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When Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley was asked about the rise of “rival golf leagues” in a press conference at the 2022 Masters, he did not exactly take out his flamethrower.    

“What is your stance on that?” SI.com’s Bob Harig asked Ridley about the threat of upstart tours, the most prominent of which at that point was LIV Golf, which had announced an eight-tournament schedule for 2022 if not yet any signees. “Have you spoken to any players about their possible involvement in those leagues? Would you be opposed to that? And could it even preclude them from being invited here if they were to go down that road?”

Ridley’s response in full: “I would start by saying that our mission is always to act in the best interests of the game in whatever form that may take. I think that golf’s in a good place right now. There’s more participation. Purses on the professional tours are the highest they have ever been. Clubs and courses I think are in healthy financial positions. 

“You know, the youth that are emerging at a competitive level is just amazing. I mean, the top four players in the world are under 30. I think seven of the top 10 are under 30. 

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“We have been pretty clear in our belief that the world tours have done a great job in promoting the game over the years. Beyond that, there’s so much that we don’t know about what might happen or could happen that I just don’t think, Bob, I could say much more beyond that.” 

But according to allegations in a complaint filed earlier this week by 11 LIV Golf signees, Ridley, in fact, could have said more, because by that point in early April, the suit alleges, Augusta National wasn’t only keenly aware of the threat that LIV Golf posed to the PGA Tour but the club also had already taken significant actions to try to thwart the fledgling league.

In February, the complaint alleges, “Augusta National representatives threatened to disinvite players from The Masters if they joined LIV Golf. In addition, Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley personally instructed a number of participants in the 2022 Masters not to play in the LIV Golf Invitational Series. Plainly, these threats to top players served no beneficial purpose, as they would only serve to weaken the field in the Masters.”

The complaint doesn’t say which players Augusta National allegedly threatened, but three-time Masters winner Phil Mickelson seemingly wasn’t one of them.

By Masters week, Mickelson hadn’t yet publicly stated his intentions to sign with LIV Golf but he was presumed to be on the LIV short list and also embroiled in controversy for having revealed his plans to use LIV to gain leverage on the PGA Tour. The fallout from those comments led to Mickelson taking leave from the PGA Tour.

When asked about Mickelson’s absence at the 2022 Masters, Ridley said in that same Masters-week press conference that the club “did not disinvite Phil.”

“Phil reached out to me, I think it was in late February, early March, and let me know that he did not intend to play,” Ridley said. “That was by way of a text. And I thanked him for his courtesy in letting me know. I told him that we certainly appreciated that and, you know, told him that I was certainly willing to discuss that further with him if he’d like, and he thanked me, and we had a very cordial exchange.”

Had Mickelson not voluntarily withdrawn from the tournament, would he have been disinvited? It’s a reasonable question to ask, but also not one which Augusta National seems willing to answer.

The club did not respond to a request for comment, either in relation to that question or other specific queries about the allegations cited in the suit.

Another reasonable question to ponder, especially in light of Augusta National’s alleged LIV offensive, is why Mickelson turned up to the first LIV Golf event in London wearing a vest emblazoned with an Augusta National logo. Was it a not-so-subtle jab at the club? That is, of course, not a question for Augusta National but for Mickelson.   

If Ridley was open to talking to with Mickelson as LIV was coming to fruition, the chairman was not interested in engaging with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that when Norman asked Ridley for a meeting so Norman could explain “LIV Golf’s business model and discuss how LIV Golf could operate in the existing professional golf world, Mr. Ridley declined the invitation — another example of LIV Golf trying to work with existing golf entities and being turned away before even getting to show them what LIV Golf is all about.”

Even after the Masters concluded, the complaint alleges, Augusta National continued trying to influence players’ decisions about signing with LIV. Soon after LIV announced the field for its first event, the PGA Tour Player Advisory Council held an emergency meeting at which Augusta National representatives were in attendance, the suit alleges. The complaint goes on: “They informed the golfers in attendance that the PGA Tour and Augusta National had agreed to work together to address LIV Golf. As described above, the threat of exclusion from the Masters (and the other Majors) is a powerful weapon in the Tour’s arsenal to deter players from joining LIV Golf.”

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If that claim is true, it’s significant, because Augusta National has not publicly admonished or distanced itself from LIV Golf, at least not with unequivocal language. If the club has been working as closely with the PGA Tour as the suit alleges, it would suggest that Augusta National might be willing to ban or disinvite contracted LIV players from participating in the 2023 Masters.

