Still holding on: Why a bucket hat and a week at the Masters was about more than golf
The tires of my 2017 Toyota RAV4 crawled up the pavement toward the water tower guarding the media parking lot at Augusta National Golf Club just after 7 a.m. on April 4, a little more than 72 hours from the first round of the Masters
A white bucket hat emblazoned with that famed yellow silhouette of the United States rested on the passenger seat, perched atop a cluster of dog hair courtesy of Cooper, the 7-year-old beagle-hound mix I adopted in Mississippi two years ago.
That hat, in truth, isn’t mine. It belongs to my maternal grandfather, Ed Crocker, or “Pod” — short for “Poor old dad” and an endearing nod to the father of four girls.
Pod died in 2003. Cancer. Decades of cigarettes eventually caught up. I was only 6 years old when he passed. Frankly, I don’t really remember him being sick.
I fought off a lump in my throat as my car crept closer to the parking lot on the northeast corner of Augusta National. It’s this hat worn from my time hacking away from the rough over the years that sent a feeling equal parts sorrow and joy through my body.
In some backward way, it was comforting, even cathartic.
Arnold Palmer spoke of the “gracious permanence” of Augusta National, that there was a feeling of coming home when he arrived on site. Palmer and Pod were born just two months apart in 1929. Palmer won seven major championships during his professional career, including four Masters titles. Pod made it to Augusta as a patron once in the late 1990s and again in the early 2000s, but he made his living selling hotel and restaurant supplies up and down the East Coast.
Perhaps in an alternate universe Palmer and Pod would be friends. They’d trade stories from the road over lunch on the immaculate lawn beneath the towering oak tree off the 18th green. Palmer would drink his patented iced tea and lemonade mix. Pod would clutch an old fashioned.
The sun rose over the clubhouse as I sorted through the logistics of this hypothetical breaking of bread. Patrons congregated near the north gate. Keyboards clicked and clacked inside the media center.
I tossed Pod’s hat onto my head, adjusted the brim and slid a tape recorder, pen and notebook into the back right pocket of my khaki shorts before heading for the course.
Masters week is here. I’m bringing Pod with me.
Remembering my grandfather at Augusta National
I quickly learned Augusta National is a living, breathing thing.
Its mortality resides in the magnolia trees that line its entrance, in the azaleas that coat the course and in the ponds that defend its greens against aerial assault.
Even the crowds themselves are alive. Spectators washed across the fairways like the tide during these seven days in April. In these masses are individuals with their own unique pasts, presents and futures, each making a pilgrimage of sorts to this golf sanctuary born out of a nursery that was converted from an indigo plantation.
I wished more than anything Pod and I could experience it together.
Pod was a Navy veteran, though you’d never know it. He rarely, if ever, talked about his service. He was kind-hearted and gentle. He was stern but loving. He, too, could be the life of any party.
During my parents’ wedding reception, Pod whipped off his tuxedo jacket to reveal the most absurd floral vest you can imagine, much to everyone’s surprise. The Crocker twist on an old fashioned was also a staple of his. (Sorry, that recipe stays in the family.)
What he loved most of all, though, were my grandmother, Jan, his four daughters and seven grandsons.
“He adored you guys,” my mom told me not too long ago. “I wish you could’ve been around him now.”
My own memories of Pod are less eccentric. I remember riding an oversized plastic shoe that had been fashioned into a child’s car on the pavement outside my grandparents’ condo in Fort Lauderdale as he stood watch.
There were also those evenings I sat atop the stairs in my dinosaur pajamas, listening to Pod, my grandmother and my parents talk in the kitchen down below. The longer I sat, the louder their voices rang out — no doubt a byproduct of the wine corks resting on the island.
My most vivid recollections of my grandfather, though, are on the golf course.
Pod was never a ringer, but he was steady. He found fairways and putted with precision, my grandmother told me. He kept his overflowing set of golf shoes meticulously cleaned. He even took the spikes out of a few so he could wear them around town.
My grandparents split time between Florida and the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina during those days. The course that weaved past their home at what was then Sapphire Lakes Country Club was the centerpiece to so many early evenings during the summers of my youth.
I never teed it up with Pod, at least nothing beyond slapping balls around the chip-and-putt near the house or the occasional putt-putt outing, but we ventured onto the course plenty.
My younger brothers, Will and Robert, and I would slip into our pajamas just before sunset and race out to the golf cart in front of the house to meet Pod. He’d drive us all over the grounds, searching for errant balls or scooping up unused tees. If we were lucky, a rabbit or bear might appear on our makeshift scavenger hunt.
Pod was euphoric in those moments, I’m told, perched behind the wheel of a golf cart, chauffeuring a trio of grandkids under the age of 7 from hole to hole.
“Hold on,” he’d say as the cart dipped and dove down hills and around the bends of the mountainous North Carolina course. “Here we go!”
Here at Augusta National, I’m still holding on.
Masters memories and a lasting image of family
There’s something familial about the Masters.
Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren spread across these hallowed, well-manicured bermudagrass grounds over the course of my seven days there.
I thought of Troy and Jack Lerche, the father and son duo I met on Amen Corner early in the week during my stroll to that outpost of golf nirvana. They’d landed last-minute tickets from a friend in Jacksonville. Troy wanted nothing more than to share his first Masters experience with his 8-year-old son.
That feeling persisted into Saturday as I stood on the right side of the ninth green, just 40 yards or so from that brilliant white clubhouse. There, NBA legend Dwyane Wade and his dad, Dwyane Wade Sr., looked on through their tinted sunglasses as Tiger Woods valiantly slogged up the slope protecting the front of the putting surface.
Wade told me he and his father picked up golf in relative unison over the past few years. It’s a shared experience, he explained. So, too, was taking in the Masters together.
“We picked up the love of this sport,” Wade said. “And we get to travel the world and have these experiences together.”
This, at least I think, is why I carried my fleeting memories of Pod so close as I strolled around the rolling hills of Augusta National last week. This holy place in the world of sport tinged with sophistication and Southern hospitality is to be experienced with those we hold closest.
I pecked away at this column just a few hours removed from the last of Scottie Scheffler’s four putts on 18 that made him a Masters champion and the recipient of a $2.7 million check. Good work if you can get it, huh?
The clicking of laptop keys echoed around that arena of deadline-induced stress. The free Crow’s Nest ale provided to media members certainly helped the words flow a little more easily.
Augusta National returned to a state of hibernation when I exited the media center at 11:02 p.m. Sunday, April 10. The crowds had dissipated. Players left for their next PGA Tour stops. Only 10 of the roughly 200 reporters who previously occupied the space still typed when I walked down the master staircase and, eventually, out the front door.
I peeled out of the parking lot and wound toward the interstate. The lanyard holding my Masters press credential still dangled from my neck. I pulled Pod’s hat out of my bag one last time, placing it in the same spot it rested on the passenger seat when I first arrived.
Darkness enveloped the highway. My headlights and passing cars were the only form of light on those pitch-black roads. The sign indicating I’d crossed the state line into South Carolina posted on the right side of I-20, just a strong 3-wood downwind from the club, served as a reminder my first Masters had ended.
What I’d give to tell Pod all about it.
This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
