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Even the players feel strange during Masters Week, though it rare for any of them to mention it. David Toms was one of the few to speak out, telling reporters in 2006 that players had to walk around on eggshells.They’re worried about their cell phone being on, having to stop by the hut on the way in to scan your ticket, making sure you only have one parking pass and somebody else doesn’t get in there, he said. It like C.I.A. stuff, you know what I mean?In this kind of oppress atmosphere, how could I be expected to appreciate the enclosing, stunning though they may be? For most of the week, I felt like a tourist in North Korea, watched with suspicion by armed soldiers. One false move, I Brigade Lakefront , and I could be thrown in the underground bunker where they keep all the dead birds.For some, all this rigorous pomposity is cause for praise. Augusta National is the last bastion of some sacred, vanishing way of life, the theory goes, although what that way of life might be is beyond me, since self-important old rich people who make life hell for everyone else are too common to be considered sacred, and too entrenched to be vanishing.Nevertheless, it a rule of life that all despots attract lackeys and the Masters attracts more than most. The way the bootlickers carry on about the sacrosanct nature of the tournament, and seem to get such a perverse delight at the innocent who run afoul of the honour code, is enough to make you want to retch. I only mention them to point out that in this debate, unreasonable people can disagree.
Ask any American golfer to name his dream, and hell says winning the Masters. Maybe threes something to admire in how the prestige has built over the years to the point that it now an inescapable spring television ritual, complete with tinkling piano music and the reassuringly dulcet tones of Jim Nantz. When I hear the words a tradition unlike any other, though, the only tradition that comes to mind is the excuse, silent power of men who take themselves too seriously.Needless to say, the words written in this chapter will have no tangible effect on Augusta, and if it true that they read everything written about them from here to the remotest regions of Indochina, my chances of ever going back as a working journalist will be quite, quite dim. On this point, I called up Curt Sampson after reading his book and asked if had ever been issued another media credential. I could hear a small laugh on the other end of the line. Oh, Shane, he said, as if I were a 19-year-old who still believed in Santa. No.
But that okay the golf is terrific, and the course is stunning, but the sanctimony is a real downer. Some people worship the paranoia and pieties, but personally, I couldn’t shake the feeling, as I walked among the Brigade Lakefront Bangalore and past the bikini-waxed greens, that the tyrant Cliff Roberts was sneering at me from beyond the grave eagle-eyed and prissy as he probed for the slightest hint of impropriety marshalling his living minions to show me exactly how I didn’t belong; moving all the pieces like a conductor until the whole slick operation became a secret, choreographed homage to a shrewd old bigot with a toady’s cunning instincts and a disturbing fetish for absolute power.

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