Hidden Meanings at the Masters

The Masters Golf Tournament, played annually at the Augusta National Golf Club (ANGC) in Augusta, Georgia, is an extravagant sporting event with the ostensible aim being to showcase the game’s most skilled competitors. Every April, as many as 90 golfers vie for millions of dollars in prize money—and a green jacket, the iconic sports coat worn by ANGC members while on club grounds. Winning the green jacket confers lifetime honorary membership to the very exclusive ANGC (300 members), putting champions in the exalted company of golf legends like Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player. But it’s not only the winners who gain from the Masters; so, too, do members of the ANGC. Owing to the adroitness of the golfers, the ANGC’s emblem, the green jacket, is widely recognized as a symbol of excellence, and the glory associated with victory extends to those wearing the green jacket, namely, ANGC members themselves, who never have to compete for it. In short, the green jacket functions both as a metonym for champion—much as crown functions as a metonym for king—and as a contemporary totem, creating a small, clan-like, status group of southern gentlemen connected to one another in a manner similar to what anthropologists call fictive kinship. As will be explored further below, the game of golf itself acts as metaphor for capitalism—a game at which ANGC members not only compete but excel.

Somewhat more than a golf tournament, therefore, we claim that the Masters is an elaborate socio-political allegory that artfully aims to reshape the American public’s imaginary as to what constitutes, and who represents, the virtuous American. Southerners and southern culture are often omitted from such considerations; the stereotype of the rural-racist-dimwitted-region-that-has-yet-to-join-the-21st-century persists, and with it the impression that the South is a place that is foreign to the rest of America. For the 300 proud members of the ANGC, whose ranks include many of the country’s

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super-rich, this snub simply will not do. To many of them the southern man represents the nation’s noble archetype—the epitome of class and civility—and the Masters is their way of projecting this image to the world, ultimately staking a claim to regional exceptionalism that some would say has been denied since the South’s defeat in the Civil War (Bertram Wyatt-Brown, The Shaping of Southern Culture, 2001).

But how are the proud members of the ANGC to attain legitimacy tactfully—that is, without jeopardizing the dignity of the organization and its members? After all, a group wishing to be perceived as elite cannot be seen to grovel; the use of tropes is shrewd. Indeed, psychoanalysis tells us that human consciousness is constituted via the unconscious mechanisms of fantasy and desire. At Augusta, the ANGC’s bid for national recognition relies on adoring fans identifying with green-jacketed champions whom they associate with members of the ANGC. It takes place tacitly, subconsciously, with the assistance of totems and tropes.

Golf and the One Percent

Golf is the ideal medium in which to attempt this renegotiation of meaning. The game itself has a lengthy list of rules and an elaborate code of etiquette, imparting a sense of noblesse oblige that is missing from other sports. Indeed, knowledge of and conformity to the rules is regarded by everyone who plays the game to be of equal or even greater importance than the sum on one’s scorecard. Golf is a gentleman’s game. It’s an individual sport. There are no coaches or teammates; no uniforms; no military-like tactics. Rather, the intrepid golfer succeeds or fails all on his own through a combination of athletic skill and mental acuity—an exalted combination said to represent “character” by those who follow the sport.

The average golfer is not freakishly muscular but rather very average in size. He is lean and lithe, which some admirers regard as a sign of restraint and self-discipline. He is nattily attired, well-groomed, and composed. He never seems to sweat or grunt, and although victory on the tour is statistically rare, the golfer learns to lose with dignity. In sum, the golfer is self-reliant and self-made; there are no regular salaries, only uncertain prospects of winning. The game represents a true meritocracy; the golfer is more analogous to the risk-taking entrepreneur or investor than to

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the gladiator, a comparison that is bolstered by the multiple corporate logos plastered all over his brightly colored clothes. All of these attributes, overlearned by most Americans as values, resonate with golf fans at both conscious and unconscious levels—knowledge that is deftly exploited by the ANGC.

