Masters Insider

Where to go: Practice putting green

Sunday’s winner will be recognized in a presentation at the practice putting green. Patrons are welcome to stay for the ceremony.

The winner will receive a replica of the Masters Tour­nament trophy and a gold medal. 2012 champion Bubba Watson will help the winner slip into his green jacket.

The runner-up will receive a silver salver and a silver medal, and the top amateur will get a silver cup.

Under the oak tree: Bob Jones IV

Bob Jones IV, 55, is the grandson of Augusta National and Masters co-founder Bobby Jones. He is not a member of Augusta National, but he regularly attends the tournament.

Jones is a clinical psychologist and has a practice in Conyers, Ga.

Q: Do people recognize you at the Masters?

A: What people notice more than anything else, I’ll get people who come up to me and who have longtime memories of being here. That means a lot to me. For the most part, people let me be.

Q: What is your first memory of the Masters?

A: I was 12 years old, it was 1970 and it also was the first time that my grandfather wasn’t here. So it was a real changing of the guard for our family.

I will never forget, I came here in the dead of night – we had arrived by plane – and we stayed in the Jones Cabin. And the next morning at 6:15 I woke up, walked out to the porch and all of a sudden I saw this property.

Two things immediately hit me. No. 1 was I was going to start playing golf, but No. 2 was this place existed in my grandfather’s mind.

And it just blew me away.

Q: What impressed you?

A: When I look at the course now, and I still see the logic of it, how it was put together.

It still does. It’s 43 years later, and it still boggles my mind that my grandfather could conceive something that has held up this well to the test of time.

Q: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen?

A: Well, the lengthening of the course is the most obvious change, but there are more subtle ones too. The way the course is manicured.

I don’t mean it in terms of rough or nonrough. What I mean is the technology that is available to care for the course that didn’t exist in 1970.

I’ve always felt lengthening was a good thing because what it did do was bring the playability of the golf course back to where it was in the early days of the tournament.

Q: What’s your best score at Augusta National?

A: I played here last in 1976 and I
shot 77 and 78.

I’ve always been hesitant to ever ask to come back, because when you play that well you just don’t want
to give this course a chance to get its revenge.

History lesson: Birdies to win

The Masters has seen plenty of heroics through the years, but only six golfers have birdied the final hole to win the tournament outright.

Art Wall Jr. was the first to do so, in 1959, and he was followed by Arnold Palmer in 1960. Gary Player (1978), Sandy Lyle (1988), Mark O’Meara (1998) and Phil Mickelson (2004) followed suit.

Wall, Palmer and O’Meara also birdied the final two holes to secure their wins.

– John Boyette,
sports editor