Thus far, a half-dozen green-jacket winners — Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson — have signed with LIV, and who knows how many more might follow. Excluding that group from next year’s tournament would be a loss not only for the players but also for fans and the lore and charm of the tournament itself; arguably the only winner would be Scottie Scheffler, who would escape with one of the lightest Champions Dinner bills in recent memory.

As for the LIV players who aren’t past Masters champions? They will need to qualify through their world-ranking status.

That’s increasingly becoming an issue for those players given LIV has not yet been accredited by the Official World Golf Ranking. LIV applied for accreditation on July 6, but the process can take up to two years, meaning Masters hopefuls collecting LIV paychecks theoretically could be shut out of golf’s most prestigious invitational until 2024. Oh, and for what’s it worth, yes, Augusta National also has juice at the OWGR, with Buzzy Johnson, the Masters’ senior director, holding a seat on the OWGR’s governing board.

Augusta National plays only a small role in the 105-page complaint from the LIV players, but the allegations within provide rare insight into the club’s outsize influence in the upper rungs of the game.

Indeed, even LIV’s merchandising efforts were indirectly impacted by Augusta National, the complaint alleges.

“LIV Golf tried to order custom hats through American Needle hat company,” the suit reads, “and American needle informed LIV Golf that it does not want to do business with LIV Golf because of its relationship with the PGA Tour and Augusta National.”

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — This is a new era. The chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club had a question for a reporter. Usually, you know, it goes the other way.

“You’re referring to the Dude Perfect guys, right?” the club chairman, Fred Ridley, said to the reporter who had asked about a “viral video” made by “some guys who had playing Amen Corner in a way we have never seen before.”

Yes, those dudes, with 57 million YouTube followers.

In Augusta National’s 92-year history, Ridley is likely to be the first chairman to use the word “dude” and “YouTube” in the space of several sentences.

By tradition, Augusta National clings to tradition. For example, every player in the field receives a printed invitation with these four letters in the lower left-hand corner: RSVP. Ridley said that Phil Mickelson who has played in every Masters since 1995, RSVPed in late February or early March — by text. Evidently, Mickelson said (by text) that he would not be playing.

“And I thanked him for his courtesy in letting me know,” Ridley said. “I told him that we certainly appreciated that and told him that I was certainly willing to discuss that further with him if he’d like. And he thanked me. We had a very cordial exchange.”

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Roughly two weeks later, there was a fine-print change on the club’s Masters website: Mickelson’s name moved from one column, the list of players invited to this year’s tournament, to another list, players invited who would not be playing.

Needless to say, Ben Hogan’s name never made a similar migration. Hogan played his final Masters in 1967, when Clifford Roberts was still the club’s chairman and Bobby Jones its president.

Ridley is proving to be an extraordinary chairman of the club. By manner he is formal and low-key, but by word and deed he is really nothing like any of his predecessors. He’s almost a radical.

Reading prepared remarks to reporters at the start of a press conference late Wednesday morning, Ridley noted the death of Lee Elder. 

“In November, we also lost one of golf’s greatest pioneers, Lee Elder,” Ridley said. “A year ago, we honored the important [role] Lee played as the first Black man to compete in the Masters. It is a moment we will treasure forever.

“Since announcing Augusta National would fund the creation of a women’s golf team as well as a women’s and men’s golf scholarship in Lee’s name, we have worked closely with Paine College to bring these initiatives to fruition. I am proud to welcome the inaugural Lee Elder scholars, Taya Buxton and Devin Smith.”

The two students and golfers stood, wearing the colors of their college. Ridley paused as the frigid Press Building auditorium offered them a round of applause.

Beautiful. Also, unprecedented.

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Ridley is likely more expressive than he knows. When a reporter asked him about the unlikely circumstance of this year’s field including Tiger Woods, who was in a single-vehicle car crash 14 months ago that could have claimed his life, and not Mickelson, who won last year’s PGA Championship at age 50, Ridley tilted his head and moved his chin toward his right shoulder, the universal symbol for disbelief.

When a reporter asked what would happen first — a next-generation golf ball that flies shorter than the current one or the 13th tee at Augusta National being moved back — Ridley almost laughed.

Bobby Jones died in 1971, but Ridley cites his name often. The current chairman doesn’t wear a wristband marked with the letters WWBD but he could. Every decision the club makes keeps in mind that Jones, as well as Roberts, intended for the club and the tournament the two men began.

