If you have never sat in darkness because a hurricane is about you, if you have never watched the weather channel hoping that there is no correspondent based near you, if you have never refreshed your phone and looked at the speeds of the wind outside continue to increase … Well, I do not recommend it.
In the evening of September 27, 2024, millions of people from the Côte du Gulf de la Florida through Georgia and Tennessee spent a white night watching the Hurricane Helene Fley his way to the North. The forecasts put the storm route directly on Atlanta.
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But late in the evening, Matters took a dramatic turn. Helene hit the Florida Big Bend at an unexpected speed. Like a driver taking a turn too fast, Helene skidded much further than expected, which put the fierce oriental wall of the hurricane directly on Augusta, in Georgia. Atlanta had prepared with many hours of warning. Augusta did not.
The result, in Augusta and later in the Northern Carolina mountains – an absolute and total devastation. Biblical destruction on a massive scale of 250 miles wide.
Six months later, abandoned houses, blue tarpaulins, marked lawns and uprooted trees remain visible everywhere in Augusta and the surrounding area. There are so many scars – on Earth, on psychans, on the inhabitants of Augusta – who will take years to cure.
Houses across Augusta are still repairing seven months after Hurricane Helene tore the region. (Yahoo Sports)
But healing has already started, and this week is a key step in this long process. I spent time in Augusta last week to report a story about how the city and the Augusta national golf club worked hand in hand to recover generational damage, and a key theme shone. If you have never been, neither in Augusta or Masters, here is the truth of the foundation: this city likes this tournament.
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You do not have to visit Augusta National to appreciate what the masters represent. Masters, like the opening day of baseball, arrive each year at the ideal time: at the end of a long winter. It is an appropriate reward for all these weeks and months spent inside, cursing sunsets and cold winds.
For golf fans, this week is Nirvana. This is the moment when you waited all year round. This is where all the outside noise falls, where the distant leagues and the handbags of several million dollars disappear, and we all live in the moment:
• Can Scottie Scheffler earn a third green jacket and settled as one of the best players to have led Magnolia Lane?
• Can Rory McILroy ultimately exceed the demons that have rekindled him for more than a decade?
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• Can Brooks Koepka gain a sixth major and stand as one of the biggest big game hunters in golf?
• Can Bryson Dechambeau become the first real superstar of golf social media?
• Can Jon Rahm take over the Mojo who made him one of the most formidable players of his generation?
• Can Jordan Spieth recover a little from this lost magic in the place where it all started?
• Can someone else play the best golf course in his life in the biggest tournament in his life?
Hell, you don’t even need to know the difference between Scheffler and Schauffele to enjoy this week. After all, a master’s nap, with its piano shades and soft comments, is the best type of nap.
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But there is something more in the masters that distinguishes it from all other tournaments, all other sporting events. Calling it “spiritual” could be a little too much, or it may not be.
The best element of the masters is that, for a brief moment, time stops. When you watch him on television, you watch exactly the same lesson as Arnie, and Jack and Tiger have all won over – the same fairways, the same greens. And when you are inside the high hedges with Augusta National, the best element is not cheese sandwiches cheap, or souvenir gnomes, or immaculate fairways and white chalk sands.
No, the best part is the silence – The way you leave your mobile phone behind and abandon yourself at the time. To the master, people speak. People connect. It is a welcome respite of the phone filled with rage and spitting anxiety that waits there in the parking lot.
There is so much more work to do in Augusta, serious and necessary and dark work. But just for this week, the city takes a moment to take a break, focus on the moment and enjoy its greatest export to the outside world. This is a good plan for all these moments when the world becomes a little too much.
Let’s go a good tournament this week.