Augusta, Georgia - "Across the Creek"
Augusta in April has a particular feeling. The air is warm and thick, heavy with the smell of Georgia pines and something flowering that you cannot quite name. It settles on you the moment you step outside and stays there all day.
Augusta Country Club has been there since 1899. Thirty years before Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts broke ground across Rae's Creek. The members here call a round at Augusta National simply playing across the creek. They are comfortable with what they have on their own side.
The eighth and ninth holes run alongside Amen Corner. Rae's Creek laps along both before crossing the fence to do what it has always done in front of the twelfth green at Augusta National. During Masters week you are perhaps a hundred yards from the tournament. The roar of the crowd arrives before any information about what caused it.
Which brings me to a moment that is hard to explain without sounding like you made it up.
Someone in the group stepped up on the eighth. Long three wood, needing to carry Rae's Creek. The backswing came. Contact was made. The ball went perhaps a hundred yards. A low duffed thing that found the rough well short of where intended. And in that exact instant, from just beyond the treeline to the left, the crowd at Augusta National erupted. The kind of roar that only happens one way. A hole in one at the Masters. The hat came off. Turned toward a gallery that existed only in imagination. Every bit of it accepted without hesitation. The timing was so precise, so perfectly absurd, that none of us could do anything but laugh.
Transfusions at the turn. A couple of them, which did nothing for the back nine and everything for the experience of it.
If you ever find yourself with the invitation to play here, say yes immediately. Timing like that does not come twice. It's in the walking.