Are We The Browns

Over the past decade or so, my favorite Jaguars fan, at least once during each season will say, “We’re the Browns, aren’t we? We’re the Browns, the Browns of the South.”

I usually scoffed at the comment. “Of course we’re not,” I’d say. “The Browns are always bad.”

But as of late, I’m not sure I’m right. In fact, I am sure there are some Jaguars fans currently who wish we were the Browns.

Since 2000, the Jaguars have had four winning seasons, but only one since 2008. The Browns didn’t play in 1996, ’97 and ’98 as owner Art Modell moved the franchise to Baltimore after the 1995 season to become the Ravens. The NFL put an expansion team back in Cleveland in 1999, but the Browns continued their losing ways going back to 1990.

Fans in Cleveland have had two winning seasons since 2000 and only one playoff appearance. They also endured a 1-31 record starting in 2016, the worst in NFL history over a two-year span, including a winless season the following year.

That’s right. O-fer.

They haven’t had a winning season since 2007. They’ve finished last in the AFC North nine of the last twelve years.

At least the Jaguars have sprinkled in an 8-8 year (2010) and a division championship (2017) in that span. In the last ten years, these two teams have had one winning season. Combined.

And there are more similarities between the clubs. The Jaguars have fifty-one wins in the last ten years: The Browns forty-four, including seven this season. Under their current ownership, Cleveland has won just over 30% of their games. The Jaguars in the Shad Khan era win 29% of the time.

This year is a different story.

Mired in a nine-game losing streak, the Jaguars seem destined for a top-five draft pick. The Browns, on the other hand, are a respectable 7-3 and appear a team on the rise. They seem to have drafted well recently. Quarterback Baker Mayfield looks to be their long-term solution at that position. Myles Garrett is considered the premier player at defensive end across the league. Their receiving corps looks solid.

They’ve had famous misses in the draft as well, most notably Johnny Manziel in 2014. I keep looking at the Jaguars high draft picks since 2014 and keep seeing names like, Fournette, Ramsey, Ngakoue, Fowler, Yeldon, Robinson, Lee and Bortles, none of which are still on the roster.

The Browns have had a colorful history at head coach and at quarterback. They’ve had twelve head coaches in the last twenty years and no less than thirty-two starting quarterbacks since 2000. And we thought six, including Mike Glennon for this game, was a lot for the Jaguars in the last four years.

I happened to be the sideline radio reporter in Cleveland in 2001for the Jaguars network during the infamous game when the Jaguars had to return to the field for two plays to ensure a victory.

Things got ugly at the end of the game as the Jaguars were winning in the “Dawg Pound” end of the stadium. Officials had reviewed a Browns 4th down play in that end, calling it an incomplete pass, turning the ball over to the Jaguars and enraging the fans. They started showering things onto the field from all sections and the officials took both teams to the locker rooms. A full beer bottle whistled by my head on the sidelines, tossed from the upper deck. It didn’t take long to deduce that it was the fourth quarter, and that bottle wasn’t full of beer. After that, the NFL instituted the rule that bottles are served with the tops removed.

In the middle of his post-game press conference, Head Coach Tom Coughlin was told that the Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had ordered the game finished with two final plays. I remember players grabbing their jerseys and helmets and whatever pants they could find and scrambling to the opposite field tunnel with the officials. They, and the Browns, along the with officials, sprinted to the other end of the stadium in Cleveland, had two quarterback kneel downs and hightailed it back to the locker rooms.

And the two cities have a few connections in general as well. Both are on large bodies of water. Cleveland sits on the south shore of Lake Erie; Jacksonville has the St. Johns River flowing through it. There’s a great trivia connection between the two. If you go directly north from Jacksonville, what city do you hit before you get to Canada? The answer is Cleveland.

They two cities even somehow combined for a mistake together, although in name only. When the North Deck of the newly renovated stadium was first opened, it was sponsored by the Clevelander Hotel. Yes, I know it’s operated in South Beach, but an ill-advised connection, nonetheless.

In 1986, former Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien moved his Continental Basketball Association team, the Jets, here from Pensacola. Stepien didn’t really tell anybody the Jets were coming here and did no marketing. He threw open the doors of the old Coliseum and expected people to show up.

They didn’t.

One local columnist listed all ninety-eight people in attendance at one game by their first and last name as a column once in these pages. Needless to say, the Jets and Stepien moved on after a few months.

Looking over the two rosters, there are some connections. Joe Schobert left the Browns for the Jaguars as a free-agent last year. Olivier Vernon was considered a prized-free-agent leaving the Dolphins in 2016. The Jaguars made a major play for him, offering him more money than anybody, but he signed with the New York Giants.

“You can’t sign a guy if he says he doesn’t want to play here,” General Manager Dave Caldwell said at the time. Vernon signed with the Browns in 2019.