The club has shown a remarkable commitment to racial equality and growing the game globally. It has created pre-tournament events for women and kids. It is unlikely that Jones would recognize the course and the club and the tournament as it exists today. But the guess from this keyboard is that Jones would recognize Ridley’s values and goals and motivation. He’s the last U.S. Amateur winner to never play as a pro.

“I hope he would be proud,” Ridley said, when asked what Jones would make of the state of affairs on Washington Road today. “I hope that he would feel that we continue to carry the tradition and values he thought were so important in the game. I think he would be amazed. If you look at old pictures of this place, the course surrounding is pretty much the same. But not a lot else.

Near the end of his press conference on Wednesday, Ridley was asked what Jones might think if he returned to Augusta today.

“So I think he would be surprised, be amazed. But I think he would be pleased. He certainly would know after speaking with just a few of us that he continues to be revered, and his persona really drives a lot of what we do here.”

As the Dude Perfect guys are wont to say: Indeed!

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — It was the video heard ’round the Twittersphere, and for all the wrong reasons.

To the cynical, mostly adult-aged golf tweeting audience, Dude Perfect’s missive from Amen Corner represented all the ways in which Augusta National has lost its way.

Augusta National? The same club that once needed an extra push to broadcast its tournament in color? The one that didn’t show the front nine of its golf course on television until the 21st century? The one where folks are prohibited from bringing cell phones and running on-site, among other old-school rules? That Augusta National swung its doors open for a group of heavily sanitized internet trick-shotters? Yeah, sure, and I’ve got some oceanfront property to sell you in Toledo.

But that was precisely what happened. On April 2, two days before the best players in golf arrived in Augusta, the video — titled “All Sports Golf Battle at The Masters” — hit YouTube. In the video, the Dude Perfect crew (plus Bryson DeChambeau) plays hockey, baseball, football, croquet, pool, tennis (and yes, even golf) across the perfectly manicured fairways and greens of the most famous golf course on earth.

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Almost immediately, the video was the butt-end of an internet meme — fodder for the day’s worth of golf jokes. Then something even funnier happened: it took off.

To date, the video has 6.25 million views. Check the comments and you’ll find near-universal support for its creation. For a short period of time, it was the number one trending video on all of YouTube. And that’s just in four days.

But Augusta National is well past the point of pandering for clout. In fact, they’ve been past that for the better part of their eight-plus decades in existence. So why’d they open the gates to Magnolia Lane for Dude Perfect? Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley explained during his Masters state of the union Wednesday.

“My first reaction was, who are these guys?” Ridley said with a chuckle. “I’ve never heard of them.”

Quickly, though, the 69-year-old became acquainted. Dude Perfect, he learned, held tremendous weight with young sports fans — a demographic Augusta National has targeted in its efforts to grow the sport. A video at Augusta National could be a powerful (and effective) tool for bringing the sport to a younger audience.

“It was really part of our continuing effort to be relevant to different age groups,” he said. “Going in we knew that this group had 57 million followers on YouTube, and that sort of got my attention.”

But it’s one thing to earn Augusta National’s attention, it’s another to earn its trust.

“It was something that I got comfortable with very quickly,” he said. “No. 1, these are very upstanding young men who it was obvious to me in some discussions, some third-party discussions of people who had been dealing with them and things they actually said on video.  They had the utmost respect and reverence for Augusta National.”

After a lengthy back and forth, the two parties moved forward with the video. They haven’t looked back since.

“The results of the video have been great,” Ridley said. “I think it accomplished what we wanted to.  I’ve heard from a number of my law partners who have teenage children who said, ‘This is great.  My kids want to go out and play golf.’  That’s sort of the idea.”

So maybe Augusta National has lost its way. Or maybe it’s just found a new one.

“We’ll look at more things like that,” Ridley said. “But always through a lens of our culture and respect for the game and respect for the institution in this place.”

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Death, for the old and the infirm, announces its arrival with a broadcaster’s greenside whisper. The final breath, the final heartbeat. Sometimes, not often, famous last words.

Crosby, on a golf course in Spain: “That was a great game of golf, fellas.” Bing out.

The final frames, the denouement, in the documentary of geriatric death.

Before it, more often than not, come largely uneventful years. This is nobody’s idea of a highlight reel: The office visit to a specialist; the video conference with a trust lawyer; the meeting with a clergyman making an unprecedented house call. Interruptions in the waiting game that nobody wants to play.

And then there are the exceptions. Morrie Schwartz, from the Mitch Albom book about his Tuesday visits with his old professor. Jakucho Setouchi, feminist Buddhist priest, devotee of the pleasure principle, who died in early November and at a late age. (Ninety-nine.)

