Sunday at the Masters!

Masters Sunday 2014.

It was everything Sunday at the Masters should be!  There was an amateur who survived the cut and played the weekend.  A pair of fifty-somethings stayed at the top of the board and showed us that golf is a game for a lifetime.  There was a twenty-year old youngster, playing brilliant golf, challenging a no-holds-barred Big Dog who hits the ball a country mile.  There was a breathtaking chip-in from a bunker.  There was a devastatingly short tee shot that could have gotten hung up in the rough but instead rolled back down the hill and into the water.  There was a death-defying second shot out of pine straw, through a little stand of pine trees and onto the green.   And when it was over, on the 18th green, there was gentility and humility in both defeat and victory, which is as it should be in the game of golf.  All played under the watchful eyes of a man with a vision of what golf could be in the United States, on a golf course like no other.

Unique to the Game of Golf: A Competition Among Friends

Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus & Gary Player, with Augusta
National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne, preparing, yet
again, to open the 2014 Masters Tournament with their
ceremonial tee shots.

We’ve always wanted to beat each other; we’ve never hidden that. When we did win, we congratulated the other. When we lost, we congratulated the other. 

Gary Player, on his lifelong relationship with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer

I've been fretting about the Star Fort Ladies Golf Association spring tournament.  Well, actually, I've been fretting about the pairings.  It's a team event and I'm still not entirely recovered from my shoulder surgery.  My swing's a bit stiff.  I tire easily.  I'm not going to make much of a partner.