Even more backward movement. It's as if pilgrims to Lourdes could whip out a credit card and walk away with relics for themselves and friends and family. Never will you see so many white guys in such a shopping frenzy. They descend like locusts on the memorabilia. Guys will march toward the cash registers holding a stack of a dozen hats.
Purchases routinely run into the thousands of dollars.
Once you are on the course, it's clear what all the fuss is about. The course is a feast of green, the pale shade of the actual greens, the darker fairways, the even fuller coloration of the rough. Augusta is a kind of a zen shrine to golf, every blade of grass in perfect repose, nothing at all suggesting the least disturbance is possible in this exquisitely ordered world. Well, no disturbance except for the golfers themselves, or at least except for what is going on in their heads. At the 2nd green, before the players dare take a putt, they stoop to peer at the line of their shot, walk over to tamp down the grass between the ball and the hole, circle around to the other side of the hole to look from there, squat, stand up, squat again.