Barry's Blog

Augusta National officials say they are often asked what trees line the club's famous driveway, Magolia Lane. They're magnolia trees, of course - 61 in all. In the light of the Masters Golf Tournament that begins tomorrow, The Wall Street Journal recently published their 18-hole "Augusta Challenge," so one could test their knowledge of this wonderful golf spectacle. See how you do on six of the most intriguing trivia questions:

Question 1- What is the lowest score in a round at the Masters?

1. 62 by Jack Nicklaus in 1962. He holds a record six titles but didn't win that year.

2. 64 by Craig Wood in the second Masters in 1935, tied by Sam Snead in 1953. Each won in those years.

3. 64 by Tiger Woods in his debut as a pro in 1997. He won, of course.

4. 63 by Nick Price in 1986, and by Greg Norman in 1996. Neither man won.

Question 2 -  Who was the oldest Masters winner?

1. Jack Nicklaus at age 46

2. Gary Player at aage 48

3. Arnold Palmer at age 44

4. The first Masters winner, Horton Smith, at age 43 

Question 3 -  Why is the Masters played in early April?

1. Bobby Jones, the Masters founder, liked the descriptions of the color of the azaleas in those first radio broadcasts.

2. Mr. Jones picked early April because sportswriters heading north from baseball's spring training in Florida would be willing to stop off to cover the Masters.

3. It wasn't at first, but when CBS signed up to broadcast the Masters, the network insisted that the tournament move to early April.

4. Mr. Jones liked having the year's first major golf event, making it similar to baseball's opening day. 

Question 4 - Why are the holes at Augusta named after flowers?

1. Club co-founder Clifford Roberts was an amateur botanist.

2. The seller of the property to Messrs. Jones and Roberts insisted on it.

3. The property had been an indigo plantation, and then a nursery.

4. An early tournament winner, Walter Hagen, liked to stop and smell the flowers. After he mentioned this to officials one year, they named the holes after flowers in his honor. 

Question 5 - During World War II, the Masters wasn't played in 1943-1945. What were the grounds used for?

1. Drill and marching groups from nearby Camp Gordon (now Fort Gordon) paraded up and down the fairways.

2. German POW's were camped there.

3. Cows and turkeys grazed the land in support of the war effort.

4. Much of the land was plowed under, and cotton was grown to be used for soldiers' uniforms. 

Question 6 - The 13th hole is appropriately named Azalea. Approximately how many of these shrubs line this often-photographed 510-yard par-five hole?

1. About 700

2. About 1,100

3. About 1,600

4. It used to be about 1,800, but since the tee was moved back 25 yards a few years ago, it's now over 2,000 

Pulittzer Prize-winning author John Updike has been writing on golf for almost fifty years, in such publications as Golf Digest and The New Yorker. While golf has been the subject of many books and the province of many experts, few have written as sympathetically, as knowingly, about the peculiar charms of bad golf, and the satisfactions of an essentially losing struggle, as Updike. I've found his musings on golf and the human dilemma to be both humorous and insightful. From his essay, "Moral Exercise,' he writes:

"Most of us don't really know how well we're doing, in real life, and imagine we're doing not so bad. The world conspires to flatter us; only golf trusts us with a cruelly honest report on our performance...The game and your swing provide a barrage of criticism that there is no evading..."

"Our bad golf testifies, we cannot help feeling, to our being bad people - bad to the core. Socrates or his mouthpiece Plato thought that to know the good was to do the good, automatically. But, like a character out of Dostoevsky, we perversely continue to play with wild and self-punishing imperfection..."

"Golf morality runs to paradoxes. He who hits down sees the ball soar. He who looks up tops the ball into the tall grass. He who tries to hit hardest loses yardage to the supple devil-may-care. He who strives to steer the ball into the hole winds up stubbing the putt. 'He who would save his life must lose it,' a rabbi once advised. 'Let the nothingness into yer shots,' the imaginary pro Shivas Irons instructed his disciple in Michael Murphy's lovely Golf in the Kingdom. Don't try too hard, we might more simply say..."

"Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand - not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it."

Little wonder that writer Scott Peck once likened golf to a spiritual exercise. Isn't it amazing that a game that can deliver so much joy and delight, can also excruciatingly reveal so much about ourselves?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

Oh, yes. The answers:

Question #1 - 4

Question #2 - 1 

Question #3 - 2

Question #4 - 3

Question #5 - 3

Question #6 - 3

N.B. - Email me if you wish to have the complete 18 - hole Wall Street Journal "Augusta Challenge" trivia quiz emailed to you in pdf.