First Impressions

A Master's first look

Over 30 years after his plunge into life on the PGA Tour, the Bogey Man does Augusta and gives a rookie's impression

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By George Plimpton

Photo by Jim Moriarty

April 2000

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the April 2000 issue of Golf Digest. George Plimpton's unique brand of participatory journalism includes the classic first-person account of life on the PGA Tour, The Bogey Man. His stories for Golf Digest include 1995's "Playgrounds of Privilege" on golf in the Hamptons.

Late last winter, the editors of Golf Digest asked me if I would like to attend the Masters--a tournament I had never thought I'd see, because it is so difficult to get a ticket. So naturally I accepted, thrilled to the marrow. The editors then informed me that while they were interested in my general impressions of the goings-on, they particularly hoped that I would look into the question of how to become a member of the National, one of the most exclusive clubs in the golf world. So off I went to Augusta, armed with a notebook, delighted for the opportunity whatever the assignment, and of course a suit coat and tie for social occasions to pursue the membership matter.

On my return, I was asked by so many friends what it was like that it occurred to me to offer my views in the form of a conversation with them. Thus the reader should imagine a group out on the golf club terrace in the shade of a sun umbrella, drinks about to arrive, and one of them turns and remarks:

Q: Well, how was it?

A: Vijay Singh won the thing, of course, and Tiger wasn't up to snuff--which is memorable--but what I will truly remember about my first Masters is the trouble it gave my feet.

Your feet?
I'd packed some tennis sneakers thinking they were mine. When I arrived in Augusta I discovered they were my son's--a size too small. So my first day on the course was an exercise in utter agony. I became acutely aware of this when I ran across the clubhouse lawn early that first day to catch a glimpse of a great Masters tradition--two venerables, in this case Sam Snead and Byron Nelson, hitting drives off the first tee. Over the heads of the crowd I caught a glimpse of Snead's familiar straw hat with its colored band, then the rise and fall of a clubhead. The pain in both feet suddenly became so sharp that I stopped fast as Snead's drive bounced down the edge of the fairway. So that was my first impression of the Masters--a sharp pain in both feet and the fact that when the crowd broke up, I heard a woman calling after Byron Nelson, "Nice to see you, Mr. Hogan."

Did you interview Nelson or Snead?
No, but I remember Snead from years before. The old rascal! I played golf with him on the Boca Raton course where he was the professional in the early '60s--one of my first ventures in participatory journalism. I had a notebook, a good automatic pencil, one in reserve, my hopes to get little tidbits of information, perhaps a tip on my swing, a story or two, enough to round out into a nice portrait.

The trouble was I never got a chance to talk with him. We met briefly on the tees and greens. After his drive, he would climb into his golf cart and off he'd go with my girlfriend at the time--slender, in a yellow summer dress--while I struggled along far behind. On occasion she walked with me. "Hey, do you know what?" she said. "Sam says he can lift me off the ground and tell me within two ounces what I weigh." She told me later that she had fended him off, joshing with him, but at the 17th green, while I was extricating myself from a distant bunker, she had relented and let herself be picked off the ground.

"How close was he?" I asked.

"He was off by six pounds."

You say you were playing with Snead as part of a participatory-journalism stint. Were you at the Masters to try the same sort of thing?
I'll admit something: It was my hope to climb over a fence and play a couple of holes at night. That was the best I could hope for as a participant.

Is that what Golf Digest had in mind?
Absolutely not. Beyond my impressions of the tournament, the editors wanted me to find out how you become a member of the club that hosts it--one of the more secret of organizations in the country, right up there with Yale's Skull and Bones, the Bohemian Grove and other bastions of secrecy and mumbo jumbo. Very hard to get into. One of the stories is that Bill Gates, the Microsoft tycoon, has let it be known that he would like to be a member, willing to pay anything for the privilege, and has been rebuffed. The magazine wanted me to ask the club's chairman, Hootie Johnson, about this.

It's true, isn't it, that the members wear a green coat during the tournament? Did you think of wearing a green coat and infiltrating?
Frankly, no. I had a blue blazer. Incidentally, by tradition the newly coated champion takes his green jacket off the grounds for just one year. Then he returns it to his locker in the champions' room. As for the membership, no one is allowed to wear their green jackets except on the premises.

Why is that?
The idea is, the club mustn't be dishonored by having a member wearing the green jacket falling down drunk in some honky-tonk bar, say in Hong Kong. The word would get back to Augusta. So the jackets stay, hanging in a cedar closet on the premises, arranged alphabetically on hangers, and when a member calls to say he is coming down to spend a weekend, he arrives in his room to find the jacket waiting for him. A member told me that he was informed that his jacket looked a bit "scruffy." He was urged to get a new one. He didn't dare not comply. This done, he got what he described as a "whopping" bill. Incidentally, my friend tells me that the tournament winners--Tiger, Vijay Singh and the others back through history--do not get billed for the first jacket that is draped over their shoulders in the Butler Cabin. But they've got to pay for any replacements.