Ronnie Harrison, a former third-round pick of the Jaguars, was traded to Cleveland before this season. When he remarked how glad he was to be out of Jacksonville, Twitter followers hammered him, one saying, “Dude. You were traded to Cleveland!”

Which, at least right now, doesn’t look like a bad thing.

Jaguars vs Steelers

Jaguars Path to Glory

We’ve called the Steelers the Jaguars big rival for a long time. When the Jaguars began in the AFC Central, Head Coach Tom Coughlin molded the Jaguars in the Steelers’ image, knowing the only way to the division title was through Pittsburgh.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen those television commercials showing Fred Taylor, Rashean Mathis and other Jaguars of a bygone era beating up on the Steelers. Some were night games on national television. Those were fun. They were exciting. It’s hard not to yearn for those “good ole’ days.” Equally as difficult is to imagine those kinds of games for the Jaguars “under the present circumstances.”

Why?

Because they’re just not good enough.

And they know it.

When asked about beating the Steelers in Pittsburgh twice in 2017, one of those wins in the playoffs, Marrone explained how that happened.

“I think it was something that we had, a lot of good players, a lot of people that had a lot of confidence, believed in themselves, a defense that created turnovers. And then in the second game when we needed to score, we were able to score and run the football. So, it was a great moment for those players and those coaches that were there.”

In other words, “We’re not that same team. They might still be good, but we’re not.”

But give Marrone credit. He says losing “rips a part of his soul” that he never gets back. He also knows and has said often it’s a production business. The only thing that counts is winning and losing.

“I don’t want to be one of these guys that (BS’s) and tries to [explain] the philosophy and doing all that stuff; I do see improvement but it’s obviously not at the rate that we need,” he said when asked about the team getting better.

He added, “I don’t want to be that guy that comes out after you lose a game and is like, ‘Oh, we’re getting better.’ I think people don’t want to hear that (stuff), at least in my opinion.”

He’s right.

“A lot of times, the big difference with some of those things is some guy will just make a play, make a catch, break a tackle,” Doug said recently when I asked him if it was about making the difference on game changing plays.

“You see the explosive plays that we had given up, guys that are able to make a play where we can’t get a guy down, things like that,” he added. “I think it’s easier for everyone to kind of look and see you’re in position, but who’s going to be the playmaker? Is it you or is it your opponent?”

When I followed up, asking if it’s just a matter of the players stepping up and making plays, Doug thought for a second and said, “No, we have to do a better job as coaches. I’ll just stick with that.”

Marrone knows that the sum of the pieces deleted, and pieces added since that winning year in 2017 don’t add up. To be fair, no team is the same three seasons out from a championship game run based on the salary cap. But the decisions made by the teams that stay relevant year after year are different than the one’s made by Jaguars General Manager Dave Caldwell.

His moves have been well catalogued and dissected. Letting players like Marcedes Lewis and Calais Campbell slip through their fingers when they still had plenty of gas in the tank are glaring mistakes.

His drafting acumen has been rightly called into question, including missing on character issues when drafting Jalen Ramsey and Dante Fowler. Add Tom Coughlin’s decisions to take Leonard Fournette and Taven Bryant with their first-round picks in ’17 and ’18, adding pieces he thought would complete the puzzle, and the Jaguars cupboard in 2020 is not bare, but a Costco size shopping list is in order.

When Shad decided two years ago to keep Marrone and Caldwell to run his football team, I’m convinced it was Marrone that helped keep Caldwell around. Usually, the General Manager makes the decision on the coach, but I think in this case it was the other way around. My admiration for Marrone as a coach and a person is no secret. And I don’t know Caldwell well enough to have an opinion on anything else but his body of work. But I do think Khan listened to and bought into Marrone’s vision on how to run the team after Coughlin was dismissed and then asked the coach who he thought should run personnel. Marrone has plenty of loyalty and I believe he told Khan he was very comfortable working with Caldwell.

In my colleague Gene Frenette’s column in today’s Times-Union outlining the history of the Steelers and how they went from laughingstock to perennial contender, he defines how Pittsburgh has “set the bar for excellence as high as anyone.” He credits the Rooney’s “impeccable reputation” on and off the field for keeping the Steelers competitive.

“Shad Khan and the Jaguars may never get there,” he added.

I think the easy question is, “Why not?”

I’d agree that under, as Gene notes, “present-day circumstances” it would be, “hard to envision the Jaguars ever becoming the Steelers.”

And those “present day circumstances” include how Shad Khan is operating as the owner of the franchise. It’s a far cry from how the Rooney’s are fully invested in the Steelers. While admittedly, the Jaguars are one of Khan’s forty or so enterprises and the Steelers are the sole business of the Rooney’s, the two franchise couldn’t be run more differently from the top down.

On the business side and on the football side, the Steelers have figured out how to not only be a part of their community but reflect what their community is about.

There were times under Wayne Weaver’s ownership of the club that the team got close to that, but the Jaguars, too often in their history, have felt like an alien entity that happens to operate in our stadium.

