AUGUSTA, Ga. — I can’t stop thinking about those trees.
Some 24 hours after three of Augusta National’s towering pines went down during play, it seems more and more remarkable that things weren’t any worse.
I’m not here to assign blame. Golf is an outdoor spectator sport. Augusta National has a lot of trees. Trees are wonderful. And most trees will, after tens or hundreds of years, fall down.
I don’t know enough about root systems, tree health or agronomy to offer a useful critique. (Others who do, should!) I do know that it got very windy at Augusta National on Friday afternoon. And I know from watching videos of the crash — and hearing reactions from those who were there — I feel a deep anxiety even a day after I know everybody was okay.
The first video that emerged came from a recording off Masters.com, which captured the incident on its live stream of the 15th and 16th holes. Ned Michaels was on the call as they cut from a shot of Sergio Garcia greenside at 15 to another shot of the 16th green. Suddenly in the background, something started to happen. There was a murmur, then yelling, then a crash. Michaels reacted in real time.
“Oh, good gracious, watch out!”
“Holy smokes,” said broadcast partner Iona Stephen, speaking for all of us.
For a little while, that’s all we had. The broadcast stepped away shortly thereafter with no further information given. It seemed like a good sign that play resumed nearby — amateur Harrison Crowe, no doubt unsettled, missed his short birdie putt at No. 16 — but it was hard to know if anyone had been hit.
The horn blew before Crowe’s ball had even stopped rolling. This felt like a yellow flag in an F1 race; the track was suddenly unplayable. Caution. But what of the tree and those in danger nearby?
Before long, ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt confirmed on the broadcast that everyone was okay. There were, miraculously, no injuries. The internet breathed a sigh of collective relief; we could gawk on at the spectacle, guilt-free. Augusta National, the place that tries to control every variable, had still been proven no match for nature.
Surreal photos emerged in the immediate aftermath. There was one from Getty photographer Patrick Smith of an Augusta member surveying the aftermath of a massive uprooted tree (and no doubt phoning up the finest Chainsaw Guy in the American Southeast).
But every time a new video emerged, the level of miraculousness increased. It wasn’t just one tree — it was three. They were monsters. And they were horrifyingly close to taking out the crowd.
The next video showed, in slow-motion, a wider angle of the fall. The trees were clearly making enough noise that by the time they actually came down the entire crowd was aware. The players were, too: Crowe, Larry Mize and Min Woo Lee had a clear view of the action.
Mize was lining up his putt by the back right section of the green when he heard the first sound.
“Then all of a sudden I heard it, and I looked around, and I saw the trees,” he said. “They were probably at an angle like that coming down, and I saw people scattering.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, people. Get out of there!'”
He was asked for his real-time reaction. “Shocked, scared,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like that on the golf course.”
A careful zoom-in revealed that there was a woman who, recognizing she didn’t have time to escape, instinctively stayed put and dodged one tree on either side of her. That account was corroborated by one onlooker to ESPN, who called it “absolutely a miracle.”
One final video posted by No Laying Up was presumably taken from the camera stationed behind No. 17 tee. It showed the falling trees entering the frame and underscored the size of these behemoths.
I’m running out of printable words to describe my reaction, so here are a few I found on Google: Wow! Good grief! Crikey! Blimey! Holy Mackerel! Gadzooks! Bloody Hell! Mamma Mia! Great Googly Moogly!
Even knowing everyone is okay, it’s hard to shake some of those images. I mean, after the trees went down, there were spectator chairs beneath their branches. Augusta National is hardly immune from bad stuff happening to people but, I mean, Holy Mackerel!
What if Augusta National didn’t have a no-phone policy? What if there hadn’t been enough warning to scatter? What if there’d been a group on the tee? What if a group with more spectators had been there instead? What if they hadn’t built in an extra six minutes for spacing in between those tee times?
A day later, we all moved on. Augusta National’s top-tier access to everything helped; their greenskeeping staff could probably recover from a volcanic eruption in like, 12 hours. So it was no surprise that there was hardly a sign of the trees come Saturday morning:
Spectators faced trials and tribulations on Saturday, too, but those were lower stakes: soggy clothes, chilly hands, embarrassing muddy wipeouts. (I saw some tough ones.) Come Sunday our focus will be back on the golf, on Brooks Koepka, on legacy and history and second-nine drama.
What a joy to be able to move on so easily.