Credit:  http://www.usdirect.com/the-masters

Thursday Tee Times For The 2012 Masters

7:40 Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus (Honorary Starters Only)
7:50 Craig Stadler, Brendan Steele, Tim Clark
8:01 Jose Maria Olazabl, Robert Garrigus, Randal Lewis
8:12 Larry Mize, Paul Lawrie, Randal Lewis
8:23 Ross Fisher, Ryan Palmer, Harrison Frazer
8:34 Ben Crenshaw, Robert Karlsson, BrydenMacpherson
8:45 Adam Scott, Bo Van Pelt, Martin Kaymer
8:56 Steve Stricker, Padraig Harrington, Stewart Cink
9:07 Aaron baddeley, Kyung-Tae Kim, Lucas Glover
9:18 Kyle Stanley, Jason Day, Bill Haas
9:29 Trevor Immelman, Rickie Fowler, Justin Rose
9:40 Tom Watson, Johnson Wagner, Hideki Matsuyama
10:02 Matt Kuchar, Geoff Ogilvy, Yong-Eun yang
10:13 Gary Woodland, Henrick Stenson, Alvaro Quiros
10:24 Charl Schwartzel, Keegan Bradley, Kelly Kraft
10:35 Tiger Woods, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Sang-Moon Bae
10:46 Luke Donald, Francesco Molinari, Nick Watney
10:57 Scott Verplank, Sean O’Hair, Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano
11:08 Mark O’Meara, Chez Reavie, Martin Laird
11:19 Sandy Lyle, Simon Dyson, Corbin Mills
11:30 Ian Woosnam, Eduardo Molinari, Kevin Chappell
11:41 Louis Oosthuizen, Mark Wilson, Graeme McDowell
11:52 Zach Johnson, Ian Poulter, Patrick Cantlay
12:14 Kevin Na, Frederik Jacobson, Ben Crane
12:25 John Senden, Jonathan Byrd, Paul Casey
12:36 Bernhard Langer, Jason Dufner, Charles Howell III
12:47 Mike Weir, Brandt Snedeker, Webb Simpson
12:58 Vijay Singh, Lee Westwood, Jim Furyk
1:09 Thomas Bjorn, Scott Stallings, Rory Sabbatini
1:20 Fred Couples, Darren Clarke, Ryo Ishikawa
1:31 David Toms, KJ Choi, Sergio Garcia
1:42 Angel Cabrera, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson
1:53 Phil Mickelson, Hunter Mahan, Peter Hanson

Dates: April 2-8, 2012
Where: Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, GA
Par/Yards: 72/7,445 yards
2011 champion: Charl Schwartzel
2012 Purse: TBD
FedExCup: 600 points to the winner
Format: 72-hole stroke play
Cut: After 36 holes, top 44 and ties and players within 10 strokes of the lead play the final two rounds
 
Miscellaneous Masters Notes

How the Masters was won in 2011

Charl Schwartzel became the first Masters Tournament champion to birdie the final four holes, capping off a 6-under 66 and a two-stroke victory over Aussies Jason Day and Adam Scott. He became the first champion to play the final four holes in 4-under since Jack Nicklaus (E-B-B-P) in 1986.

Most recently, Mark O’Meara birdied three of the holes (B-P-B-B) to win by one in 1998.

Schwartzel won the 75th Masters Tournament and became the third South African winner, joining Gary Player (1961, 1974, 1978) and Trevor Immelman (2008). His win was 50 years after Player became the first international winner of the Green Jacket in 1961.

Masters Traditions: Honorary Starters

The first balls off the tee at the Masters are hit by “honorary starters,” a tradition which began in 1963. The first honorary staters were Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod—two men with ties to Augusta National.

Hutchison won two Major Championships in his golfing career—the 1920 PGA and the 1921 Open Championship. He also was the winner of the inaugural Senior PGA Championship (1937), which was held at Augusta; he won that event again in 1947. He started until 1973.