Their level of philanthropy is certainly laudable, probably unmatched. But somewhere along the way there has to be a closer connection that differs from a straight line to the checkbook.

Perhaps this column would be better served at the end of the season. But whenever I’m out, if there’s conversation about the Jaguars at all, it’s whether they’ll win another game this year.

With their recent play, yes, they are playing better. But they’re still a double-digit underdog, at home, to the Steelers today. Remaining games against the Browns and Bears here seem within reach, as does the road game against the Vikings. But Indianapolis, Baltimore and Tennessee have plenty of motivation against a Jaguars squad that’s been depleted by injury and personnel moves.

One of the top three draft picks in 2021 would ensure that Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields could be wearing black and teal next year. No matter who’s making that decision next April, they should hope it’s their “Chuck Noll/Terry Bradshaw” moment of fifty years ago that started the Steelers on the path they continue to blaze.

A Walk at the Masters

I took a few walks this week. That’s not unusual, and this particular walk is one I’ve made perhaps two hundred times before. But this was a special version of that walk. Whenever I get to Augusta National for The Masters, I take part of each day I’m there to walk the back nine. And it’s the same walk every time. I usually make this walk with a friend or colleague but this week with no patrons and limited media, I took this walk alone.

The walk starts just behind the scoreboard to the right of the first fairway. That’s where the original pressroom used to be. A Quonset hut full of the legends of sports journalism before the explosion of media, that press room had a manual scoreboard at the front. It’s where the then PGA Tour Director of Information, Tom Place rescued a lost and bewildered 25-year-old version of me in 1979. It was replaced by the first permanent Press Building in the same place. And now, the golf cart shuttle from the magnificent new Press Building drops you in that same spot.

From there, the hill walking up next to the golf shop and skirting the famous oak tree by the clubhouse is usually worn with patron pedestrian traffic. But this week it was lush and green. And I was the only person there. The first fairway was open, no ropes, just small dark green dashes on the ground, a reminder of where to, and where not to walk. The walkway was marked by a couple of stakes on the ground but only a few maintenance cart tire tracks had passed that way.

Each time I walk by the golf shop, I have the same thought, about a story Jack Nicklaus told me. Chatting during construction of The King and The Bear course at World Golf Village, we were talking about the changes at Augusta in the era before they announced what they were doing to the golf course in the off season. Jack said after one of his wins, the following year he walked out of the golf shop, headed to the first tee. As with most courses of that era, the first tee was right outside the door. Jack’s play had made the game longer as Bobby Jones said, “he plays a game I’m not familiar with.” Nicklaus held his hands out in front of him, palms facing each other and in a very animated voice said, “But it wasn’t there, it was up there,” as he gestured and looked up the hill to his left. Going by the shop, I glanced to my right, looking for any hint of a former tee, but none to be found.

At the top of the hill, I was struck by how still it was. Just some security standing around, nothing going on under the oak tree, the first tee open without any restrictions.

I waited behind the ninth green on Tuesday as Fred Couples, Tiger Woods and Adam Scott finished the front nine, checking green speed and fairway slopes during their practice round.

I’ve known Fred since his win at the ’84 Players and he gestured for me to walk with him to the tenth tee. There were maybe four of us there, including the member assigned to the tee. I stood with Joey LaCava, Fred’s long time caddie who now works for Tiger just trying to blend in. As familiar as I was with the players and the setting, the situation was so different I was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Although they were working, it felt like a casual game among friends.

Fred mouthed “Wow,” to me as Tiger and Adam blasted three metals down the middle with a high draw, just like you’re supposed to there at ten. Fred hit driver, and the three walked to the clubhouse, leaving their shots in the fairway.

As the players walked away, the member in the green jacket asked me about the logo on my golf shirt. “I’ve played there and they let me buy a shirt,” I explained, somewhat sheepishly. . “I’m a member there,” he said. We spent the next ten minutes talking about golf in different parts of the country, a conversation that couldn’t have happened in any other year.
When Larry Mize won The Masters in 1987, he navigated around the golf course hitting fairways and greens en route to a spot in a playoff. He lead the tournament this year in driving accuracy through two rounds but a combination of lengthening the golf course and the shorter distance that comes with age, Mize, Langer and several other senior past champions oftentimes find themselves with a fairway metal or a hybrid in their hands on many of Augusta’s par four’s.

As I passed the eighteenth green on Friday, Mize had hit two solid shots but was still twenty yards short of the putting surface. I stopped as the only person nearby. I was in what normally is a high traffic area but alone, golf etiquette demanded I be still while Mize played. Trying to be very precise, chipping to a back left hole location, Mize’s shot caught the top of the bunker to the right of the green and rolled in. I didn’t dare move while Mize, obviously disappointed, still very professionally walked into the bunker and saved bogey with a beautiful, long sand wedge to two feet.

