A Tradition Unlike Any Other: Falling Asleep During the Masters
An ode to the greatest lullaby in sports.
On those second Sundays in April, my Dad would pack my brothers and me in the car and drive us over to our grandparents’ house to watch the final round of the Masters—or, as my grandfather put it, a trace of the Bronx warping his vowels, “the tournament.”
Few things are inevitable in the last 18 holes of a major championship. There are too many players, too little room for error, too much at stake for the pressure not to take root in the head and branch out to the hands, which must, in sync with the rest of the body, perform the small miracle of perfect contact, swing after swing. But without fail, one event would always come to pass on those fateful afternoons. At some point, leaning back in his white leather recliner, a half-empty glass of sherry by his side, my grandpa would doze off—dreaming, I’d like to think, of either his deceased cocker spaniel or a Tiger Woods victory (maybe both).
For non-golf fans, nodding in and out of wakefulness as you gaze limpidly upon a six-hour telecast would seem—if you’ll pardon the pun—par for the course. But falling asleep during the Masters is a pleasure distinct from falling asleep during other tournaments, because the Masters itself is distinct from other tournaments.
Unlike golf’s remaining three majors, the Masters takes place at the same course every year: the famed Augusta National. Co-founded by the game’s preeminent amateur, Bobby Jones, the conditions at Augusta are the stuff of legend. Each fall, the crew “installs” the fairways as though they were carpet (very, very expensive carpet). Miles of drainage pipe travel under the lengths of the course to absorb water, helping to maintain the speed of the greens. After every round, the groundskeepers replace divots on the tee boxes with specially-grown sod; divots on the fairways, meanwhile, are filled with a green sand that’s virtually indistinguishable from the grass. So immaculate is the course that people routinely question whether its iconic azaleas are real or fake; so telegenic is the broadcast that some have accused CBS of piping in prerecorded bird sounds. The result is a hyperreal vision of a golf course—perpetually untouched, conspicuously out-of-time.
Contributing to this feeling, of course, are the traditions Augusta goes to great lengths to preserve. The Masters bestows the only trophy of the year that champions hang in their closet rather than place on a shelf; for over six decades, the tournament has hosted a par-3 contest the day before play begins. Despite representing an Instagram version of reality, patrons are still not allowed to bring their cellphones to the course. Concessions are resistant to inflation: You can still get their famous pimento cheese sandwich for a buck-fifty.
In the sense that the Masters is a dream, enshrined behind our screens like a museum piece, it follows that we might enjoy it in a kind of hypnagogic state. Featuring Jim Nantz’s whispery poetics and the dulcet tones of Dave Loggins’ theme song, the telecast is sport’s ultimate lullaby; far from being sacrilegious for golf fans, I’d argue that “sleeping through” the final round puts us in communion with elements of the sublime the tournament is engineered to evoke.
Assuming you wake up in time to watch the finish.