Moments after embracing his new fiancee, Taylor Lamb raised his left hand and thanked the clapping patrons.
After he became engaged Monday at Amen Corner, applause was well-deserved.
“I can’t stop shaking,” said Alyson Dukes, 26, of Augusta, who said “yes” on Monday afternoon between the No. 12 tee box and the No. 13 fairway of Augusta National Golf Club. “This is the best surprise of my life.”
Lamb, 25, the sports information director at Georgia Regents University, purchased the ring Nov. 24 and immediately circled Masters Monday as the proposal date. His plan nearly fell flat, though, when he was still without tickets late Sunday afternoon.
“All along, I thought I would get two Monday practice-round badges, but yesterday at 5 p.m., I still had nothing,” Lamb said Monday.
He worked the 3M Augusta Invitational on Sunday at Forest Hills Golf Club and was walking to his car to leave the facility. Toting his printer and laptop, the Conyers, Ga., native assumed he would have to go to Plan B.
“Only problem was, there was never a Plan B,” Lamb said. “I was walking to my car in defeat. I mean, I had already told both our moms – and a ton of friends – about my plan, and all I could think about was having to call everything off.”
Then, “Faith came through.”
Shortly before he reached his car, GRU athletic director Clint Bryant pulled next to Lamb with two Monday practice-round tickets hanging out of the window.
“Unbelievable,” Lamb said. “I had honestly given up, and then two seconds later it all fell into place.”
Dukes hopes to make an annual trip to the spot of their proposal at Amen Corner.
“Oh my God,” Dukes kept repeating, while looking at the ring. “We’ve been dating five years but I had no idea this would happen today. He gave me no reason to think this was about to happen.”
The couple met at Georgia College in Milledgeville, where, Lamb says, it wasn’t easy to persuade Dukes to date him.
His fiancee is in her second year of anesthesiology school at Georgia Regents University.
“I got told ‘no’ a lot,” Lamb said, laughing. “But I’m definitely glad I kept trying.”
