Once they do, the man who ends up wearing the green jacket Sunday will, in the grander scheme of things, be unimportant. After all, there will always be a next year at The Masters, when yet another winner will ascend to the champion's locker room.

	?">?" height=60 width=120 border=0>
	T O P   N E W S

What matters is that two men -- one the greatest amateur golfer of all time, the other a New York investment banker -- discovered an overgrown plantation in Augusta, Ga. Against all odds, they managed to carve out a perfect, permanent shrine to golf that is more celebrated around the world today than they ever could have imagined.

The saga of Bobby Jones, Clifford Roberts, Augusta National and The Masters has been told and retold many times, but never with the detail and tenacity that punctuates three books which focus on the tournament and the people who made it happen.

Arguably the best of the bunch is by New Yorker staff writer and Golf Digest contributing editor David Owen, whose measured prose and exacting attention to detail illuminate The Making of The Masters: Clifford Roberts, Augusta National and Golf's Most Prestigious Tournament (1999, Simon & Schuster, $25 US, $37 Cdn).

Owen's offering is thorough and enjoyable. (None)

From its opening sentence -- "The modern golf season never ends," writes Owen, "but it does begin." -- The Making of The Masters successfully avoids the temptation to wax poetic about its magical subject matter.

At times, Owen seems to relish pointing out the errors of other Augusta biographers, and his precision with even the slightest minutiae fuels an overpowering sense of authority from cover to cover, serving as a compass for the reader to navigate Augusta's minefield of speculation, rumor and innuendo.

But he tells the story in even-handed tones, never wavering from his belief that Roberts, who ruled the club with stern, unyielding authority until his suicide in 1977, has gotten an unfair shake from his critics.

Early on, he sets the record straight on a number of mistaken facts. Roberts' real name was Charles DeClifford Roberts Jr., and he was born in Morning Sun, Iowa, rather than Chicago. He never spent time in an orphanage; he never finished the ninth grade; and his first Christmas dinner in 1894 consisted of pudding, popovers, grapes, cranberries, baked oysters and squirrel.

Yes, he was a dictator when it came to his golf course and his tournament, Owen concedes. But his motives were rooted more in a deep respect for tradition, decorum, good sportsmanship and the game itself than in the malevolent forces of racism, greed and corruption to which so many over the years have claimed Roberts was allied.

Many of Owen's revelations come at the expense of Curt Sampson and his 1998 blockbuster The Masters: Golf, Money and Power in Augusta, Georgia (Villard Books, $25 US, $35 Cdn).

Others are pointed rebukes for Steve Eubanks, the PGA pro-turned-author who kicked off the modern warts-and-all Masters genre with 1997's Augusta: Home of The Masters Tournament (Broadway Books, $14 US, $19.95 Cdn).

It's hard not to feel bad for Eubanks. He's put together a readable biography of the course, its founders and its champions, but Augusta has trouble keeping up with Owen and Sampson.

Eubanks has a hard time resisting the treacly Masters imagery; his writing is nowhere as dynamic as Sampson's and his research, while thorough, cannot compare to that of Owen.

Sampson's rendering is of the 'New Journalism' style. (None)

For his part, Sampson romps across the fairways with fiction-familiar abandon. He uses New Journalism to the hilt, fusing familiar allegations of corruption, elitism and racism with local color, folklore and a healthy dose of literary license to generate an eminently readable book.

He manages to weave in a yarn about 1942 lightweight boxing champion Sidney Walker, a.k.a. Beau Jack, whose career was bankrolled by Augusta members grateful for his performances in the club's famous battle royals.

There's even a bit about Augusta native James Brown, dancing and singing on the street as a young boy for change from local soldiers.

But where Sampson uses the legends of conspiracy and racism to great dramatic effect, Owen's more sympathetic and methodical tone rings truer as he debunks the mythology that swirls around the tournament.

In all three books, old stories are made new. Herman Keiser repeats his claim of a plot in 1946 by two well-heeled Augusta members to keep him from winning so they could collect on $100,000 they had riding on Ben Hogan.

There's the tale of Frank Stranahan, the eccentric bodybuilding golf pro who finished second in 1947 only to have his invitation rescinded the next year because he had been using more than one ball during practice rounds. Rumor had it Stranahan had been having an affair with Roberts' secretary.