Our own Lee Elder, the pioneering golfer who died on Sunday at age 87.

Fred Ridley, Augusta National’s radical chairman, brought Mr. Elder in from the cold. At the one-off November Masters in 2020, and again at the 2021 Masters, Ridley brought Mr. Elder back into public life. Into our lives.

Ridley’s goal, first and foremost, was to honor the first Black golfer to play in the Masters, which Mr. Elder became in 1975. That is, appallingly late. It’s an invitational. There were years, in the 1950s and ‘60s and early 1970s, when Charlie Sifford and Pete Brown could have and should have been invited.

In April, Mr. Elder, blind in one eye, struggling in every physical way, stood on Augusta National’s celebrated first tee, before the first round got underway, alongside Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus. Lee was an honorary starter and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t make a swing.

For years, Nicklaus and Player and Arnold Palmer owned that little Thursday morning ritual. Now there was a new Big Three.

Elder won four times on Tour and eight times on the senior circuit. His career is linked with Player’s and Nicklaus’ in the most meaningful ways. He stood on that tee, the applause in his ears, as a proud man.

But the ultimate gift, stemming from Ridley’s invitation and Mr. Elder’s acceptance of it, was to us, to millions of us across the world, to get acquainted or reacquainted with Elder’s remarkable life and example. 

If professional golf has a Jackie Robinson, it is Charlie Sifford, for whom Elin and Tiger named their son. If the game has a Henry Aaron, it is Lee Elder.

No, Mr. Elder did not dominate professional golf as Henry Aaron did professional baseball. Not even close. But Henry and Lee, sons of the Jim Crow South in the years before and during World War II, both pursued their sports with quiet professionalism and little flash. 

They didn’t talk about the death threats that came their way. Aaron and Elder had their eyes on the prize. Money in the bank; the respect of their peers; the contentment that comes from doing a difficult thing well. A house they could call their own.

The distance between the 18th tee with a tournament on the line and the batter’s box in the ninth with a game on the line is a hop and a skip and not even a jump.

Earl Woods, a college catcher and a good golfer, knew that well. Tiger’s father and Mr. Elder were buddies. Earl would come around the public D.C. courses where Lee hung out and played. Mr. Elder and his first wife, Rose, managed Langston Golf Course for years. Langston was the epicenter of Black golf in Washington, and you could roll up there any day of the week and see Lee Elder in the pro shop or on the putting green.

But when he wanted a money game, Lee would go to another public course, Rock Creek, near his stately home in the northwest part of the city. All the public courses that Earl Woods knew in the 1970s — in New York and Baltimore and D.C. — Elder knew better.

Instruction

Earl made sure that Lee was greenside when Tiger won his first Masters in 1997. Maybe you were worried, in the moment, amid the pandemonium, that Tiger would skip on by him. Tiger sees far more than he lets on. He stopped. They hugged.

That day belonged to Tiger — age 21, winner by 12 — and to history. It is entirely possible, even if you follow the game closely, from that April day in 1997, to the November day in 2020 when Ridley announced Mr. Elder as an honorary starter, that you didn’t see Lee once. And, of course, there are the many golf fans in the game today who weren’t born or paying attention in 1997.

When Elder was 21, and all through his 20s and into his early 30s, he played most of his golf on professional tours organized by Black businessmen for Black golfers. This was in the 1950s and 1960s. When Elder finally got on the PGA Tour in 1968, he was 33 turning 34. As a 34-year-old rookie, playing at Firestone, he was in a sudden-death playoff with Jack Nicklaus. You could say that Nicklaus won with a birdie on the playoff’s fifth hole. You could say that Elder won just by getting there.

“Lee wasn’t long but man he hit it on the face,” a friend and a former Tour caddie, Richard “Jelly” Hansberry, said Sunday night in a phone interview. “His thing was putting. He could putt the bumpy greens he played all those Black tournaments on. It was the smooth Tour greens that gave him trouble.”

Nicklaus’ greatness speaks for itself. You could say the same of Tom Watson’s and Bobby Jones’ and countless others who came up in the affluence of the American country club. The best of everything. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s some head start.

Now consider the path Elder took to shooting 280 for 72 holes in the 1968 American Golf Classic at Firestone, the same score Nicklaus shot. But Mr. Elder did it as a Black man who had no come-on-in access to private courses, to plush driving ranges, to junior tournaments, to superior instruction and bespoke equipment. The PGA of America didn’t end its clause that kept Black pros from becoming members until 1961.

