At this point, no one knew whether Palmer's score on the 12th was a 3 or a 5. Palmer, however, didn't let it bother him. On the 13th, a 475-yard dogleg left, he followed a solid drive with a great 3-wood from a sidehill lie that carried the arm of Rae's Creek that wraps itself around the green, and then canned his 18-foot downhill putt for an eagle 3. When he was playing the 15th, he was informed that his official score on the 12th was a 3. That, in effect, won him the tournament. Incidentally, it was Palmer's first victory in a major professional championship.
The sheet music to "Shoutin'" (top); jazz singer Mildred Bailey peformed the song with the Dorsey Brothers, one of three versions done of the song in the 1930s.
With plenty of time to think out the article, I felt that I should try to come up with some appropriate name for that far corner of the course where the critical action had taken place -- some colorful tag like those that Grantland Rice and his contemporaries loved to devise: the Four Horsemen, the Manassa Mauler, the House that Ruth Built, the Georgia Peach, and so on. The only phrase with the word corner I could think of (outside of football's "coffin corner" and baseball's "hot corner") was the title of a song on an old Bluebird record. (Bluebird was RCA's label for its cheaper discs. Its prestige label was Victor.) On one side, a band under the direction of Milton (Mezz) Mezzrow, a Chicago clarinetist, had recorded "35th and Calumet" -- most likely the site of a jazz joint in Chicago. The reverse side was "Shouting in the Amen Corner." There was nothing unusual about the song but apparently the title was catchy enough to stick in my mind.
The more I thought about it, the more suitable I thought the Amen Corner was for that bend of the course where the decisive action in that Masters had taken place (as indeed it had in some past Masters and would in several in the future). My article, in the issue dated April 21, was called "The Fateful Corner," and the opening sentence went like this: "On the afternoon before the start of the recent Masters golf tournament, a wonderfully evocative ceremony took place at the farthest reach of the Augusta National course -- down in the Amen Corner where Rae's Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee, then parallels the front edge of the green on the short 12th and finally swirls alongside the 11th green..."
I have no idea how the name caught on. To be candid, I am delighted that it did. To be connected even in the flimsiest way with a course like Augusta National and an institution like the Masters is good for the soul.
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