McLeod was a founding member of the Senior PGA, who played in the first four Masters. He acted as a starter until 1976.

Gene Sarazen performed the duties from 1981 until he passed away in 1999. Sarazen won the 1935 Masters with the “shot heard round the world”, a 225 yard four wood for a double eagle 2 on the par 5 15th. Sarazen also won the 1922 US Open and PGA, the 1923 PGA, the 1932 US Open and British Open, and the 1933 PGA. Sarazen is credited with inventing the sand wedge.

Byron Nelson served as a starter from 1981 to 1999. Nelson won two Masters—in 1937 and 1942. He also won the 1940 and 1945 PGA, and the 1939 US Open. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for wininng 11 tournaments in a row in 1945.

Sam Snead served from 1984 to 2002. Slammin Sammy won a record 82 PGA Tour events and about 70 others worldwide. He won seven majors: three Masters, three PGA Championships and one British Open

Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player—the Big Three—now serve as honorary starters.

But I wonder. Who will have the stature—and willingness—to serve as honorary starters twenty years hence?

Masters Traditions: The Green Jacket

Each year, the winner of the Master’s Tournament is awarded a Green Jacket to commemorate his victory.

Members of the private club have been wearing green jackets to the tournament since 1937. (Although the original jackets were deemed too hot to wear.) Members purchased their jackets from the Brooks Uniform Company in New York.

The first Green Jacket awarded to a player given to Sam Sneed in 1949. It signified his membership—for a year—in the ultra-exclusive Augusta National Golf Club.

Master’s winners must return the jacket to Augusta the following year, where they are stored and made available to the players when they visit. Some past winners, such as Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer have become actual members of the club and presumably are allowed to have permanent possession of their jackets.

Since 1954, the club has awarded crystal for various achievements, such as low round, holes-in-one and eagles. Jack Nicklaus holds a record 61 pieces of Masters’ crystal.

First Sunday in April: The Masters
Grade: A

The GolfBlogger is a voracious reader, with an oeuvre that covers a wide range of topics: economics, history, science, medicine (yes, Mrs. GolfBlogger thinks this is weird, too), politics, the classics, science fiction, modern thrillers, and of course, sports. In short, I’ll read practically anything I can get my hands on, typically working through fifty or more books in a year. I just finished Julius Caesar’s Commentaries, and soon will start working on a biography of Thomas Moore.

One thing I’ve noticed in my literary travels is just how rich a body of work has grown up around the sport of golf. From Bernard Darwin, to Bobby Jones, P.G. Wodehouse, Herbert Warren Wind, Feinstein, Dodson, Jenkins and others, golf seems to inspire great writing. I think it’s in the very nature of the game—the way it lays bare our humanity. A round of golf can take a man from the depths of despair to the very heights of joy. It brings out the very worst, and the very best.

And perhaps nothing does it like the Masters at Augusta National. Indeed, with its legendary back nine, Augusta was specifically designed for triumph and disaster.

First Sunday in April: The Masters is a collection of stories, articles and reminisces of that legendary golf tournament. With contributions from professional writers, as well as from players, it is divided into sections: The Tradition, The Personalities, The Course, The Background, The Caddies, The Moments and The Controversies. For any one of these, the editors would have been able to put together enough to fill the book. It had to have been a hard task to choose a five to seven piece representative sample.

I enjoyed each of the pieces in the book—and all the more so because none was particularly long. They were perfectly suited for a few minutes read just before going to sleep. The breadth also was nice in that the book avoided being repetitive. The tone of the pieces range form humorous to serious to sentimental. Again, all welcome changes of pace.

The title of the book has been the bone of some contention in some circles: The first Sunday in April is actually the last day of the Houston Open, and the climax of the Masters is the second. But the book’s editors have a point, I think, in that the Masters is more than a Sunday; it’s a whole week of talk and prediction and preparation which just happens to culminate on the second Sunday. And in choosing such a wide variety of topics

That said, perhaps a better title would have been “One Week In April: The Masters”