Jim Thorpe was a young Black golfer who watched that 1968 Firestone tournament on his uncle’s TV in Baltimore. As Charlie Sifford paved a path for Elder, Elder paved a path for Thorpe. These golfers did not grow up with separate but equal. The equalizer was the scores they could shoot.

Gary Player grew up in a racist country (South Africa) in a racist time, in the years before, during and after World War II. In time, he got his arms around the magnitude of the problem, and he was in position to do something about it. In 1971, he arranged for Elder to become the first Black golfer to play in the South African PGA Championship.

And there they were, on Augusta’s first tee in April, after all those years: Mr. Elder, Mr. Nicklaus, Mr. Player. Cameron Champ came down to the first tee, to check it out. Someday, you imagine, he’ll tell his children, and on it will go from there.

In his public life, that’s how Mr. Elder went out.

Jelly Hansberry was asked Sunday night if Mr. Elder was bitter, in those years, in the 1960s, when he was playing rough courses for modest purses at Black tournaments, while his white contemporaries were playing for big bucks on manicured courses in front of big crowds.

“Nah,” Jelly said. “Not a bit. For one thing, he was having a good time. But also, he knew. He knew he’d have to get better.” Professional golf’s age-old thing. Shoot lower scores on harder courses in tournaments with deeper fields.

And that’s exactly what Mr. Elder did. 

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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On a Saturday afternoon in December, 11 days after the death of a well-liked Augusta National caddie named Freddie Robertson, relatives and friends, from the club and the neighborhood, gathered for visitation at C.A. Reid, a funeral home in Laney Walker, an old Black section of downtown Augusta. The next morning, two dozen or so people congregated at a cemetery in a far hillier part of Augusta, the city where Mr. Robertson had lived all his life. He was buried wearing his white caddie jumpsuit, green club hat and plastic name tag. He was 64.

“He loved caddying,” Mr. Robertson’s grown daughter, July Little, said recently. Her father lived in a small white house he rented on Broad Street in Harrisburg, another old Augusta neighborhood, once an enclave of white mill workers, though that was in a different time. 

Mr. Robertson didn’t drive, so his fellow caddies often gave him a lift to the course. When they couldn’t, he’d take the 5, an Augusta Public Transit bus. He’d be on the bus as Broad Street morphed into Washington Road where it crossed over Rae’s Creek. On the course, members and guests got a kick watching Freddie as he ran to distant greens, ahead of the golfers in his group, to clean their golf balls and repair their ball marks. Freddie Robertson, in the best tradition of his profession, sought to leave the course in better condition than he found it, but his daughter doesn’t cling to a romanticized, Bagger Vance view of her father’s work. “He loved the money,” she told me. 

It didn’t take long for July, who works at a daycare center on Laney Walker Boulevard, to go through her father’s belongings. The most impressive thing he left behind was a set of golf clubs. If you’re a caddie at Augusta National, and you play, you’re going to wind up with some brand-name sticks, sometimes as hand-me-downs from members eager to share their good fortune.

There’s a lot of that at Augusta National, as there is at other old-line clubs: members showing an almost paternal warmth to those who serve them. It’s a two-way street. Loyal employees bring joy to the lives of members. They remind members of their status. They trigger feelings of gratitude. Overtures from members are often modest — a green-coated man might slip into the clubhouse kitchen to say thank you now and again — but the underlying intensity is unmistakable. It was in this spirit that a member took care of Mr. Robertson’s funeral costs. In that same spirit, the club and its membership have, without fanfare, bestowed many gifts throughout Augusta over the years. To whom much is given, etc.

And then came 2020, when the word unrest started trending aggressively.

On a Wednesday in mid-November, at the delayed Masters, the club showed it was ready to put more skin in the game than it ever had before, and to do so more publicly. That was when Fred Ridley, the Augusta National chairman, announced that the club, along with its corporate partners, would be making a major housing, health and education commitment to Augusta’s Harrisburg and Laney Walker neighborhoods. This was not another club nod toward “grow the game,” noble though those efforts have been. This was a pledge to give hundreds of millions of dollars, likely over the course of a decade, to inject new life into two hurting neighborhoods. This was, and is, a pledge in the name of repair.  

As Ridley spoke at his annual press conference, an artist’s rendering was projected on a press building wall and now the world could see the future Boys & Girls Club of downtown Augusta. It was a streetscape, a dreamscape — and an X-ray of the chairman’s soul.

“Fred bought in to what this project could do for the community,” Kim Evans said recently. She is the CEO of the greater Augusta Boys & Girls Clubs. “He believes in social responsibility. He cares about people. He’s attuned. This is Augusta National making a statement.”