There's Charlie Sifford's famous story about Augusta calling on the Royal Montreal Golf Club in 1962 to rescind its policy of inviting the winner of the Canadian Open just when it looked like Sifford, a black man, was about to win it.

Owen defends Roberts on all three counts. Keiser was simply wrong, Stranahan broke the rules and Sifford wouldn't have qualified even if he had won the Canadian Open, since The Masters only invited Canadian winners of that tournament.

In Augusta, Eubanks relates the tale of Bobby Jones' departure in 1968 from the CBS telecast, and says it was Roberts who decided that it was no longer seemly to have the withered and dying Jones portrayed on national television.

Eubanks has several anecdotes of note to recount. (None)

But rather than tell him the truth, says Eubanks, Roberts informed a deeply hurt Jones that it was Bill MacPhail of CBS who no longer wanted him as part of the televised awards ceremony.

When Jones confronted MacPhail, the CBS executive said nothing, allowing Jones to go to his grave believing CBS, not Roberts, had betrayed him.

Owen's reply is short, sweet and typically logical: After all those years of watching his partner tell everyone what to do, why would Bobby Jones suddenly believe the network was calling the shots?

All three books stand on their own merits: Sampson's for its entertainment value, Owen's for its precision and Eubanks' for the information absent from the other two. All three would be time well spent for a discerning Masters fan.

If, however, you're looking for more contemporary action from "inside the ropes," tackle The Majors, John Feinstein's tale of triumph and tragedy (Little, Brown & Co., $25 US, $34 Cdn).

The familiar running-copy style which lit up the 1995 New York Times bestseller A Good Walk Spoiled, is used to a healthy extent again in The Majors, which skips along at a respectable pace but occasionally gets bogged down in the details.

It makes liberal, breathless use of the so-called controversies that have emerged from recent Masters match ups, including Fuzzy Zoeller's boneheaded joke about fried chicken and collard greens in 1997, and the lack of love between Justin Leonard and Matt Kuchar's cheerleading father.

Feinstein often relates the details of these private spats with the relish of a gossip columnist, and it tends to distract more than illuminate. He ran into the same problem in 1995; his attempts to find controversy amid Paul Azinger's dislike of Bill Clinton and of the U.S. Ryder Cup's decision not to sign autographs during the team dinner weighed down an otherwise sensational chapter of blow-by-blow golf writing.

For lighter, more historical fare, there's Cal Brown's more modest Masters Memories (1998, Sleeping Bear Press, $19.95 US), a collection of brief anecdotes documenting some of the tournament's most memorable moments.

All the classics are here, including Gene Sarazen's perfect 4-wood on the par-5 15th for double-eagle in 1935, Nicklaus' mighty back-nine charge in 1986 and Tiger's triumph in 1997.

Brown's book is a trivia buff's dream. Loaded with facts -- some fabled, others less-known -- the tales are told lovingly and, where possible, in the voices of the participants themselves. Short on controversy but long on nostalgia, Masters Memories is an aptly titled opportunity to recall fond tournament triumphs.

In 1996, Brown went to work with Frank Christian, the third generation of the Augusta-based Christians to perform the official photography duties of Augusta National, to put together a coffee table book of photos, new and old, of the course, the tournament, its governors, champions and challengers.

Augusta National & The Masters: A Photographer's Scrapbook (1996, Sleeping Bear Press, $45 US, $55 Cdn) is a majestic, gorgeously assembled collection of stunning photos and personal anecdotes told from the unique point of view of the man behind the camera.

It is a must for any hardcore fan, since it's readily apparent that the family tradition of shooting Augusta National and The Masters (son Edward is at it now as well) is a labor of love.

The photos are stunning, and Christian generously breaks up the dazzling course shots with ancient pictures of luminaries, like Jones. Other images include Gene Sarazen in a football helmet and an autographed group photo of the entire 1949 Masters field that was sent to Ben Hogan while he was recuperating from the car crash that nearly ended his career.

The star of Christian's book, however, is not a pro, a member or even one of Augusta National's co-founders. It's Augusta National herself, and Christian concedes that not even the most talented photographer can do her justice.

"At dawn, when the light is pink, the golf course yields images that are misty and faint, like a fairy tale," he says in the words of Cal Brown.

"I have never really been able to capture on film what the eye sees, even with the use of filters. I cannot explain this, but I think photographers will understand."

Editor's note: James McCarten is a monthly contributor to GolfWeb.