Nothing Beats Practice With a Champion
If any first-time Masters participant is lucky the week, he'll find himself in a practice-round pairing with a former champion who has been there and done that. The rookie could get a memory he won't soon forget.
In his classic 1970 book Pro, still one of the best accounts of life on tour, Frank Beard remembered his experiences playing with three Masters champions--Henry Picard (1938), Ralph Guldahl (1939) and Herman Keiser (1946)--during his first visit to Augusta National G.C. in 1965.
"My round with them went faster than any round I've ever played in my life, it was so fascinating," Beard wrote. "They mentioned trees that had been knocked down by lightning and mounds that had been leveled. . . . For me, it was like participating in history. It was like being a modern big-league baseball player and batting against Walter Johnson or being a modern professional football player and tackling Red Grange. It was beautiful."
And Beard had some advice that would come in handy for this year's first-timers. "You can lick this course with your normal game--f you ever calm down enough to play your normal game," he wrote.
Some things haven't changed.
--Bill Fields
Not just practice rounds most of the young players on tour are spellbound when they are paired with some of the legends of the game in the first couple of rounds. In preparation for the masters, if some of the young guns are lucky enough to get a chance to play with a great not only would it be an amazing experience for them they would also get valuable tips on how to go about the course. After all on tough courses, where you place the ball for the approach shot is just as important as the shot to the green itself.
Armed with information obtained from champions it would give the young guys a great fillip and boost. Sometime it could be a life changing experience. Just recently we heard Arjun Atwal , who won an European Tour event after a break of nearly 8 years tell us how practicing with Tiger at his home club inspired him a lot.
How can we forget the Nike Ad where the amateurs start hitting an amazing ball the moment Tiger is with them , it does happen in real life too!
Andy Brown
http://www.golfswingsecretsrevealed.com/blog/2008/04/05/nicklaus%e2%80%99-legacy-helps-makes-tiger-what-he-is/