Evans watched Ridley’s press conference from home. She knew what was coming. Still, when the news was set loose, she and her husband hugged. Her cellphone started dancing with incoming calls and texts. The many painful episodes of 2020 — the virus racing across the world, a series of violent Black deaths at the hands of police officers, the acrimony surrounding the presidential election — raised the stakes and the meaning.

Leon Maben is a retired small-business owner who lives in his childhood home in Laney Walker. He used to hear the men in his father’s barbershop speak of Augusta National in a derisive way, back in the 1950s and ’60s and into the ’70s. He heard about Ridley’s press conference and summed up what the club’s leadership was doing with a preacher’s ease: “They had their come-to-Jesus moment.”

Forgive him for not throwing a party. He’s 68 and he lived through the deadly 1970 Augusta race riots. He knows Augusta National didn’t invite a Black golfer to the Masters until 1975 and didn’t get its first Black member until 1990. Maben, like others in Laney Walker, recognizes that the club is making a serious commitment. But he’s viewing it through a long and murky prism. Talking to Maben, a board member and tour guide at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum, is a powerful reminder: We see what we want. 

Lee Ann Caldwell, a historian at Augusta University, has devoted her professional and personal life to understanding her hometown’s racial, social and economic history. As she has taught her students for generations, those three ropes are entwined, sometimes violently so.

There might be no person in Augusta with a deeper sense of what the city is all about than Dr. Caldwell. (She spent hours giving history lessons to me.) She’s an active member of a variety of local civic groups, and she recalls standing by her car in a parking lot recently, talking to an Augusta National member, a well-heeled, do-the-right-thing Augustan, about the complex roots of their city’s problems for a half hour. “I thought he was trying to understand,” Dr. Caldwell said. Every aspect of this thing is a work in progress. 

Augusta is a jumble. It’s a human and geographic maze. Rae’s Creek flows into Lake Olmstead, which feeds the Augusta Canal and the Savannah River. You can’t tell the story of Tiger’s win at the 2019 Masters without mentioning Rae’s Creek (the moat that guards the 12th green), and you can’t write the history of Augusta without referring to the Augusta Canal, which powered the Confederate Powder Works. Its redbrick obelisk chimney still stands today, 150 feet high, the tallest structure, by far, in Harrisburg. The Salvation Army Kroc Center, a massive, gleaming fitness center that Augusta National supports, is across the canal from this Washington Monument of a chimney.

On the five-mile drive from the downtown Marriott to Augusta National, with just minor detours, you’ll pass Augusta University, growing and prospering, and its various affiliated medical centers. You’ll see decaying shotgun shacks in Harrisburg, along with other houses being rehabbed. In Laney Walker, where Freddie Robertson went to high school and played football, you’ll see weedy vacant lots ready for development and gleaming hospital exteriors. Throughout downtown Augusta, you’ll see every kind of church and every kind of bar. They’re interesting.

The House of Transition and Transformation in Harrisburg is a redbrick storefront church on Broad Street, about two blocks from where Mr. Robertson lived. By all appearances, it hasn’t been open for a while. But appearances can be deceiving, and who among us can say what the future will bring?

There are still old-time Augustans who remember Harrisburg as white, working-class, vibrant and self-contained. But then robotics came in, and textile manufacturing migrated from Harrisburg and the Deep South to China and Vietnam. Harrisburg has not recovered. Not yet, anyway.

Jim Dent, born and raised in Augusta and nearly 82, can readily recall Harrisburg in its heyday. The lodge brothers called him “Big Boy” in his long journeyman’s PGA Tour career, his apprenticeship to becoming a Champions tour star. He grew up in the Sand Hills section of Augusta, as did many celebrated Augusta loopers, including Carl Jackson, Ben Crenshaw’s main man. Dent caddied as a kid, first at the Augusta Country Club, later at Augusta National. He described his commute to work: “We’d walk from the house to the Country Club, walk across the course, get on to the National back by the 13th tee and go straight up the hill on 18 to the clubhouse.”

Young Jim Dent went to Laney High and Paine College — Black schools in Laney Walker — and shot pool in a white pool hall in Harrisburg. “You went in through the back door and you didn’t go alone,” Dent said. Dent had what the homeboys wanted, the caddie money in his pocket. When he was feeling frisky and rich, he’d get waffles in Harrisburg on his way home, eating quickly.