One of the things television can’t convey from Augusta National is the elevation changes on the golf course. Walking down next to the tenth and eleventh fairways, you could almost call it steep. Eleven is so directly downhill, that as a par four, it’s actually longer in yardage than the par five thirteenth. Halfway down the hill I had a bit of a wry smile, thinking I might not have been able to make this walk if the tournament was held as scheduled in April. Left hip replacement last November has been very successful but I’m still working on regaining the muscle strength in my left leg. I still struggle a bit downhill, but I’m not sure I’d have gotten even this far eight months ago.

By now on Tuesday, I was virtually alone.

I glanced to my right as a passed by the spot Bubba Watson hit that hook out of the woods to win in a playoff. A few hole monitors were just about to gather their things and finish their days work. We exchanged hellos and I stopped for a second when one asked me how I was doing. “Couldn’t be better,” I said. “I’m here.” “That’s true,” he answered, “Couldn’t be better.” I heard tee shots being hit in the distance on the fifteenth tee.

When I take this walk with somebody attending the Masters for the first time, at this point I usually take them around the back of ten and back up the little hill behind the eleventh tee. It’s a demanding tee shot out of that chute, especially since they added the trees to the right of the fairway. That’s one of my favorite spots in practice rounds or during the tournament. There aren’t many people back there, and the players walk right up and occasionally have to wait on their tee shots. Sometimes they’ll chat up the fans, it’s a little bit of a relaxed moment in an otherwise focused eighteen holes. In the era of persimmon head drivers, the echo through the tall pines of the crack of the club hitting the ball is the most unique, and satisfying golf sound I’ve ever heard.

When the TV station I worked for was the CBS affiliate, I used to scoot to the other side of the eleventh tee and take the short walk up the tree-lined, cinder roadway to the television compound. I knew most of the CBS production crew and the announcers, mainly thanks to my friendship with Pat Summerall. I’d spend time in Producer/Director Frank Chirkinian’s office listening to golf stories, mostly told by his “do everything” producer Chuck Will.

But not today.

Heading down right of the eleventh fairway on Tuesday I was very aware that I was alone. Nobody in sight. Nobody playing number eleven. Nobody on fifteen tee. Nobody on fourteen green. No players, no officials, no workers. I walked around the closed concession stand to Amen Corner, by myself, noticing there were no stands erected there, and still, nobody in sight.

During Friday and Saturday’s competition rounds, there were maybe twenty people at Amen Corner. I stood close, right behind the caddies on the 12th tee Friday as Yuxin Lin an amateur from China, in the field from Southern Cal, hit it to eight feet. In the quiet, I heard the ball hit and plug on the green.

On Tuesday, by myself, I heard a few birds were chirping. I could hear the soft whine of a water pump behind the eleventh green. The distant staccato of mowers cutting grass at Augusta Country Club behind the thirteenth tee was faint in the background. The occasional passenger and private jets executed their climb out just east of The National, only noticeable against the silence.

I thought about walking off a few times, but there, alone, I looked around in a circle, cataloguing and being grateful for some of my shared experiences in that spot. Spending time there each April with friends and co-workers in the past four decades was always fun for me, and especially gratifying to see the joy on their faces. A friend got down on one knee a few years ago and proposed to his now-wife right there. I smoked a cigar there with my Dad in 1979.

Walking up the right of the thirteenth fairway I paused to look at the green in the distance. Normally framed by a splash of azaleas, some of the deciduous trees in the background had begun to change color, adding a hint of autumn to the scene.

To the right is where my brother Gust and I waited for Fred Couples beside the fourteenth fairway before he hit his second shot in a practice round in 2015. I know Freddie pretty well, but he and my brother are actual friends. It was fun to see his face light up and come over to chat when he heard my brother’s voice.

Crossing the fourteenth fairway on an unused walkway, I stopped for a second in the middle to see the golfer’s perspective of that hole. I’ve been fortunate to play Augusta National a few times and I thought about the mix of emotions I’ve had every time I’ve teed it up there. Excitement and fear with a healthy dose of humility, knowing I can’t replicate the shots I’ve seen there by the best players in the world.

Up to the fifteenth fairway and still alone, I looked down at the amphitheater formed by the fifteenth green, the sixteenth, and the seventeenth tee.

With nobody there.

On Friday, still without a group in in sight, I crossed the seventeenth fairway and headed up the hill. I stopped in a grove of trees, remembering standing there on a Sunday looking toward the green when Sergio Garcia’s drive rolled up from my right and stopped at my feet.

Finally seeing some golfers, I stood with about ten officials, watching, Graeme McDowell, Si Woo Kim and Nate Lashley all hit it to inside five feet on number seven.

And not a sound.

“Sad,” one official said to me noting the lack of even a polite golf clap. “But at least we’re getting it in,” he said wistfully. “Maybe again in April,” I said as his eyes gave away the smile behind his mask. Only Kim made his putt.

