Augusta —- A.D. Frazier looks past the azalea curtain that now envelops his old Atlanta Olympics boss, Billy Payne, and sees a man in his rightful element.

Square peg, meet immaculately prepared square hole.

It seems Payne has quite comfortably settled in as chairman of the grand old golf club, Augusta National, and its holy grail of a tournament, the Masters. He'll rule over his second edition of the Masters this week with an authority that he could enjoy almost nowhere else.

"I've told Billy he's running the last absolute monarchy on earth," Frazier said, laughing.

If Payne has an itch now, it doesn't need to pass through four committees, two commissions and assorted sultans and potentates before he can scratch it. When he needs something done, he doesn't have to close his eyes and hope there's enough money or enough competence to do it, as was the case in birthing the Atlanta Olympics. He and all those who work with him at the club seem to share one vision.

For instance, there's the hat story from last year's Masters, Payne's first as chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club. Frazier, the No. 2 man behind Payne on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics organizing committee, tells it as a way of illustrating his good friend's fiery devotion to detail.

Frazier, who is not an Augusta National member but regularly attends the tournament, witnessed his buddy inform a club member in passing how much he disliked the man's hat. It was nothing obviously tasteless —- it had neither "Caterpillar" nor "U.S. Beer Drinking Team" stitched above the bill. It was just a straw hat as Frazier remembers it. But Payne thought it not quite appropriate for a green-jacketed symbol of the Augusta National ideal.

And what did this un-named member, a powerful man as befits a member of one of golf's most exclusive enclaves, do?

"He took it off," Frazier said.

Everything runs on time in the House of Payne now. Augusta National and the Masters have worked like that since co-founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts began the tournament in 1934. It has fallen on every successive chairman after Roberts to answer to the highest standards.

"It's a tough job," said David Owen, author of "The Making of the Masters," a look at the beginnings of the club and the tournament. "No one wants to be the one [chairman] who makes a big mistake."

How can that not appeal to Payne after his experience with the Atlanta Olympics? No politician now can turn his event into a county fair stinking of funnel cakes and meat on a stick. No puffed-up sporting poobah is ever again going to faintly praise his efforts as "most exceptional," as did former International Olympics chief Juan Antonio Samaranch at the Closing Ceremonies. If Payne and the Augusta National membership want to run the best-ever golf tournament, there is nothing to stop them.

Perfection may be unattainable, but you can see it from the chairman's office at Augusta National.

Few battles here

With the gentility expected of the chairman, Payne outlines a key difference between organizing an Olympic effort in his hometown and guiding an iconic golf club and tournament. "You have the great history of running this wonderful tournament," he said, ticking off the advantages: "An incredibly talented staff, plus a wealth of members who are very unselfish as volunteers. Yeah, this is a lot of fun and joy. I had all that with the Olympics, but part of every day was fighting battles. We don't fight a whole lot of battles here."

The view from the chairman's office in the green annex just off the first fairway has to be pleasing to eyes such as Payne's. At this point of his life —- 60, with two triple-bypass operations behind him —- he seems so utterly comfortable with where he is and the job he took in May 2006.

"I think that's an understatement," said Frazier, CEO for Danka Business Systems USA in Florida.

From his desk, Payne looks across to the opposite wall and sees an original portrait of Bobby Jones by a dabbler named Dwight Eisenhower. Just to the left of that is an original sketch of the Augusta National antebellum clubhouse by 10-year-old Bo Sikes, one of Payne's eight grandchildren. Those two works seem to define what Payne sees as his mission as chairman —- serving the weighty tradition of the place while staying relevant to incoming generations.

Young Bo did his art off a photograph. He will be among the children getting a firsthand look at the Masters this year under a new program that allows a badge-holder to bring one unticketed child between ages 8 and 16 to the tournament. Previously, children were allowed on the course, but each had to have his or her own Masters badge, considered one of the scarcest tickets in sports.

One columnist suggested a concern about "untethered young'uns" running loose in Tiger Woods' backswing. The chairman cannot conceive of such a thing.

"No, that's not going to happen," Payne said confidently during an interview last month. He can't be sure how many children will be on the grounds during the tournament —- there's even a pool going among the membership —- but he seems fairly certain that there will be no breaches of decorum.

Apparently, then, they are not going to install a ball pit next to the Butler Cabin or be offering pony rides at Amen Corner. Nor will Stuart Scott's trademark "Boo-Yeahs" ring through the pines as ESPN takes over airing the Thursday and Friday broadcast from USA Network. Chris Berman will not be commenting on Stewart "Kitchen" Cink or Larry Mize "Eyes Have Seen the Glory."

"I wouldn't respond specifically to any talent," Payne said, ever diplomatically. "I would say the tone of the Augusta broadcast is never going to change. It is respectful. It is in some cases almost reverential as it relates to this beauty. And I know it's going to continue like that."

In Payne's world now, everyone is on that same page.

A new stage

The advantages of running such an event as opposed to selling the Olympics in Atlanta are not lost on the chairman. When he wants to reach out to the world, to expand the brand of the Masters and proselytize about the beauties of golf, he has a stage unlike any other.

