Having just seen another fascinating Master golf tournament, I have to admit it is still the best one of all the majors and other professional tournaments, but it is still far from perfect and often extremely annoying to watch.
Why is it great? Of all the big tournaments, it is the only one at the same site every year. The only other yearly venue that comes close is the Players Championship. When someone eagles 15 at Augusta on Sunday, you know exactly what they face on the last three holes and what their chances are of success. Today, I noticed they had not shown one person hit a ball in the water on 12, and most of the contenders had hit very nice, if slightly conservative shots, into the green. It seemed pretty tame despite its notorious reputation. The 12th at Augusta is not the 17th at the TPC, but it is very tough and anything to the right of the flag is high risk. So, when I saw Spieth's swing on the tee, I immediately snapped to attention, as it looked like he hit it to the right. The rest is history: epic collapse, but without hitting that many bad shots (the chunk on the first penalty was one of those, though).
The Masters also has "tradition." While it overemphasizes this, like Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, we like some of our traditions for the Masters. About the only other major golf tradition is having the final round of the men's U.S. Open on Father's Day, which is not that big a deal. Even oversold tradition matters. Will they still be talking about Gene Sarazen's albatross in 30 years, or Nicklaus shooting 30 on the second nine at age 46 to overtake a choking Norman and Ballesteros? You betcha!
Finally, the course is spectacularly eye-catching and is a place where nearly anything is possible, from epic collapses to spectacular comebacks and surges up leaderboards. A little known French player shot 83 yesterday and 68 today.
That said, it is still a tough go at times watching it. The demands on the announcers to say "patrons" instead of crowd or spectators, "second cut" instead of rough, and "second nine" instead of back nine is the tip of the iceberg. From the pretensions of the CBS announcers, including "Sir" NIck Faldo and his blabbering (don't try to diagram his sentences) and Jim Nantz's funereal reverence, to the repeat on every broadcast of the honorary starters teeing off, the audioanimatronic spiel by the Vice President (I believe his mouth is the only thing that moves, and just barely), and the constant displays of the flora and fauna while actual golf is being missed try my patience. This year my pet peeve was every hole announcer's compulsion to drop some fact about the player they were showing at the time. Example, with only slight exaggeration: "Danny Willett, who was an outstanding junior golfer and who takes his truffle dog out every weekend he is not competing, has this 4 footer for a par." During the early parts of Saturday's rounds, the production team couldn't seem to restrain itself from showing prerecorded piece after prerecorded piece, all while the best golfers in the world were having fits due to the wind conditions. The wind blew Billy Horschel's ball into the water from the green on 15 and we never saw the end result, I presume because the Master's Museum needed a plug, like we could ever go there.
So, watch the Masters for the beauty, the tradition, and the possibility of something memorable happening, but maybe with the volume off and something to read during the commercials and promos, and you will have a pretty good afternoon.