In addition to their many parallels to the market and free-enterprise, golf and golfers share a number of other traits—both demographic and ideological—with business and members of the ANGC. Both groups of men are overwhelmingly white, wealthy, heterosexual, Christian, and patriotic; in a word, ultraconservative. Few PGA professional golfers come from working class backgrounds. Rather, most were raised in upper-class, predominantly southern families, and they honed their strokes at private, all-white country clubs. Sports Illustrated reported in 2004, that of the 125 golfers then on tour, 123 were Republicans, a finding that shows up in myriad ways over the years (Orni Starn, “Golf Politics,” http://golfpolitics.blogspot.com/ 2006_09_01_archive.html, September 1, 2006). In annual surveys of more than 70 touring professionals, conducted from 2002-2010, Sports Illustrated also found that many members of this group shared a number of additional right-wing beliefs: solid support for war with Iraq and Samuel Alito, on one hand; unequivocal opposition to the film “Brokeback Mountain” and Obamacare on the other (“SI’s Annual PGA Tour Player Survey,” www.si.com). On Twitter, after the last presidential election (2012), golfers such as Chris Smith tweeted displeasure with the reelection of Barack Obama: “Sad day. I hope I don’t get sick or need surgery or a job or a loan before I learn to speak Chinese and get on food stamps” (Tweeting Athletes, www.tweeting-athletes.comindex.cfm?CatID=6). What really tees off golfers, The Herald (UK) reports, is taxes, as one reporter found out when he interviewed golfer John Cook in 1996. “My taxes are wasted on people who don’t give a damn,” Cook fumed. “I’ve earned my money. . . . Liberals are always fighting what this is all about, [namely], people working hard, not getting something for nothing” (Bruce Selcraig, “Playing the Patriot Game,” http://ww1.theherald.co.uk/sport/70559-print.shtml, September 22, 2006).

Not exactly a sympathetic group; certainly not the underdogs that Americans are known to favor. So, the question is how

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do 100 million people, worldwide, become captivated for four days by these bland men hitting small white balls up hill and down dale with clubs?

CBS Sorts: Projecting Southern Virtue Nationwide

Adam, an agnostic golf fan, attempts to answer that very question. On a golf message board, he posted:

“I can’t really explain why, but I love the Masters.
I’m not proud of this, but it’s the truth. I’m not an
old man. I don’t really like golf—especially on TV.
I think all the whispered talk of the ‘hallowed
ground of Augusta,’ or it being ‘a tradition unlike
any other,’ is silly. . . . Yet every year, without fail,
I watch. I wish I knew why . . .” (6 April 2006).

Adam’s comments suggest that the Masters succeeds as other televised dramas do, namely, through effective story-telling. For this, the ANGC relies on CBS Sports, especially lead announcers Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo. Starting with a stock of symbols—18 named holes, and other vernacular phenomena, like Butler Cabin, Eisenhower’s Tree, Amen Corner, and of course, the coveted green jacket, as well as a list of legendary past winners and a sublime landscape featuring 80,000 plants of 350 species that elicits both awe and dread—Nantz and Faldo weave a variety of familiar cultural tropes aimed at arousing Americans’ emotions and convincing them that they are witnessing something extraordinary.

The narrative is invariably a version of the following: the intrepid golfers—all men of good character—are up against the ravishing but treacherous Mother Nature whom they must conquer through guile and courage in order to join the legends who have worn the coveted green jacket. It’s a steady dose of danger, nostalgia, honor, and virility—all of which are tacitly understood and highly arousing meanings. Every drive, approach, chip, and putt is objectified and turned into institutional—and collective—memories, many of which spectators and audience recall and discuss year after year—like Larry Mize’s 140-foot chip in for birdie in 1987, and Scott Hoch’s missed 24-inch in 1989. And if that still isn’t enough, the announcers furnish viewers with folksy backstories of the contenders, as Nantz did this past April when he gushed,

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“Brandt Snedecker; the pride of Nashville, Tennessee. He married his high school sweetheart, Mandy, and now they have two children, daughter, Lily, born in 2011 and son, Austin, born in 2012.” In short, the announcers sanctify the events and project an honorable identity on the players. The idealized history of the Masters creates an American morality play, one where champions succeed on talent and character alone; where everybody competes on a level playing field and has the same chance of winning; but what separates the champion from the other non-contenders is courage and determination.

Just like capitalism. Thus, by way of totems and tropes, transference and countertransference, internalization and externalization, spectators and viewers see members of the ANGC and the golf professionals as one and the same. And southern gentlemen, stigmatized since the Civil War, replenish their prestige and perhaps achieve a modicum of redemption.

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