For instance, bringing on board big international sponsors like Mercedes-Benz and Rolex this year to support the telecast and golf development programs overseas was a relative gimme.

"You don't have to talk anybody into being associated with the Masters," Payne said. "You don't have to get on your hands and knees like I used to trying to get sponsorship of the Olympics. Then, they thought I was nuts. Here, they say, 'Where can I sign up?' "

In terms of sheer size of event, the Masters ranked a distant ninth in a January Turnkey Sports poll of 800 senior-level sports executives. The Super Bowl was first, with 70 percent of the vote. But the Masters was No. 1 on the list (with 42 percent) when the question was posed: Which is the most prestigious event? That image is a powerful corporate pheromone.

One of Payne's bigger disappointments was his inability to get golf on the Olympics program, using Augusta National as the launch pad. The issue became lost in politics, a ready target for criticizing the club's membership policy. A leading voice in scuttling the idea was Atlanta City Councilman Bill Campbell (who later became mayor and now is serving a federal term for tax evasion). He called the plan "highly inappropriate given the historic lack of any black, Jewish or other minority members." And thus did Olympic golf disappear into a deep, wide divide of class and race.

Rather than trying to drag the world to Augusta National, Payne now can take Augusta National to the world on his terms. Like anywhere else, change comes to this staid old place. A chairman is marked by how he contributes to that inevitable evolution.

The subject of bringing in a woman member has receded recently, and Payne is not about to inflame it now. He has shown himself to be more careful in his comments on that than his predecessor, Hootie Johnson. In 2003, Johnson engaged in some Masters-week verbal sniping with activist Martha Burk over the issue of excluding women from Augusta National membership. Nothing came of it, other than a national debate over the rights and responsibilities of a private club that holds one very public event.

"I have not a clue what he'll do," Frazier said. "But I know he'll keep his own counsel when it comes to matters that sensitive."

Global reach

So far, Payne's moves have been designed to expand the name of the Masters while marketing the game along the way. ESPN, with its more global reach, through both television and online, thus becomes the more perfect partner.

Included in the deal will be the first live broadcast of the Masters Par 3 contest, a Wednesday lark on the adjoining Par 3 course intended to show younger viewers that golf doesn't have to take all day nor does it require a player to check his sense of humor with the starter. This day-before-the-tournament, nine-hole event is strictly for giggles, many players choosing to have children or friends caddy for them. It even comes with an unofficial curse —- no winner of the Par 3 ever has won that year's Masters.

"Imagine if just before the Super Bowl the two teams had a flag football game," said John Wildhack, ESPN's senior vice president of programming.

The technologies have changed but the ideas are consistent with those of the bygone Masters founders Jones and Roberts, Payne said. For one week of the year, the club shall give a gift of golf to the people.

Does the new chairman recognize any kind of contradiction in such an ultra-exclusive place selling golf as a game for everyone?

"We as organizers of a tournament have had an obligation to the game of golf to spread the greatness of this game, the integrity it teaches you," he said. "I don't think that relates at all to the fact that we operate, as do thousands of other places, as a private club."

When he signed on for this duty, Payne dived headfirst into the history of Augusta National. During the first summer of his chairmanship, Payne said he spent most of every week in Augusta (he figures he splits his time pretty evenly between there and Atlanta now). During that time, the club archivist presented Payne with collections of early letters from Jones and first chairman Roberts that traced the history of the club and the tournament. He read them by the hundreds, treasured them like the scrolls of ancients.

Seemed that everything he felt about the place and its mission was verified. And that this was the place where he belonged.

"One of the things I think about all the time, historically, is that I've been referred to as a big-picture guy who messes around too much in detail," Payne said. "It's very clear that the success of the Masters and what the world sees of it is a direct result of Mr. Roberts' attention to detail.

"Everything was specific. He would order silver for the trophies, he would make sure it was the proper weight. If anyone made the slightest error he would be immediately aware of it. Nothing got by him. ... The footprint is in place, it's his. It's a good one."

Big-picture guy who obsesses on the details? "It sounds like the job description for chairman at Augusta National," Owen, the Masters chronicler, said.

The full scope of the Payne Era at Augusta National has yet to reveal itself.

"He is going to do something with the position that hasn't been done before," Frazier said. "I don't know what it is, but it will be fascinating to watch."

In the meantime, keep the children in tow and headwear dignified.

AUGUSTA NATIONAL * TOURNAMENT BEGINS THURSDAY

BILLY PAYNE'S ROAD TO AUGUSTA

1987: Billy Payne, a former captain of the UGA football team and a local real estate attorney, begins fanning interest for an Atlanta Summer Olympics bid.

1990: Atlanta awarded the 1996 Olympics and Payne named CEO of Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. He spearheaded the effort to raise money and put on the Games.

1997: Six months after the Games, Payne is named vice chairman of NationsBank —- and becomes a member of Augusta National Golf Club.

2000: Payne opens an Atlanta office of New York-based investment firm Gleacher Partners —- and becomes chairman of the Augusta National media committee.

2006: Payne named chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, succeeding Hootie Johnson.

—- Compiled by staff researcher Richard Hallman