June 24, 2019 Issue

Nick Paumgarten’s deliciously nasty “Unlike Any Other,” in this week’s issue, mocks the mythology of Augusta National, home of the hallowed Masters. He calls Augusta “an environment of extreme artifice, an elaborate television soundstage, a fantasia of the fifties, a Disneyclub in the Georgia pines.” At one point, he writes, “Years of watching the Masters on television had not prepared me for the smell of shit.” He mercilessly skewers the place as an “oligarch’s playground,” “a club for the rich and powerful.” He takes us inside Berckmans Place, “the Oz within Oz, a lavish dining-shopping-and-drinking complex accessible only to those who have been approved by the club to buy passes, at a cost of ten thousand dollars for the tournament.” He writes,

In some ways, Berckmans is just a food court, but exclusivity can be mind-altering. A badge holder pays for nothing. People who can afford a meal at any restaurant in the world derive a thrill from dining without being handed a check. There are five restaurants: Ike’s; Calamity Jane’s, named for Bobby Jones’s putter; MacKenzie’s Pub, for the course architect; the Pavilion, outside; and Augusta’s, a sprawling Art Nouveau palm-frond-and-tin-ceiling seafood emporium, where you can get raw oysters, étouffée, and bananas Foster. For breakfast, our host chose Ike’s. There were hooks under the table on which to hang our ball caps. “The little things,” he said. A TV on the wall carried a live feed of Jim Nantz, off air but on site, having his hair strategically restructured. At the buffet, we heaped our plates with biscuits, grits, eggs, French toast, and candied peaches. I thought guiltily of my colleagues at the press center, having to make do with omelettes and no hooks for their hats. As I hid in a john to jot down a few notes, I noticed that the restroom attendants cleaned the stalls after each patron’s use. (Later, I overheard a man talking to his wife on a courtesy phone: “Guess what: every time you go, there’s a guy who runs in and cleans the toilet.”)

That image of Paumgarten hiding in the john “to jot down a few notes” made me smile. But other parts of  “Unlike Any Other” struck me as a shade too cynical. Its treatment of Tiger Woods is borderline snark.