Masters Memories

Falling Foul
The then world number one received a formal dressing down from Billy Payne, the Augusta chairman, when he returned to the game after events of 2009-2010. Yet
the truth is that it is not necessary to have “done a Tiger” to fall foul of Augusta officialdom.
When, for instance, Bernhard Langer hit into a members’ four on the weekend prior to the tournament in the mid 1990s, this avid Christian could not have been in more trouble had he been caught digging up the greens.
Back in 2004, Ian Poulter, while preparing for his first trip to Augusta, received a prior warning about the hair-do he might sport that week. The message came from Hootie Johnson, Payne’s predecessor as chairman, but was delivered by another. “I won’t,” promised Poulter when he was asked about it, “put a ‘colour’ colour in it. Out of respect, I’ll steer clear of the old blue and red stripes and stick to natural shades.”
Woods knew what it was like to be rebuked by Hootie. Back in 2003, when Martha Burk, the feminist activist, was at her most trenchant and making much of Augusta’s insistence on remaining a male-only club, Woods was asked for his take on the subject. Since the club now had a couple of African-American members, did he not think that it should open its doors to women?
Tiger could not have picked his words more carefully in venturing that he, personally, would like to see such a move.
Yet when his message was relayed to Johnson, it invoked the sharpest of responses: “I don’t tell Tiger how to play golf if he doesn’t tell us how to run our club.” In other words, as one British broadsheet put it, “Hootie tells Tiger to mind his own business.”