Walking around the eighth tee and up left of the eighteenth fairway, a group of a hundred people or so were gathered around the ninth green. Easily the largest collection of people in one spot on the golf course.

“Must be Tiger,” I thought. Getting closer I heard a spontaneous golf clap coming from that group as Tiger two-putted from about forty-feet for par.

Only members and officials are allowed in the clubhouse this year, so one of my personal favorite Masters traditions will have to wait. At this point in the walk, I usually head into the clubhouse grill and walk to the end of the bar. For thirty years, “Coach” was on station there, and unfailingly would remember, “Vodka, lemonade?” when I’d ask how he’d been. When he retired, his son was there for a few years and we followed the same routine.

Lingering under the oak tree after the walk I’d renew old acquaintances each year, see some of the celebrities in attendance and generally watch the world go by.

Occasionally, I’d smoke a cigar, away from the crowd, people watching. About five years ago, a gentleman politely came and stood next to me, also a casual observer. I said hello, and he nodded, eyeing my cigar. I asked if he’d like one, (don’t ever smoke in public without an extra in your pocket) and realized quickly we had a bit of a language barrier. Looking at his badge, he was a representative of the Argentina Golf Federation and was here as a guest of the tournament. Miguel spoke no English and I only have a version of ‘restaurant Spanish’ I can muster but somehow, we figured out how to have a whole conversation, without saying much, around two cigars and golf.

The next year, I was standing in the same spot, not smoking, people watching, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Miguel was standing beside me, two cigars in hand, smiling.

Back down the hill by the golf shop, I passed a green-jacketed member coming the other way.

“How are you,” he said as he approached with a wave.

“Couldn’t’ be better,” I said. “I’m here.”

A Walk at The Masters

I took a walk today. That’s not unusual and this particular walk is one I’ve made perhaps two hundred times before. But this was a special version of that walk. Whenever I get to Augusta National, I take part of the first day I’m there to walk the back nine. And it’s the same walk every time.

Starting just behind the scoreboard to the right of the first fairway, I walk up the hill toward the first tee and just on the outskirts of the famous oak tree that sits behind the clubhouse. The walk starts here each year because that’s where the press room used to be. A Quonset hut full of the legends of sports journalism before the explosion of media, that press room had a manual scoreboard at the front. It was replaced by the first permanent Press Building, but on the same spot. And now, the golf cart shuttle from the magnificent new Press Building drops you in that same spot.

The hill walking up next to the golf shop is usually worn with patron pedestrian traffic. But on this walk it was lush and green. And I was the only person there. The first fairway was open, no ropes, just small dark green dashes on the ground, a reminder of where to, and where not to walk. The walkway was marked by a couple of stakes on the ground but only a few maintenance cart tire tracks had passed that way.

Each time I walk by the golf shop, I have the same thought, about a story Jack Nicklaus told me. Chatting during construction of The King and The Bear course at World Golf Village, we were talking about the changes at Augusta in the era before they announced what they were doing to the golf course in the off season. Jack said after one of his wins, the following year he walked out of the golf shop, headed to the first tee. As with most courses of that era, the first tee was right outside the door. Jack’s play had made the game longer as Bobby Jones said, “he plays a game I’m not familiar with.” Nicklaus held his hands out in front of him, palms facing each other and in a very animated voice said, “But it wasn’t there, it was up there,” as he gestured and looked to his left. Going by the shop, I glanced to my right, looking for any hint of a former tee, but none to be found.

At the top of the hill, I was struck by how still it was. Just some security standing around, nothing going on under the oak tree, the first tee open without any restrictions. I walked around the back of the tee and marveled at how close it was to the practice green that sits outside the clubhouse. That used to be a huge meeting place for patrons. The lengthening of the first hole has made that just a walkway.

This walk always turns right and heads down the right side of the tenth hole. The tenth tee was open, a few players were finishing on eighteen to my right. I stopped as one of them prepared to play a shot out of the right bunker on eighteen. It occurred to me that side of the hill is usually full of fans in a ‘sitting only’ area. Stopping during a practice round on this walk usually isn’t necessary. Patrons are usually streaming to and from the back nine. But I was the only spectator there. The only person not a part of the game. So, stopping just seemed the right golf etiquette. A nearly perfect bunker shot ensued, settling about two feet from the back-pin position.

One of the things television can’t convey from Augusta National is the elevation changes on the golf course. Walking down next to the tenth fairway, you could almost call it steep. Ten is so directly downhill, that as a par four, it’s actually longer in yardage than the par five thirteenth. Halfway down the hill I had a bit of a wry smile, thinking I might not have been able to make this walk if the tournament was held as scheduled in April. Left hip replacement last November has been very successful but I’m still working on regaining the muscle strength in my left leg. I still struggle a bit downhill, but I’m not sure I’d have gotten even this far eight months ago.

