At the Masters, unplugging becomes the real tradition unlike any other: Telander

CHICAGO - The Masters Tournament is a lot of things besides the site of Rory McIlroy’s thrilling, repeat championship on Sunday. It’s old, staid, quiet, bland, conservative. Some people don’t like that.

Some would say the private club is stuck in another century, just like the famous Old Oak Tree near the clubhouse. That gnarly thing actually goes back two centuries, to its planting in the 1850s when Augusta National was a produce farm called Fruitland Nurseries.

But, yes, I would place the time setting for the yearly Augusta National event as, I’m thinking, mid-1950s. You likely weren’t alive then. But I was. Just a kid, I remember hula-hoops, Davey Crockett coonskin hats, Tang and multi-party phone lines. I’m thinking the Masters could be AI-dropped into the middle of a "Mickey Mouse Club" episode with Annette and Cubby, and you’d never blink.

So, what I noticed Sunday more than anything were the adult spectators at the course experiencing something none of them had for at least a quarter of a century, and which everybody experienced in the 1950s: No cell phones. No iPads. No Internet. No handheld electronics. No instantaneous connection to the grand mothership, the World Wide Web.

You may not have noticed, but all day Sunday nobody at the Masters looked down at a screen, talked into a device, snapped photos or recorded anything at all. And this, though the tourney patrons may not realize it yet, is a far more valuable life lesson than anything they saw at Amen Corner.

You can watch the Masters on TV just fine. Because the place is so old and staid and moneyed—my God, is it moneyed; estimated valuation for the place: $6–12 billion—it doesn’t need to run ads endlessly on whatever network it sells the rights to. So that’s great.

And then there’s the merchandise. You can only buy the stuff—legally, anyway — at the course store, and it makes $70 million for Masters week alone. Tidbit: I stood in line some years ago to get into the store (often a very long line), bought a couple hats with the distinctive yellow flag logo, and watched as a tourist from Asia in front of me bought thousands of dollars' worth of merch.

But because watching on TV is so cool, being at the event is less of an in-depth sporting view and more forced revelation. It’s cool for an entirely different reason than mere competition. Simply put, you have to be there, be present, watch in real time, observe, focus, walk, stare, and—above all — talk to people.

When you’re at the Masters, you often don’t know what’s going on. You see what’s in front of you, all around you, manicured nature, the green, the lovely magnolias and flowering dogwood. But you hear a roar from two fairways away, and you say to anybody nearby, "What happened?" They shrug and say, "Don’t know, I’ll bet Scheffler just cranked one."

Because no modern electronics are allowed at the Masters, it’s an incredible sensation. It’s disorienting at first. Then it’s transcendent. A thought hits you: This was how humans were meant to be.

There are employees around making sure the rules are followed. You get caught with a cellphone, you are thrown out, and you’ll never get another entrance badge. You run and you get warned. I did. So, I stopped. Keep running and they’ll throw you out.

No unnecessary shouting. No high heels. No Slipknot T-shirts. The scoreboard is a hand-worked job just like at ancient Wrigley Field. A pimiento cheese sandwich at the clubhouse restaurant is $1.50. The chicken biscuit sandwich is $3. Iced tea is $2.

You’re not just dreaming about olden days. You’re there.

You can see in person something like McIlroy’s 350-yard drive on No. 13. But you could also see it in big-screen color in your home mancave. But to be forced to look ahead of you and not look down at a screen for information, to stare at what’s happening, live, and not videotape it for later perusal or dissemination to the world—that’s so rare as to be currently nonexistent.

Who, anywhere in the USA, goes six or more hours during the course of a normal day and never looks at an electronic information device. No one. The therapy that comes from this forced Masters reality—one that we all lived normally before Apple and Google and Amazon took over—is something that audience members wouldn’t experience anywhere else.

And every year, the bells-and-whistles-free tourney separates itself from all the other hotshot events with its music and noise and three-bars reception, simply by not clinging to the past.

The Masters is ancient, old-fashioned, kind of silly. May it never change.

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