AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | Hello – and goodbye. Post the 87th Masters, I am off for a spell of rest and recuperation. The late Seve Ballesteros said he always took the week off after a major championship to recover, and what was good enough for him is good enough for me.
I always try and do this after a big event such as the Open Championship, and I try even harder after major events in the U.S. To the tiredness that is accumulated after a busy week made up of long days and short nights is added the extra discombobulation after flying west to east to get home.
At the Masters the days are particularly long though the egg salad sandwiches and drinks in the clubhouse help one get through. If you don’t get to the course early, then traffic builds and a 30-minute journey on a quiet day can take twice as long.
Rest and recuperation could involve golf, but it is more likely to be something far removed from the game.
One of my best R & R weeks was not a week at all in fact. It was a few days at Sea Island, off the Georgia coast, staying in a condominium adjoining the shore. I could lie in bed and hear the rise and fall of the Atlantic only a chip shot away.
After the 2009 Open at Turnberry (where 59-year-old Tom Watson almost won), I stopped off in England’s Lake District and, armed with “Wainwright’s Illustrated Walking Guide to the Lake District,” spent a couple of days tramping the hills. I have often crossed the English Channel and driven to western France where in a former life I had a little house inland from La Rochelle and its quaint port.
After previous Masters, I traveled the 20 or so miles to Aiken, South Carolina, a horse-dominated town that has a real tennis court as well as several good restaurants and an air of somnolence. It is a treat to eat breakfast in the Track Kitchen with horse enthusiasts and trainers and relish the slower pace of a town that has streets wide enough for a horse and carriage to be turned around in.
Rest and recuperation could involve golf, but it is more likely to be something far removed from the game. After all, I have just spent an intense period at a golf tournament. A change is needed. That said, the opportunity to go to the wonderful Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska on my way home from a tournament on the West Coast is too good of a chance to pass up. I shall be there post the U.S. Open in Los Angeles in June.
Wherever it is and whatever I do, I enjoy it. You may not agree, but I think I deserve it.
John Hopkins
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