From the hearth -
Saturday morning of Masters week, I spoke with Ron Green, author of Shouting at Amen Corner. Underscoring his answers was not only a deep understanding of the tournament, but a consummate appreciation for those qualities that make the Masters, as he suggests, the World's Greatest Golf Tournament.

Hearthstone Review: Tiger's a stroke behind Tommy Aaron.

Ron Green, Sr.: That's right! That's been fun, having the old guys around for decoration but to have a guy like Aaron or Nicklaus, playing as well as he has, it just gives a lot more character to a golf tournament than your average tour event where, you know, everyone is 25 or 30 and can hit it a mile.

HR: In the spectator guide years ago, Bob Jones wrote: "The course is not intended so much to punish severely the wayward shot as to reward adequately the stroke played with skill - and judgment." Is that still the case?

RG: I definitely think that's true. I can't think of a golf course where you have to think so much about where...the players call it 'hitting the number.' They try to hit it to an absolute certain spot on the green so that it bounces, so that it rolls, a certain way... It's extremely important that you hit the ball to the right place on these greens.

HR: How significant are the changes? You've got folks like Nicklaus and Ben Crenshaw lining up in opposition.

RG: I appreciate the fact that they want to guard what has been so great for so long. After the tournament starts people sort of forget about those things. They've moved some tees back. They've added some pin placements that are scary. But you get those once per tournament. And the rough? It needed the rough. It really did. It'd become too much of a putting tournament. It'd always been so wide open. There's a little bit of punishment in that rough, but not much. You or I could hit out of it. It's just spinning the ball on the hard-faced greens.

HR: If we were to walk out together in 1955, the first year you covered the Masters, how much different a golf course would we have seen?

RG: Shorter and purer; there was no bunker on the first hole and sometimes the greens would be so hard and the grass would be thin. I can remember one of the golfers saying you could hear the ball rolling, that kind of thing. They have maintained the integrity of the golf course. They have. But with the equipment and the guys so strong, I mean Tiger hit a tee shot 340 yards on the 15th hole. He hit 8-iron to the par-five across the water. Something had to be done to defend the golf course a little bit. I think it's been done fairly, I really do. And if they make a mistake, they'll change it. . .Once they start playing it's the wind, it's the sloping greens, it's the fact that it's a major championship, that's where the players' problems lie.

HR: Despite the talk about change, when you talk about the Masters, you're really talking more about what stays the same than what changes. That's what makes it exceptional, don't you agree?

RG: Oh, gosh, yes. I love coming back. The thing about Augusta that makes the Masters special. . .you have this treasure of memories: this is where Weiskopf was, or this is where Seve was when he hit that shot in the water, on and on and on. You walk around and think about it, you talk about it, you remember and you see how the players react to the places they've had problems before. . .That, plus just walking back and seeing the beauty of the place, and looking to see if the azaleas are at their peak. I love all that. And I think everyone else does, to come back and see so many wonderful things and you know, you know something else wonderful is going to happen.

HR: What's the first thing that you do, or look forward to doing, when you arrive?

RG: I always walk down the 10th fairway, down to Amen Corner by myself. That sounds kind of sappy, I guess, but that's sort of a tradition with me because it gets me in the mood for the tournament - just to feel the place, to sort of let it wash over me a little bit.

HR: What were some of your earliest impressions?

RG: I can still remember walking around. We got to drive in, we don't get to anymore; working people don't get to drive up Magnolia Lane anymore. Driving up Magnolia Lane, it's like driving underwater and then you see the clubhouse ahead there and then we parked and walked in and went around to the other side and looked out at the golf course, and I had never seen anything so spectacularly beautiful, so green. And I still remember how I felt. I couldn't believe anything could be that perfect, you know. No scars. Everything all dressed up in flowers, every fairway just perfect. I think most people feel a lot that way. I had a friend who lived in Charlotte who promised himself that if he ever got to the Masters, he would eat some of the grass. And he did! He was standing in the middle of the fairway and he pulled some grass and started eating and people were yelling at him to move because someone was getting ready to tee off!


"He was standing in the middle of the fairway and he pulled some grass and started eating ..."


HR: You wrote about Ben Hogan when he came back to receive the Richardson Award from the Golf Writers Association in 1973. That night you saw a Hogan that few people and fewer reporters ever did: candid, relaxed, cordial.

RG: I had sat in press conferences with him quite a bit and he was never particularly forthcoming. He would answer your questions, if it was a good question. If it was not a good question, then he would bite your head off. That night he just stood around and talked forever and ever about his favorite golf courses and things like that. . .I was always fascinated by Hogan. He was so mysterious in a way. Being able to stand around with him, and have him seem happy to do it, was a real treat.

One of the great quotes I ever heard down here was from Hogan, of all people. In the middle or late stages of his putting yips, he just couldn't putt and someone asked him about it. He said, "I'm not afraid of missing the putt. I'm afraid I can't draw the putter back. Every time I look at the cup it's filled with my blood."

HR: The Masters seems to have a way, unfairly or fairly, of defining a career. Chip Beck, Scott Hoch, Di Vicenzo, Greg Norman. There's baggage out there. Do you think that it plays on the minds of the contenders?

RG: Oh, I think so. I definitely think so. I have often wondered if that criticism of not going for it (with Chip Beck) on the 15th hole might have affected his play because he fell off the screen for a long time; he's back playing better now, thank goodness. I think Greg Norman, when he blew the big lead to Faldo, I don't have any doubt in my mind that the demons were just eating him up.

HR: About Jack, how badly did the galleries treat him when he was challenging Arnold, to the point that Bob Jones felt compelled to include a note about etiquette and decorum on the pairing sheet?

RG: Pretty badly. Not generally speaking but you could hear people, individual voices, yelling, calling him 'Fat Jack,' and all that, derisive kind of thing. And, certainly he heard them. But he did something about it. He changed his image. He lost weight and got a tailor to do his clothes and he became beautiful and loved. Arnie was so popular that anybody, anybody who came along and started beating him was not going to win the favor of the crowd. It took a long time for Jack. But the one thing about Jack, he never made an issue of that. He's always done it right. You can say what a great golfer he was, but the way he's conducted himself, handled his life, made sure he had time for his family. He's been one of the really, really great champions of any kind that we've had.

HR: You've done something everyone who picks up a club aspires to. You played the golf course. Shot 86.

RG: That was quite a while back. It made me nervous. I don't know why. I think I was just so in awe of the golf course. I got out there and was trying to think what it would be like to be a tour player, trying to play up to their standards, playing the same tees and the same pin placements of the day before. It was really, really fun, sort of like being in a wonderland.