By now, I was virtually alone. I glanced to my right as a passed by the spot Bubba Watson hit that hook out of the woods to win in a playoff. A few hole monitors were just about to gather their things and finish their days work. We exchanged hellos and I stopped for a second when one asked me how I was doing. “Couldn’t be better,” I said. “I’m here.” “That’s true,” he answered, “Couldn’t be better.” I heard tee shots being hit in the distance on fifteen.

A couple of carts went by me as I crested the hill to the right of ten green and just to the side of the fifteenth tee. When I take this walk with somebody attending the Masters for the first time, at this point I usually take them around the back of ten and back up the little hill behind the eleventh tee. They’ve moved that tee back in the last ten years, adding yardage to the hole. It’s a demanding tee shot out of that chute, especially since they added the trees to the right of the fairway. That’s one of my favorite spots in practice rounds or during the tournament. There aren’t many people back there, and the players walk right up and occasionally have to wait on their tee shots. Sometimes they’ll chat up the fans, it’s a little bit of a relaxed moment in an otherwise focused eighteen holes. In the era of persimmon head drivers, the echo through the tall pines of the crack of the club hitting the ball is the most unique, and satisfying golf sound I’ve ever heard.

When the TV station I worked for was the CBS affiliate, I used to scoot to the other side of the eleventh tee and take the short walk up the tree-lined cinder roadway to the television compound. I knew most of the CBS production crew and the announcers, mainly thanks to my friendship with Pat Summerall. I’d spend time in Frank Chirkinian’s office listening to golf stories, mostly told by his “do everything” producer Chuck Will.

But not today.

Heading down right of the eleventh fairway I was very aware that I was alone. Nobody in sight. Nobody playing number eleven. Nobody on fifteen tee. Nobody on fourteen green. No players, no officials, no workers. I walked around the closed concession stand to Amen Corner, by myself, noticing there were no stands erected there, and still, nobody in sight.

Earlier in the week, Dottie Pepper, part of the CBS announce crew said she walked down to Amen Corner on Monday and was struck by how quiet it was. Jim Nantz takes that same walk every Wednesday afternoon when the Par 3 tournament is going on to immerse himself in the moment before his broadcast duties begin. Standing there, I thought about what Jim had said Monday, explaining the gratitude he feels every time he takes that walk.

In that setting, I’m not sure I can exactly describe what was running through my mind. A few birds were chirping. I could hear the soft whine of a water pump behind the eleventh green. The distant staccato of mowers cutting grass at Augusta Country Club behind the thirteenth tee was faint in the background. The occasional passenger and private jet executed their climb out just east of The National, only noticeable against the silence.

I thought about walking off a few times, but there, by myself, I looked around in a circle, cataloguing some of my experiences in that spot. Up the hill is where one of the first photographers I worked with, Ramon Hernandez and I watched a lot of golf early in my career. My wife Linda and I walked all eighteen holes a few years ago and I’m pretty sure right where I was standing was her favorite spot. Just down the hill a few steps is where my colleague Tom Wills and I watched action on the twelfth green at the 1985 tournament. Rob Kearney and I always position ourselves in front of the stands, as we’re just tall enough to see over the patrons and onto the twelfth tee. Matt Robinson and I had a head-shaking, eyebrow raising chuckle standing on the twelfth tee the year we played there together. One of those, “How’d we get here?” silent laughs.

Over toward the thirteenth fairway is where my friend Todd Galley got down on one knee and proposed to his now wife Dierdre. My long-time producer, photographer, friend and confidant Matt Kingston liked this spot the best. And I smiled thinking of all the times I stood in this spot with Kevin Talley, my most-often companion at Augusta National and the Masters. I met Kevin at the Masters while he was working with Warren Peper at Channel 5 in Charleston and hired him to come to Jacksonville in 1990. As a professional television producer and photographer, we traveled the US (and the UK), working together with a close friendship, but I never saw him happier than when we were standing in that spot at Augusta National. We’d get there, he’d pull out a cigarette and say, “It’s time for a smoke.” I’d tell him every year it was sacrilegious to smoke in that spot, until I realized it was one of his traditions at The Masters. And in my first trip to The Masters in 1979, I took my Dad as my photographer (there was no such person at the station I worked for that year in Charleston) and we smoked a cigar together in that spot. Still alone, the occasional light breeze going by, I felt that sense of gratitude that comes from remembering shared experiences with people you’re close to.

Walking up the right of the thirteenth fairway I paused to look at the green in the distance. Normally framed by a splash of azaleas, some of the deciduous trees in the background had begun to change color, adding a hint of autumn to the scene.

To the right is where my brother Gust and I waited for Fred Couples beside the fourteenth fairway before he hit his second shot in a practice round. I know Freddie pretty well, but he and my brother are actual friends. It was fun to see he and his then-caddie Joey LaCava light up and come over to chat when they heard my brother’s voice.

