Masters’ Traditions: Pimento Cheese Sandwiches

What hot dogs are to baseball, the Pimento Cheese sandwich is to the Masters’ at Augusta. There are eight types of sandwiches sold at the Master’s but the Pimento Cheese is the one to get. Although the exact recipe is a secret akin to the secret formula for Coke, it’s made of pimento cheese and smeared on white bread.

In 2003, Golf Digest hired Gourmet magazine Food Editor Ruth Cousineau to create her own pseudo Augusta Pimento Cheese sandwiches.

Pimento-cheese sandwich.

Makes 2 sandwiches

Ingredients: 4 oz. extra-sharp Vermont white or yellow cheddar, finely grated ( 1 1/2 cups); half a jar of pimento (3 oz.), drained, finely chopped (14 cup); 2 tablespoons mayonnaise; 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce; salt to taste; 4 slices of good whole-wheat bread, crusts discarded (optional); 4 thin slices Vidalia or other sweet onion; 1 cup watercress sprigs, tough stems discarded.

To prepare: Mash cheese, pimento, mayonnaise, and hot pepper sauce in a small bowl with a fork until well combined. Season with salt to taste. Cover and chill 1 hour for flavors to blend. Spread pimento cheese evenly on bread. Top with onions and watercress sprigs. Cut each sandwich into triangles and serve.

Here’s my own variation of the recipe:

GolfBlogger’s Pimento Cheese Sandwich Spread

Ingredients:

1 cup sharp cheddar
1 cup montery jack (or pepper jack)
1 package cream cheese
half a jar of finely chopped pimento
dill pickles, chopped
pepper sauce, salt, pepper, chopped onion to taste

Wait for the cheese to soften, then blend all ingredients in a food processor.

I use this recipe because I can’t stand mayonnaise.

That’s a photo of one of my sandwiches at the top.

I didn’t get an invitation to play in the Masters this year. I don’t expect to get one next year, either. But if there’s a Member of Augusta out there who’d like to invite me to play the course at any other time, I’m there. Just name the time.

Here’s how you qualify for the Masters:

Gary Player has always been one of my favorite players (we share a birthday) —and much more so since he took time out to talk to my young son during one of the Ford Players’ Championships. We had been following him throughout the day (he was with Chi Chi), and on the tenth, Player walked over to the ropes, shook my son’s hand and asked about his golf game. My son kind of stammered, but Player said some encouraging words and said that whatever he chose to do, he must “practice, practice, practice.”

I don’t know why he decided to come over to us. We certainly were not calling his name or making a spectacle of ourselves. But perhaps he had noticed that we were following him through his round (there weren’t that many people there). It was an incredibly nice thing to do and made a real impression on a young kid (and on his golf-blogging dad). I can’t imagine that anyone would take time out for a kid in the middle of a Major. I wish we were able to get an autograph from him later in the day, but missed our opportunity. The memory, however, will last forever.

Few phrases in sports evoke as strong an image as “the Amen Corner.” Coined in 1958 by golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, it refers specifically to the second half of the 11th, the 12th, and the first half of the 13th holes at Augusta National, site of the Masters Tournament.

Wind, who was writing for Sports Illustrated, used the phrase to describe the scene of the critical action of the 1958 Masters, when Arnold Palmer earned his first major Championship.

Wind wrote:

On the afternoon before the start of the recent Masters golf tournament, a wonderfully evocative ceremony took place at the farthest reach of the Augusta National course —down in the Amen Corner where Rae’s Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee, then parallels the front edge of the green on the short 12th and finally swirls alongside the 11th green.

Wind later said that he was looking for a phrase like “coffin corner” in football, or baseball’s “hot corner”, but that all he could come up with was the title of the song, “Shouting At The Amen Corner,” by Milton (Mezz) Mezzrow.

Here are the television times for this week’s Masters. Set your DVRs.

U.S. TV Coverage (EST)
4/5, 3:00 - 7:30 p.m. ESPN
8:00 - 11:00 p.m. ESPN
4/6, 3:00 - 7:30 p.m. ESPN
8:00 - 11:00 p.m. ESPN
4/7,3:30 - 7:00 p.m. CBS
4/8, 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. CBS

Masters broadcasts are ripe (perhaps overly so) with references to the names of various geographical features at Augusta National. The announcers drop names like the “Crow’s Nest”, “Eisenhower Tree” and “Amen Corner” with careless abandon, perhaps assuming that the average listener knows what they’re talking about—or perhaps in an attempt to make themselves seem to be a chummy insider at America’s most hallowed course.

Here’s a guide to some of the more famous landmark references:

Here’s an updated list of Masters’ winners, with the names of the tournament winners, their victory in relation to par, and their margin of victory.
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