When I think of The Masters golf tournament, I think of egg salad.
Not your usual gloopy store-bought kind. I’m talking about a homemade creamy mustard-mayo combo with delicate chunks of hard-boiled eggs between two pieces of soft, melt-in-your-mouth white sandwich bread, no crust. The tournament, held at Augusta National, invites local high schools to host food trucks where they make and sell a ton of egg salad and pimento cheese sandwiches.
Twenty years ago this weekend, I went to The Masters. It was a trip to remember, and I’m not even a golfer. I don’t really care for eggs, either. But the tournament and the food made for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The greats were there — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player — and they made room for some new young greats on the leaderboard — Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and a young player named Tiger who would win it all that Sunday, his first of four coveted green jackets.
And to think I almost didn’t go.
I had a 5-month-old baby and 2-year-old. The thought of leaving them didn’t thrill me, nor the effort of actually dressing in something besides a T-shirt and sweatpants, the outfit of choice endorsed by most young moms decades before yoga pants.
Ya gotta go, my husband said when he found out he and his good friend won four tournament passes in a charity fundraiser. Uh-huh. I’m not leaving my babies and I can’t fit into any of my pre-pregnancy clothes. Then buy new outfits, he said. Take a friend, I said. Trust me, he said leaning in for dramatic effect, you will regret not going.
So I went. I’m glad I convinced my husband to take me.
The tournament was everything sportscaster Jim Nantz said it was. An exquisite landscaped course so vividly in technicolor and crisply manicured it looked like God himself painted it with a big green crayon and meticulously trimmed each blade of grass with surgical scissors.
The arriving fans, fervently clasping their prized entry badges like it was Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, respectfully moved through the clubhouse gates at an almost solemn pace quietly nodding to each other. Hello. Yes, we made it.
We’re on hallowed ground. Shhhh. Act like you belong here. Remember, not a peep when the players are about to swing or putt or walk by or breathe near us. Utter nothing. NOTHING.
The crowd swarmed near Tiger so we went elsewhere. Up and down the hilly fairway we walked. And walked. And walked.
That’s when the hunger set in.
Enter egg salad.
I’m not sure if the sandwich was that good (it was) or I had fallen into a sensory stupor (I had) from the Crayola-green course and the electric pulse of celebrity golfers passing by and the unspoken, but acknowledged, feeling of being alive and present at one of the world’s greatest sporting events on one of the world’s greatest courses.
Probably all of the above. Totally worth those dozen egg salad sandwiches I consumed (sad, but, true.)
As the sun set each day, the mowing brigade arrived, sweeping across the course in perfect synchronized unison as the masses exited as humbly as they entered, ready to rest and restore before the next round of impeccable play, pristine setting and egg salad.
Come this weekend, I’ll be glued to the television set, grateful for the commercial-restricted policy only The Masters can command. I’ll pull out the scrapbook our friends made for us after we returned from Augusta. They were the other lucky couple winning the golden ticket to golf’s mothership. Flipping the pages, I see a boyish Phil Mickelson as he leans into his putt. And Fred Couples shyly smiling at the crowd. There we are, Mike and me, wearing golf visors with the iconic Masters logo.
And Tiger. Lots of photos of the young phenom.
I witnessed Tiger revolutionize a new season of golf. He was alive, electric. Twenty years later, turns out he was kind of just like us — human, flawed. Now, he’s ready for a comeback.
Will this be his year? Doesn’t really matter to me. He’s still here. And so are we. Ready for another tournament of a lifetime.
