Editor’s note: Lewine Mair will return to Augusta this week for the first time in several years to accept the 2025 PGA of America Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism. She shares some of her fondest Masters recollections in this column.
I’m not 100 percent sure what year it was but, after the courtesy car had turned into the drive, I remember first coming face to face with the flowers in their America-shaped bed before looking beyond to the whiter-than-white clubhouse. The wooden benches to the right of the front entrance were where I used to sit and chat to the caddies and pick up on the news of the day.
Living as I do in Edinburgh, Scotland, where everything tends to be a bit grim and grey in the winter months, the next thing to hit me were the gloriously green fairways among the rust-coloured pine needles. With fertilisers no longer being used to the same extent, the grass may have toned down a couple of shades since my last visit, but will I be able to tell?
Still on a “to dye or not to dye” note, it must have been in ’04 that I was given a curious little story – it came from a thoroughly reliable source – concerning that great character, Ian Poulter. Apparently, he had been advised not to turn up at his first Masters with his hair in an assortment of different hues.
When the rest of the press descended on Ian to ask if what I’d written was true, he denied it.
Awkward situation though that was, I could understand why he would have been anxious to avoid ending up in the centre of a burgeoning tabloid story. His manager, meantime, was a decent enough fellow to see things from my point of view. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but Ian let you down.”
I had by then been going to the Masters for around nine years, firstly as a diary writer and then, in 1998, as the follow-on golf correspondent to the endlessly popular Michael Williams for The Daily Telegraph. (Inevitably, there was a complaint about the job going to a woman, though only the one.)
In that role, I was asked more than once if I would like to play Augusta National on the Monday following the tournament. In what sounds more like a vice than a virtue on my part, I turned the offer down on both occasions. To explain, it was for fear of missing a story. (Men tend to share stories with men, but women mostly operate as lone warriors.)
Martha Wallace, the media officer at Augusta who was on duty at the foot of the stairs in the old press centre, was a great ally in this mostly male environment. The media centre itself, on the other hand, did not emit such friendly vibes. I can’t wait to see the latest edition, but it struck me that the old version was made more for exam-sitting than painting pretty pictures of the day’s events.
Ungrateful though this might sound, I didn’t grab too many of those pimento cheese sandwiches to which the club treated the media. However, when the day came that I was invited to attend the meeting where Augusta members would talk to the British contingent about how things were working from their point of view, I seized my chance.
Since no-one else was saying anything, I forged ahead with that well-worn Gary Player quote, “You are what you eat,” and suggested that we might all write better if we were given a more varied diet.
The charmer of a green-jacketed gentleman who was at the helm of the Augusta party nodded wisely and took note.
It’s maybe so much nonsense, but I’d like to think I played at least a minor part in the magnificent running buffet which has appeared ever since. If I did, I would love to know whether my green-jacketed friend thought that our articles were better or worse.
Towards the end of that same meeting, I thought of something else worth a mention.
With the walk from the press car park unevenly cobbled, I commented on how photographers and writers alike were worried about the effect the dune-like bumps might have on the equipment we were all wheeling to and fro.
“If you’re looking for a story,” said an approaching caddie, “it’s bang in front of you. That old rogue stuffs his satchel with that money and takes it home.”
Here again, I got an encouraging nod and, one year on, the path to the press centre had been given a surface which, in its own way, was up there with that of the Augusta greens.
To interject with a diary item, I remember an occasion when I strolled over the road with a notebook in hand to visit what was then – and maybe still is – a handsome grocery store. In front of it, there was one row after another of the shoppers’ parking places.
I heard a man in a white overall telling people that they would need to pay a $10 parking fee because this was Masters week – and thought nothing of it.
I loved the Thursday morning of the Masters when old hands such as Sam Snead, Gene Sarazen and Byron Nelson would start the day by hitting a drive apiece to a riot of appreciation. With each additional year, these old-timers would hang around for longer and, for those of us with U.K. deadlines who wanted to get some early copy in the bag, things couldn’t have worked out better.
For me, the best of those days came when Arnold Palmer played in the Masters for a last time in 2004 with the whole of Arnie’s Army in hot pursuit.
Today, not too many players want to merge with spectators. Indeed, when it comes to the Open Championship, things have reached the point where they prefer to have a marquee to themselves, their families and their teams in order to steer clear of conversations with members of the host club.
A pity because those members loved nothing so much as to be able to tell of the day they had met this player or that.
Would that today’s stars could have seen how Palmer interacted with his army on that day 21 years ago. True, he could have been in trouble for slow play but, after putting out at the first, he went round the green greeting members of his army by name and shaking them by the hand.
The moderns might not believe it, but it meant every bit as much to him as it did to them.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Arnold Palmer during his final round at the 2004 Masters
Simon Bruty,Anychance/Getty Images