The Arrival of Greatness
Golf, in Full Bloom.
There’s a certain golden light that only seems to shine in Georgia. Its as if you can feel it through your TV screen, the warmth it emits on the shining faces of those lucky enough to be in its true presence. Most can only watch from afar, hoping mother nature will emulate a fraction of those vibrant rays from the edges of the Peach State into our overcast living rooms.
I’ve always been partial to the in-between seasons. Nothing too hot, nothing too cold— the perfect 60 degree day that can be found in the heart of April and the tails of September. Fall, and Spring, will forever be perfect in my eyes— as these are the start of the months I live for. The other 6 months, who’ve committed to a decisive temperature, are too stark for me—too keen on being set in their ways of frost and heat. The unruly nature of these in-between seasons— the blustery winds of October and the humid nights of June one day, and the soft snowfall of November and temperate sunshine of May the next— keeps me on my toes, helps me feel alive.
January, February, and March are a climb of endless dark days and freezing feet. They exist to help us appreciate the warmth of the months soon approaching. Winter breaks us down and tears us apart to aid us in understanding what we are made of and what we can make of ourselves. It plants the seeds of greater tomorrows—days, weeks, and years, that will be better, that will come with patience and sunshine.
We reap these rewards of winter survival when the colorless skies begin to show strokes of blue through the piles of white clouds casted above. When those leafless trees show peaks of painted green drops on their fingertips— the signs of life from buds that tease the soon days of a flourishing spring— we see all our hard work, finally starting to pay off.
Every January, the PGA Tour begins in Hawaii. It trades the tiffany blue waters of Oahu for the bustling roads of Los Angeles in February, then finds its way down to the humid wetlands of Central Florida by March—with stops in Texas, Arizona and Puerto Rico along the way. Seeds are sown from January through March— checks are cashed, trophies are lifted, and beers are thrown, but the blossoms begin to bloom when rays start to break through the clouds in early April.
In April, golf’s arrival in Georgia during the second weekend of the month is circled in red on the calendar because the first major of the season, the most prestigious major of the season, should never be forgotten.
As if Augusta National could ever be forgotten.
Lofty magnolia trees line the edges of the lane riding up to the clubhouse. Vibrant kelly green fairways and bone colored bunkers fill the acres of land nestled into the eastern Georgia skyline.
The moment Augusta appears on TV it screams at you to tell you its here, its coming—its oh so close you can almost touch it. Spring. It might not be here yet in your town and it your city but oh it exists, and its fabulous. Colors we haven’t seen before the leaves changed over in September, thrash through our screens and remind us again that they do indeed exist in real life.
Everything is yelling at you in vibrancy—telling you that you are so close to it, you are right on the edge of making it, seeing it, feeling it happen in real life. Spring, your hard work, your seeds poking through. The flowers and grasses are proof that with time and effort it will arrive. Ethereal emeralds and breathtaking fuchsias will bloom if you just trust that they can, that they will.
The trials of winter, the tournaments of January through March are build ups and battle scars for the real wars that lie ahead. The ones that force you to grow and adapt and change until you’ve become the person that can finally touch that sky, reach those clouds, see that green.
Augusta comes at you first. You know it one day and it changes the next. You kill it one day and get killed by it next. And in such eloquent fashion it does it— a beat down in Burberry, it never holds back until you can hold up against it. It forces you to become the best version of yourself, to rise to the levels only believed to be touched by the clouds above, a version you knew existed but thought might never come to fruition.
Augusta forces you bloom— and look how beautiful the flowers are.
You can win all the other tour tournaments in the world, sow all the seeds in all the land. Dozens of trophies in obscure shapes and wacky colors, glass and steel, marble and stone, yet the one that would mean the most can’t even be held— it wraps you up in its arms in a stiff wool and the color of the sport’s finest battlegrounds. That effervescent Masters green. That start of something new. Life reborn again from the child of yellow and blue. A sign of the arrival of greatness.
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Let’s gooooo!!!
Appreciate the shoutout, Grace!🙏🏼
This was wonderful!