What Does the Masters Mean to You?

Manila, Philippines is a strange place to begin when talking about the 2025 Masters. 

The capital of this small country in the western Pacific is roughly 14 million yards (or a couple of Bryson drives) from the first tee at Augusta National. But it was in Manila, exactly 50 years ago this year, where one of the great pieces in sportswriting history was produced.

And it is there that we must go to read Mark Kram on Ali-Frazier III, the Thrilla in Manila, my favorite recap of a sporting event maybe ever. 

Let’s pick it up halfway through Kram’s article as he really starts to get into the rhythm of describing their fight.

Came the sixth, and here it was, that one special moment that you always look for when Joe Frazier is in a fight. 

Most of his fights have shown this: you can go so far into that desolate and dark place where the heart of Frazier pounds, you can waste his perimeters, you can see his head hanging in the public square, may even believe that you have him, but then suddenly you learn that you have not.

Whew.

May even believe that you have him, but then suddenly you learn that you have not.

How many times have we seen that exact phrase on the faces of golfers both younger and older than Ali and Frazier were at that time? How many times have we seen its implications etched into the weather-worn eyes of men who hit golf balls instead of hitting men? 

How many times on a Saturday or a Sunday at the Augusta National Golf Club have golf’s version of Ali and Frazier thought that they had him, just before learning that cold and cruel truth that befalls nearly everyone at ANGC … that they in fact did not.

What does the Masters mean to you?

As my friend Chris Solomon (known by some now as Soly Solomon) pointed out a few years ago following the Shota Hayafuji bow to the course after Hideki’s win, this tournament is the one event that means something to everyone involved.

One frustration I have had in recent years with, well, a lot of what’s gone on in the golf world is the idea that more golf is always good. This is like saying more housing is always good or more salmon is always good. 

I mean … maybe this is true. 

What could be said instead, though, is that more meaningful golf is always good. And that is the beauty of the majors, but specifically of the Masters. From the college kid selling pimento cheese sandwiches off the side of the 3rd fairway to Jim Nantz directing traffic in Butler Cabin, everyone involved has their own story. From the first person in the gates on Monday morning until the champ drives down Magnolia Lane on Sunday evening, every minute means something.

The Masters means a lot of different things to me. My grandfather held badges for three decades, until he died a few years ago. For all of my conscious life, I never knew a day that did not include my grandfather being tethered to the Masters. My first trip there was in 2007 with my father. Then I went with both my parents. And then with a few college friends. Eventually, my girlfriend-now-wife and I started taking various couple friends to the event.

People joke that the Masters should be a holiday, but the truth is a little more profound than that. The truth is that the Masters represents a holiday because holidays take us back to the same place where we’re doing the same things and remembering exactly who we were and what we were doing the year before that and the year before that. 

The passage of time.

Remember the scene from Interstellar when McConaughey is on that planet for like two hours and he checks back in on Earth and it’s been 23 years and his kids are adults. No moment in any movie I’ve ever seen is more powerful than the split second you see the heartbreak in his eyes as they reflect the images of his grown children on that screen. 

That is how I feel on Saturday and Sunday evenings at Augusta National. 

When I walk to the little trampled down area by the big leaderboard with the colorful flags just a few yards to the right of the first fairway, I think about the first time I went to Augusta National and how my oldest daughter wouldn’t be born for six more years after that. Then I blinked, and somehow she’ll be 12 next week. For many of us, the Masters is a golf-shaped mirror that we hold up every year to take stock of where we’re at, where we’ve been and where we’re going.

It sounds like an absolutely maniacal thing to say about a golf tournament, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

What does the Masters mean to you?

I left my long-time job at CBS Sports in October, which means this will be my first major championship to cover on my own. I feel … freedom? I also feel a little bit naked and a little bit scared and a little bit joyful and a little bit rebellious. All of those at once.

I have this one golf memory. It’s of Brian Harman. Maybe it was the year he won the Open, maybe not. He was asked a Very Serious Question about the tournament or a shot or something else, and his response (which we have heard from so many players so many times) was, “I don’t know, man [shrugs] … it’s just golf.”

Except that it’s not, is it? That’s why we started this newsletter, isn’t it? Because golf is never really about … just golf. In fact, it sometimes feels like golf is barely about just golf. 

What was it that Scottie Scheffler said recently? 

“I feel like every time you're playing golf you're kind of looking into a mirror and learning more and more about yourself.”

If the best player on the planet for the last three years is saying that, then I’m listening, I’m drinking it in. We started this company because we believe all of this is not really about just golf.

What does the Masters mean to you?

To me, it means a lot of things, but one of my favorites is that I find it to be a crevice into which I can look to see what these men I cover are truly all about. The Masters is somehow both grandiose and intimate. The entrance to the biggest stage in the world is also just another sidestreet in a broken down old town. Because of this juxtaposition, the tournament seems to compress its contestants’ souls in ways we rarely see in sports.

Why do we love dramas? Because they (artificially) take people to the very end of themselves and let you take a look at how they react, what they’re made of. They also provide an opportunity for you to think about how you would react and what you are made of because, of course, everyone’s favorite thing to think about is themselves.

The Masters does this, too, but all of it is real.

It’s the place where I want to see Spieth walk off the 11th green with a two-shot lead on Sunday and stare at his own ghost for as long as time allows. Where I want to see Phil make 3 on 15 on Saturday with that “you never know” smirk on his face and his name on top of the board 34 years after his first appearance here.

Sometimes, if I’m being honest, I barely even care about the outcome. 

I want to see Brooks forget that he’s not supposed to care. And I want to see somebody – an amateur, a first timer, anybody – look around with a lead on the weekend and the world come crashing down. I want to see what it does to a person to believe that he has him, and then I want to see what it does to that person when he realizes that he very much does not.

The Masters may mean something different to us all, but it is nearly undeniable that to everyone, it means the most of anything in golf. 

For something constructed out of thin air – just the dream of two titans and a nursery that looks like it fell out of Scotland – nothing in sports has ever really disclosed the emotion and the makeup of men quite like the Masters.

I want Rory to birdie the 9th on Sunday to go up four on Scottie and Bryson with just nine holes between him and the immortal slam and nothing but terror in his eyes. Because where else can someone who has the entire world feel such fear about obtaining what he has not?

Time passes, opportunities elude, the entire thing was smoke.

For minutes, though, maybe even seconds, golf gives us – the Masters provides us – what we know we want the most. 

Competition matters. Beautifully struck shots are great. But in the end, when the week is cracked open and everyone is bare, it is the humanity this event engenders – all the fear and joy and sorrow and elation we can possibly contain – that is truly undefeated.

Sometimes you get it all in the same round. Sometimes on the very same hole. 

Nowhere more so than every spring at this wonderfully terrible place.