Before the serious work of staring down the pressure of a Masters campaign, one more lark.
It is a diversion like no other, each Wednesday of Masters week, when players and fans make their way to Augusta National’s version of the Burger King ball pit, the nine-hole par-3 fun zone.
No one goes to the Par-3 contest looking for solemn competition, not that they could find it if they did.
The front yard of Augusta National is an intimate theater where old greats go to be cheered again. “I tell people these are the only greens I can reach in regulation,” 62-year-old former champion Ben Crenshaw said.
And where the younger set gets to putter around with their children. The fewer the restrictions on family shenanigans, the better.
Sometimes they even get to have it both ways. Witness 1982’s champion Craig Stadler touring the par-3 course with his 34-year-old son, Kevin, who qualified this year for his first Masters.
Between them, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player have 236 years on this planet and 34 major championships. Yet every year when they are grouped in the Par-3 contest, they are reduced to giggling schoolboys talking nonsense before every shot.
Other random scenes of joy Wednesday:
- Mark O'Meara, 1998 champion, was one of two players to record a hole-in-one, with his wife on the bag for the first time in his 30 Masters appearances. Maybe she should have been clubbing him more often.
- Ryan Moore won the thing and uttered the traditional defiant words in the face of the famous Par-3 curse (no winner has gone on to win the Masters). "Someone has to break that," he said.
- Masters first-timer Patrick Reed played with one-and-a-half family members, his pregnant wife, Justine, on the bag. Once his caddie on Tour, she made it all the way around the par-3 course without complaint. And when Patrick stepped aside and had her hit the final shot, she quite literally was putting for two.
The 15-footer just skimmed the hole but didn’t drop. No matter. It was all in fun.
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