Your favorite aunt want a new favorite adopted nephew?
My son called me in 2006 and asked “guess where you will be next April 5”. He told me Augusta. He had been trying the lottery for several years and finally won 4 tickets. Then I won again in 2011, and my son won again in 2012. 3 times in 5 years. No luck since.
I feel for the people that have been trying for 25 years and not won.
I won 4 practice round (Tuesday) tickets I want to say in 2015 on the very first attempt at the lottery. I tell my Dad who is a die hard golfer who promptly books his ticket from South Africa to Atlanta ( 16 hr flight) I fly from Phoenix a couple weeks later to meet him there. We get to the course early Tuesday AM , make a beeline for the merch tent , grab some snacks and head out to the 9’th. Before we even see a ball being hit the biggest ass thunderstorm rolls into town and dumps a ton of rain …the committee then cancels the practice round and everyone has to leave, pronto! I want to say we were on the property for no mire than 60 minutes … man my Dad was bummed …and jet lagged !!
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That’s awful.
Had a similar situation for my first PGA tour event. Was probably 1997 or so the Buick at Westchester. We took a bus with a group up and it dropped us off around 9am. The bus left.
We got in, saw one group tee off on #10 (par 3) and then it started pouring and round was cancelled. Only problem was, the bus wasn’t coming back until 4pm - and this was before cell phones.
Can’t imagine how terrible it was for my dad to be with ~10 year old me with no entertainment for that long. We wandered the course for a bit, saw one person hit balls on the range for a minute, and just sat around for hours.
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I was there for a Tuesday practice round in 2016. I won the lottery, got four tickets, and became the best friend three of my golf buddies have ever had. We made a long weekend of it, starting Friday by driving down to Myrtle Beach and playing a couple of rounds before leaving Monday afternoon to drive to Columbia, SC where we stayed the night. We were about an hour away from Augusta National. If you ever get lucky enough to go and don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars per night with a several night minimum in Augusta, I highly recommend Columbia. Cool town, state capitol, site of the University of South Carolina so a lot of great places to go.
There were so many memorable things for me. The driving range is phenomenal–set up with several rows of what are obviously permanent stands behind the players and easily the longest driving range I’ve ever seen. It had to be at least 400 yards and uphill too. We saw Keegan Bradley with his team. I’m sure there was a swing coach, a sports psychologist, a computer guy, and an assistant, looking at a Trackman and a computer screen. In addition to their traveling costs, the high-level pros are definitely spending a lot of money on their support staffs.
I had been told the course itself was more impressive in person than on TV, and even with that knowledge, the course exceeded my expectations. It’s not just that the conditions are perfect in the middle of each fairway–there were places 50 yards off the fairways in the trees that were better than any residential lawn I’ve ever seen.
Clean, too. The patrons are generally very considerate. The only trash I saw all day was cigarette butts. I’m actually surprised in a way that Augusta National hasn’t banned smoking on the course, but I suspect that given a lot of the members are older, it’s likely this is a membership policy. But I didn’t see a soda can, sandwich or candy bar wrapper, or any other kind of trash around the rest of the course.
I’d also say that if you have a chance to go to a practice round, don’t dismiss it. I know it’s not the main tournament, but for that reason, you see two things with the pros you wouldn’t see during the tournament proper. First, the level of relaxation and kidding is high. I recall seeing Ricky Fowler walking towards a tee directly between the group in front of him on the tee and the fairway the group on the tee was trying to reach–and he was holding a golf club directly over his head to point out the line to the guy on the tee in front of him!
Second, although the players are certainly concerned about hitting good tee and approach shots, when you watched closely, you realized that they routinely dropped two or three balls around the greens to try chip shots or putts from unfavorable locations, just to see why you didn’t want to hit that part of the green with your approach shot. We saw one pro on a green where the flag was located back left drop several balls on the right front of the green, putt through the fringe on the upper right, and then watch the balls crawl out of the fringe, slowly turn left and pick up speed, slide by the hole no more than a foot away, and then come back down the green to the left front, more than 50 feet away. You can definitely see in person what you can’t see on TV: if you hit the wrong place on some greens, you either hit a hail-Mary putt to one putt or accept a three putt.
Yes, the food is good and cheap–in an entire day, I spent no more than $15 and ate and drank a lot, although I didn’t do any beer or alcohol. And yes, the merchandise building will then eat up everything you save. I kept firm control over my spending and still dropped just a little less than $200.
If you get the chance, go!
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