One of his sons, Jim Dent Jr., is the head pro at the Augusta Municipal Golf Course, known locally as The Patch. (As Augusta National has Magnolia Lane, The Patch has Jim Dent Drive.) Another son, Joseph Dent, caddies some at Augusta National. “There aren’t too many Black caddies there anymore,” the senior Dent said. “Used to be 100 percent Black. Now it’s maybe 15.”

The original Augusta-Augusta National marriage began in 1931, when local men, shovels in hand, began turning a celebrated nursery into an iconic golf course. Over the club’s first 50 or 60 years, nearly all of its caddies, waiters, bartenders and drivers were Black men from Augusta, and most of the housekeepers were Black women from Augusta.

That was still the case when I went to Augusta National for the first time as an overnight guest nearly 30 years ago. It felt like I had walked into a time machine, with the dial set to 1934. In 2008, I spent part of an afternoon interviewing an elderly man named Rayford Wigfall, who waited on Cliff Roberts, one of the club’s cofounders, from October to May, when the club was open and its chairman was in residence. In Wigfall’s era, many of the employees had to hustle to find summertime work in a city that didn’t have much of it. Some worked for members. Some collected unemployment. Some went hunting and fishing, and not as weekend sport. Freddie Robertson cut grass.

But Augusta the club has changed in recent decades, as has Augusta the city. In 1996, the city of Augusta and Richmond County merged politically, making Augusta the county seat. The combined population is 200,000, with a small but growing Asian and Hispanic population. The club now has close to 500 employees, many of whom work all year. The club’s workforce has never been more racially or geographically diverse. The employees come from throughout the Central Savannah River Area, which extends across the river from downtown Augusta and into South Carolina. There are likely far fewer employees from downtown than there once were. But (once more, with feeling) who among us can say what the future will bring?

Shell Knox Berry runs the CSRA’s Community Foundation, a gathering place for a variety of local nonprofit groups. The foundation’s office is in the heart of downtown Augusta. One of Berry’s cousins is Jeff Knox, the Augusta National member who has often played at the Masters as a noncompeting marker. Berry is not a golfer. She’s never met Fred Ridley. But nobody I interviewed had a richer idea of what this new Augusta National-Augusta marriage can mean than Berry.

She can see a day when downtown Augusta will actually have its own Starbucks and, far more meaningfully, its own supermarket. Also, community vegetable gardens, thriving schools, new cybersecurity companies (a growing business in greater Augusta). More trees, less crime, more affordable health-care clinics. Rehabbed houses and new housing throughout Harrisburg and Laney Walker. She can see the whole thing. The new downtown Boys & Girls Club is more than an artist’s future rendering to her. She can see the kids in it.

Berry also knows there’s no magic wand here that Augusta National can simply wave. “This is not Oz,” she said. She’s learned how poverty can take root in a bloodline like a cancer. But she has seen how Tom Cousins and smart philanthropy remade East Lake in Atlanta, both the golf course there and its surrounding neighborhood. She knows what’s possible. “Augusta National,” she said, “doesn’t do anything halfway.”

One of Freddie Robertson’s regulars was a man named David Novak. Novak grew up in trailer parks and became a successful fast-food executive. A couple weeks after Mr. Robertson’s funeral, Novak posted this tweet: “Freddie Robertson, the hardest worker and the best caddie in the world, recently passed in his sleep at age 64. The caddies at the club sent me this framed picture of Freddie because they know how close we were. Like Freddie said, ‘Two peas in the pod.’ The gift moved me to tears.” The black-and-white photo shows Mr. Robertson in his caddie jumpsuit, wearing his club hat, his plastic name tag attached to it, above his left ear. His smile is beatific.

It’s astounding to think how quickly the golf experience at Augusta National can bring two people together, as it did repeatedly with Novak and Mr. Robertson. Tom Cousins, a longtime Augusta National member, told me about being the only white person at the Augusta funeral of his regular Augusta caddie, Sammy Tankersley. When Fred Ridley played in his first Masters in 1976, as the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, his caddie, Shag Brigham, was a Black man from downtown Augusta. Ridley missed the cut. But he played the first round with Jack Nicklaus, and he tried to figure out how Nicklaus was able to identify Ridley’s girlfriend (now his wife) among the thousands of spectators walking with them. He played his first nine holes in 36, only one shot more than the defending champion. Shag Brigham was there, beside Fred Ridley, for all of that. A link that will last forever. A short but meaningful partnership between the son of an educator from small-town Florida and a caddie from downtown Augusta.

