“Amen Corner” was first mentioned in a 1958 Sports Illustrated essay on the Masters that was written by Herbert Warren Wind. Over time, the original meaning and intent of the phrase has been obscured, said Wind’s nephew Bill Scheft, an editor of “America’s Gift to Golf: Herbert Warren Wind on The Masters” (American Golfer, 2011).
When people say that there’s no place like Amen Corner in all of golf, and that has a lot to do with him, he was forever embarrassed by that. He didn’t think he was saying anything original about the Masters.
He had been hired away from the New Yorker, where later on his career he would take weeks to write 10,000 words about the Masters. At SI, he had to turn it in the same night after the final round. What could he pass on to the reader that they hadn’t already gotten elsewhere?
The format was to drop the reader in the middle of the action, to titillate and be lyrical. He had to grab his audience and hold them. He loved to tickle himself with wordplay, and that’s where “Amen Corner” came from. It was an obscure jazz record. He mentioned it in the first paragraph, and it was so incidental that he didn’t even bother to explain the musical reference.
He was like a comic writing a great joke that only three people in an audience of 200 would get, but he didn’t care. He was generous and did not hold back what he knew, and readers trusted him to keep them captivated. In this piece, he didn’t even mention the winner — Arnold Palmer — until about 400 words in. His authoritative writing led Augusta National to honor him by naming the press room after him.
Amen Corner did not refer to a sacred place. It was specifically the second shot on No. 11, the par-three No. 12 and the tee shot on No. 13. It was that angle that made a player go, “Whew, after making it through all that, maybe I can make a birdie now.”
As time passed, Amen Corner became those entire three holes. It was too esoteric to describe more specifically. Sadly, that’s what happens as innovations become more generic. The original nuance is forgotten.
The only time I heard him refer to it was in 1988. After being hospitalized for a prostatectomy, he was unable attend the Masters for the first time since the 1940s.
Steve Melnyk, the announcer on No. 11, mentions, “Amen Corner was first coined in 1958 by the great Herbert Warren Wind.” There’s a long, long pause and Uncle Herb deadpanned, “I owe Melnyk money now.”
He always wondered what all the fuss was about.
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