There is something about the Masters

There is something about the Masters

Whatever the consequences of the startling desertion of form the Irish man suffered during his final round of the Masters, the effect upon gauging the demographics of the Irish population is the least determinable. But the chances are that several Irish people, marked a ‘minus 10’ for the number of rooms in their house and more than one father must have ticked a ‘triple bogey seven’ in the box for their children.There is something about the Masters. Even Masters career Of Schwartzel those of us who see the tournament as the high altar of golf’s general weirdness – the overwhelming whiteness of its best practitioners and its crowd profile, the insistence by so many fans that they go for the knee-length chino short and sun-visor combo, those little foldaway seats that they lug around the course with them; the tiresome yelling of “Geddindahole” throughout the Tiger Woods era, the preponderance of argyle; that fact that blatantly out-of-shape golfers can still thrive at the game and the staggering money on offer for tournaments that nobody has ever heard of – can’t help but fall for the Masters.

Also, there is something soothing about spending three nights in a row studying what is basically the most beautiful garden in the world. Then you have guff about tradition and ceremony – the jacket, the dinner menu, the lack of prize money, the fierce protection of sexism, Amen Corner, the weather; virtues upheld by Peach State old timers who look and sound like they have doing their laid-back courtly thing since the heyday of Robert E Lee. The Masters is a sports tournament with character.So when an Irish man leads this show for three days running, everyone in the old country is going to sit up and take notice. The psychological effects of McIlroy’s dramatic implosion have already been exhausted and, it seems, overstated. When things began to go from bad to unbelievably horrible on the 10th hole on Sunday night, most of us were probably worried for the county Down man.