Crossing the fourteenth fairway on an unused walkway, I paused in the middle to see the golfer’s perspective of that hole. I’ve been fortunate to play Augusta National a few times and I thought about the mix of emotions I’ve had every time I’ve teed it up there. Excitement and fear with a healthy dose of humility, knowing I can’t replicate the shots I’ve seen there by the best players in the world.

Up to the fifteenth fairway and still alone, I looked down at the amphitheater formed by the fifteenth green, the sixteenth, and the seventeenth tee. With nobody there.

Around the seventh green, the eighth tee and behind the seventeenth green, I walked over to see the tee shot on eighteen. Intimidating to say the least, it would be hard to capture in any medium how narrow the chute is on the tee shot is trying to carve it up the hill on the finishing hole. Freddie always says, “Aim down the middle with a little cut on it and hit it hard.”

Back down to the right of the eighth tee, the walk up the left of eighteen doesn’t flatten out until you get to the clubhouse. I stood by the fairway bunkers in the eighteenth fairway and didn’t recognize the trees that were beyond the bunkers, left of the fairway. Were they new? They look like they’d been there a hundred years. Hitting it over or left of the bunkers now will be no picnic for the second shot.

By now there was a soft rain falling and a few umbrellas were opening at the top of the hill. A half-dozen greenskeepers were putting the finishing touches on the ninth green in the fading light

Back around the first tee, another feature of The Masters was still intact. As I passed each security guard, they greeted me with a polite hello or gesture of recognition. I’ve always liked that. . Call it Southern Hospitality if you like, but it always seems right to me.

Only members and officials are allowed in the clubhouse this year, so one of my personal favorite Masters traditions will have to wait. At this point in the walk, I usually head into the clubhouse grill and walk to the end of the bar. For thirty years, “Coach” was on station there, and unfailingly would remember, “Vodka, lemonade?” when I’d ask how he’d been. When he retired, his son was there for a few years and we followed the same routine.

Lingering under the oak tree after the walk I’d renew old acquaintances each year, see some of the celebrities in attendance and generally watch the world go by. Occasionally, I’d smoke a cigar, away from the crowd, people watching. About five years ago a gentleman politely came and stood next to me, also a casual observer. I said hello, and he nodded, eyeing my cigar. I asked if he’d like one, (don’t ever smoke in public without an extra in your pocket) and realized quickly we had a language barrier. Looking at his badge, he was a representative of the Argentina Golf Federation and was here as a guest of the tournament. Miguel spoke no English and I only have a version of ‘restaurant Spanish’ I can muster but somehow, we figured out how to have a whole conversation, without saying much, around two cigars and golf. The next year, I was standing in the same spot, not smoking, people watching, when I had a tap on my shoulder. Miguel was standing beside me, two cigars in hand, smiling.

Only at The Masters.

Augusta National

A Different Masters

This year’s Masters Tournament will be historic on many levels. It’ll be the first time the competition has been held in November and it’ll be contested with no patrons (fans) in attendance. The golf course will look different. The course won’t play the same. The Augusta ambience will be different. The Masters has always been the first major championship of the year. In 2020 it will be the last. Whether you’re watching on television or playing in the tournament, the 84th Masters will be different.

Generally, The Masters is scheduled to finish on the second Sunday of April. But that hasn’t always been the case. The first “Augusta Invitational” was held in late March of 1934. Four times the tournament has ended on the first Sunday of April and twice, 1979 and 1984, the third Sunday of the month hosted the final round.

For many golf fans, The Masters marks the start of spring and the beginning of the golf season. Tournament founders, Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts, also placed the tournament on the spring calendar making it easy for sports writers, headed back north from baseball’s Spring Training in Florida, to make a stop in Augusta and cover the competition.

And with Augusta National built on the grounds of a former nursery, the flowering plants and beautiful azaleas are part of the experience of the Masters Tournament in April. The golf course will have a much different look this week than it does in the spring.

“Not knowing how the golf course is going to play in November, when people ask me ‘What’s it going to be like?’ ‘I have no idea’ is my answer,” said Ponte Vedra resident, Billy Kratzert, an eight-time Masters participant and a four-time winner on the PGA Tour.

Kratzert is now doing commentary and analysis for the Golf Chanel and for CBS Sports during Masters week. He says playing the tournament in November will be an added mystery for this year’s Masters.

“I do think if the longer hitter gets there and is in form, they might have an advantage,” he said.

A two-time winner on the PGA Tour, Jacksonville’s Len Mattiace is part of the Masters lore with his runner-up finish in a playoff in 2003; Len played at Augusta once as a amateur as the member of the Walker Cup team and twice as a professional. He says the whole atmosphere of playing The Masters at Augusta National is completely different than any other tournament.

“Like twenty times greater,” Mattiace said of the electricity in the air at Augusta. “There’s a great buzz on the golf course. Those big, John Daly, Tiger Woods, type of great crowds with a really electric atmosphere. When you have those crowds following you, there’s an electricity in the air.”

