By Michael Mayo
GolfWeb contributing editor
Get me to the Masters.
Quickly. Please. Because bit by bit, buck by buck, sports keeps prostituting itself to the almighty dollar.
Everything is for sale. Everything is a billboard. Everything is about enhanced revenue streams.
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| One of the only logos on display at the Masters. (Allsport) |
So if it's not major-league baseball considering selling ad space on players' uniforms, it's the NCAA selling pitiful nose-bleed seats to unsuspecting fans in hideously ill-configured domes at the Final Four. If it's not the International Olympic Committee selling votes, it's NFL teams holding cities hostage to get new publicly-financed stadiums and luxury boxes. If it's not NBA players and owners fighting over a billion-dollar money pie, it's NHL players skating on rinks plastered with more advertising than Times Square.
Because it's all about the money.
Except at the Masters.
Everywhere else, green is the color of greed.
But at Augusta National, green is the color of civility.
Green grass, green sandwich wrappers, green jackets.
And not a logo anywhere, save for the club's flagstick-in-Georgia United States map.
Sure, the players still wear their branded hats and tote their billboard bags. But their caddies are bathed in virginal white, jumpsuits as pure as fresh-fallen snow.
And even the players seem to respect the non-commercial aura. While winning drivers at the Daytona 500 rattle off all their sponsors at breakneck speed from Victory Lane, you didn't hear Mark O'Meara thanking Toyota at his acceptance speech last year. And he said he didn't even know what the winning check paid until he received it.
When Tiger Woods came marching off the 18th green after his record-shattering performance in 1997, he didn't have some camera thrust in his face and say, "I'm going to Disney World."
Thank goodness.
The people who run Augusta National have their faults, but poverty isn't one of them.
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| Caddie Fanny Sunneson in her Masters white. (Allsport) |
So in today's grab-everything-you-can-sportsworld, they are a refreshing throwback. Rich enough not to care.
"I hate to think we'd ever become the Pizza Hut Masters," late chairman Hord Hardin once said.
As we approach the new millennium, still hasn't happened. Even in a world of Insight.com Bowls and Touchstone Energy Tucson Opens, the Masters remains simply, and eloquently, the Masters.
In a world where Candlestick Park and Riverfront Stadium have become 3Com Park and Cynergy Field, Augusta National remains Augusta National.
Everywhere else, almighty television controls the event because almighty television pays the freight.
That's why we have 9:18 p.m. tipoffs for NCAA Championships and World Series games that never see the light of day.
Not at Augusta.
The dog still wags the tail.
CBS still pays a relative pittance (an estimated $4 million per year) for rolling one-year broadcast rights, the best way for Augusta National to exercise control.
There is still only four minutes of advertising per broadcast hour, two for Cadillac and two for Travelers Insurance.
There is still only 10 hours broadcast all week, no 18-hole coverage on the weekend.
At Augusta National, patrons' weekly badges still go for $100, the best big-event value in sports.
Cokes still cost 75 cents, and you'd never know it's a Coke by the cup.
The souvenir pavilions do nonstop business, but they do not gouge.
There are no corporate skyboxes ringing the 18th green. Just two simple unadorned pavilions for Cadillac and Travelers tucked beside the first fairway, hidden by pines.
It's funny, because the stretch of Washington Road outside Augusta National is as gaudy and tacky as America gets, a non-stop stream of McDonald'sWendy'sKentuckyFriedChickenWaffleHouseHootersPizzaHutDomino's.
But inside the guarded gates is an oasis from sports' nonstop commercial barrage.
Sometimes it feels like the only sane place left.
I can't wait to get back.
Editor's Note: Mike Mayo, noted golf writer and sports columnist of South Florida's Sun-Sentinel, appears every Friday on GolfWeb.
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