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Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Great oak, wisteria endure, enchant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Augusta — Somehow, it seems, the Masters never begins until you have stood under the limbs of the great oak. It gives you the feel of a giant hovering guardian. And one lone figure stood there as I walked up. Jerry Kelly had finished an interview and was standing there, as if communing with the great oak. Just Jerry, alone.
It was early in the week, a quiet time for a man to dwell in thought. We spoke and we began to talk. Jerry Kelly is not world-famous. The sight of him doesn’t stop traffic, like, “Hey, that’s Jerry Kelly.” Modest, Midwestern average, even to his personal dimensions. He’s 5 feet 11, about 165 pounds. Smaller and more vulnerable appearing than on television. This would be his sixth Masters, and he was drinking it all in before the invasion of the milling throng.
And we talked, and as we did, he said of the Masters, “It’s the best of them all, the only one of its kind. The beauty of this place is breath-taking, always the same, with manners and taste. No tented village, no commercialism, and no player, no matter where he comes from, has any reason to be ill at ease.
“The members are always around, making you feel at home. The scene, it never changes, the tradition and all. This is the tournament I’d like to win the most. This is the place to be the first of April.”
Kelly has won twice on the PGA Tour, the Sony Open in Hawaii and one of the old established ones, the Western Open. Before there were “majors,” as we know them, the Western Open was on the scale of the U.S. Open. Not now. The one Kelly won had an “Advil” in its name.
“The place to be the first of April,” he’d said. “This will be six of the last seven for me. I missed two years ago, and that’s a feeling I’ll never forget. It was depressing, and I don’t want that to happen again.”
I recall Doug Sanders once saying, when his career was cresting, “If you don’t get in the Masters, you feel like you’re out of the universe.”
Kelly is coming off his best Masters finish, a tie for fifth last year, just a stroke back of Tiger Woods, three behind Zach Johnson, the champion, a sort of a kindred Midwesterner. Johnson is from Iowa, Kelly from Wisconsin, where his major sport once was hockey. Nobody broke par last year, the third time that has happened in the Masters, something hard to believe. But last year was a collision of the weather and the tournament, a kind of a “perfect storm,” they’re saying of it this year.
Kelly is a borderline grizzled veteran of the Tour, though he has been out here for 12 years after graduating from what is now known as the Nationwide. He has added a light shade of well-cultivated facial hair, toughening up his features somewhat, but a genuinely warm smile gives him away. He’s the kind of guy you’d buy a used car from.
So we stood there, swapping thoughts beneath the giant oak and the wisteria. Somehow, the wisteria never seems to get its share of attention, though the two have grown into each other as the wisteria leans forward from its station near the old stone clubhouse. The giant oak, though, dominates but not without outside aid, barely noticeable. Some limbs of the old tree have grown to such a proportion that they have to be supported by cables, and another cable is grounded to protect it against lightning.
No one has a perfect fix on its age, but assuming that it began life when the Berckmans established their nursery here, it should be about 155 years old. Holding up pretty well for an old guy. Expressing great admiration for the giant oak and the gnarled wisteria, and sharing the convivial feeling of being blessed, Jerry went his way and I mine, both content that this is a beautiful time and a beautiful place to have a golf tournament.
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