“The energy the players get at Augusta, that’s one of the special things about the Masters,” Kratzert agreed. “You hear what’s going on on the rest of the golf course.”

He should know. Kratzert finished fifth at Augusta in 1978 and an opening round 68 gave Kratzert a share of the lead after Thursday in 1986. That year’s Masters was eventually won for the sixth time by Jack Nicklaus.

“Without the patrons it’ll affect some players,” Kratzert said, reflecting on the different personalities of professional golfers. “There are players who love to know what’s happening all around the golf course. We talk about the roars at Augusta National. You immediately know if you’re standing on the tenth tee that somebody hit a great shot on Amen Corner. The roars define what players were doing. Then you can look on the leaderboard and actually see it. There are a lot of players who would build off those roars from the patrons.”

Both Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have said playing without a gallery in 2020 has been not only different but sometimes difficult.

“It is very different,” Tiger explained during the FedEx Cup playoffs in August. “You just don’t know where the ball lands sometimes. You’re expecting the roars and you don’t hear anything. … Obviously the energy is not anywhere near the same.”

McIlroy agreed and took it a step further saying he’s looking to the gallery to help get into another gear.

“I want to get an intensity and some sort of fire, but I just haven’t been able to,” Rory also said in August. “And look, that’s partly to do with the atmosphere and partly to do with how I’m playing. I’m not inspiring myself, and I’m trying to get inspiration from outside sources to get something going.”

“You hit good shots and you get on nice little runs. We don’t have the same energy, the same fan energy,” Tiger added.

No doubt it should be different this week with a Green Jacket on the line.

Mattiace is currently playing on the Champions Tour and at a recent event in South Dakota, fans were allowed on the course. But he sees the different situation that golfers are facing.

“The guys have experienced this already,” he explained. “It’s so quiet, there’s no buzz. At Augusta they’ll definitely notice it on the second shots. There won’t be people scattering or talking. You won’t know if it’s on or off the green.”

“If everybody was 100% truthful, the patrons at Augusta bring that special energy to it,” Kratzert said. “Tiger, (Phil) Mickelson, a DJ (Dustin Johnson) a Rory (McIlroy), they’ve all experienced that. I’d like to see (Bryson) DeChambeau react to that. He’s been able to win a major without fans.”

Besides the atmosphere, just playing Augusta National is always a challenge. The speed of the greens, the elevations, the precision necessary to play good shots all put special demands on the players. And without patrons, the golf course will have a very different look to the competitors “inside the ropes.”

“As a player, when you don’t have the patrons back there with no definition, it’ll be different,” Kratzert said. “When I played there as an amateur in ’74 over from the University of Georgia, I couldn’t believe how challenging it was from a size standpoint.”

“When you go there to play casually, the rolling hills, it’s all out in the open,” Mattiace said of the sheer size of Augusta National. “There’s nobody around, nothing defines the buffers of the holes. When there are fans there, it’s like a big block of color that defines the hole.”

Without galleries, often times ten-deep, outlining each hole, players will have a whole different challenge. Kratzert says playing practice rounds at Augusta National is one of the fun things during the week. But it could be different this year.

“It could be more serious. The course will demand very exacting sight lines and landing spots on the green. You’ll have to identify those during the week. There will be a lot of learning. It won’t change the quality of shots that need to be hit. Just the optics for the players.”

Listening to what the players have to say about the golf course this Monday through Wednesday will be a big part of Kratzert’s preparation for his broadcast role this week. He’s especially keen to talk with guys after practice rounds.

“A lot of times on Tour players are like, ‘I have to go play a practice round.’” Kratzert say of the week-to-week grind on the PGA Tour. “I think players at Augusta National get up in the morning wanting to play practice rounds! The difference this week is ‘I want to get out there and see how it is.’”

Both Kratzert and Mattiace thought certain shots will be particularly difficult at Augusta National without the galleries defining each hole.

“That second shot on eighteen, it’s hard to define the outline of the green,” Mattiace said of the elevation change when hitting the second shot on Augusta’s finishing hole. “Same on number one. You can’t see the definition of the green, maybe the top portion of the flag. You have to hit a big drive on fourteen and without people there, you won’t see what’s going on at the right of the green. And maybe even seventeen, any type of shot that’s uphill.”

“With eighteen and all of the patrons around it you get a sense ‘this is a big green’ but in actuality, it’s not that big,” Kratzert explained. “All of the Masters winners have played there without fans. But when you’re used to having the patrons behind the green, you can pick out ‘the gentlemen in the yellow shirt’ and use it as an aiming point. It’ll be more challenging to hit your spots, no question.”

Playing in November will be unique for the players and the tournament, and it’s a bit of a mystery how it will compare to playing in April. But one thing could be the same. The weather this week in Augusta is forecast to be mild with very little, if any, rain and temperatures in the upper ‘70’s and low 80’s.

Perfect golf weather.