Death revealed the trauma in Freddie Robertson’s life. The coroner’s report listed his cause of death as “Cocaine toxicity complicating hypertensive heart disease.” Two of Mr. Robertson’s sons, July Little said, could not attend their father’s funeral because they were in prison. Her father’s estate was in his checking account and his wallet. At Augusta National, he ran to those famous greens and fixed ball marks and everybody smiled. But his life in Harrisburg was something else entirely.

Little has heard bits and pieces about what Augusta National plans to do, to try to improve Laney Walker, where she works, and Harrisburg, where her father lived and died. She thinks it’s good. She thinks things are looking up. Spring is coming.

When Tom Cousins set out to revitalize East Lake 25 years ago he didn’t know he was starting a national movement called Purpose Built Communities. (His golf friends Warren Buffet and Julian Robertson run it with him.) Well, this unprecedented Augusta National-downtown Augusta effort is a marriage with a purpose. Today, East Lake, the club, is a living memorial to Bobby Jones, who grew up playing there and was a founder of Augusta National. East Lake the neighborhood has better schools, more home ownership, safer streets, a healthier citizenry.

Now Fred Ridley, a real-estate lawyer, is looking to build something that can outlast all of us. Tom Cousins, a real-estate developer himself, could not be prouder of his golf club for making a major commitment that has nothing to do with golf, not directly. As a much younger man, Cousins played golf with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. But these things, he said, are now his Big Three: “Housing, education and health.”

In November, Ridley spoke of “the unrest that we have witnessed throughout our country.” Incredible. Most people come through the gates at Augusta National looking to escape unrest. Ridley, in his own way, was taking a different stand. It’s a brand-new day. Ridley was saying something that had never been said before, not by a chairman of a golf club: we’re all in this together.

Ridley said, “Although we strive to meet our duty and obligation to give back to the community that has given us so much, the past six months prompted us to reflect and ask ourselves the question: What more can we do to move our city forward?”

Our city.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com 

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — One day, not long ago, Fred Ridley and his wife, Betsy, showed up in an SUV at the First Tee of Tampa Bay and started unloading boxes of U.S. Open and Augusta National windbreakers, along with scores of drivers and hybrids and putters. Ridley is the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club. He’s a former president of the USGA. He won the 1975 U.S. Amateur. There’s nobody in golf with a resume quite like his. But that’s not why a few kids hanging around the very public Rogers Park Golf Course that day made a beeline for Ridley’s vehicle. No. What they wanted was first dibs on the good stuff.

When Jim Dent heard about Ridley’s largesse, he wasn’t surprised. Dent grew up in Augusta and caddied at Augusta National as a kid. He had a long career on the Tour and the senior tour. He’s lived for years in Tampa. One of his sons, Joseph, is a caddie at Augusta National today. Ridley grew up in central Florida, went to the University of Florida and is a Tampa lawyer today.

“Fred’s a hell of a golfer and a good man,” Dent said on Wednesday afternoon. This was a few hours after Ridley announced a major program by which Augusta National, with three corporate sponsors, is pledging $10 million in an effort to bring new life — economic, educational and medical — to two Augusta neighborhoods that are in the grip of poverty, one called Harrisburg, the other called Laney Walker. Dent knows the neighborhoods well.

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“I grew up in Sand Hills,” Dent said. “Lot of the caddies at the National and the Country Club grew up there, ‘cause we could walk to the courses. But we’d go to Harrisburg because they had the best Waffle House there, the best hamburger in town. I went to school in Laney.”

Dent was describing life in the late 1940s, the 1950s, the early 1960s.

“Harrisburg was tough; you had to mind your P’s and Q’s,” he said. “You went there, got what you wanted and got out. But it wasn’t nothing like it is today, because there were three mills that were open. There was Claussen’s Bakery. So there were jobs. But by the mid-1970s, those jobs were gone.”.

Ridley, in his annual State of the Masters remarks late Wednesday morning, was saying things that no chairman of Augusta National has ever said before.

A screen showed a map of Harrisburg and Laney Walker, and Ridley said, “What once were thriving communities, Harrisburg and Laney Walker have experienced decades of disinvestment, poverty, crime and unemployment.”

You might be tempted to say this was another example of a rich and connected white guy, in his club coat and his cufflinks, doing and saying all the right things in the name of noblesse oblige and good marketing. It’s not. Augusta National is something like every major university — and every major hospital, for that matter — in dozens of cities across America. Town needs gown, and gown needs town. The club depends on hundreds of hourly wage workers — people working on the grounds crew, in the kitchen, as housekeepers, in security — to keep the whole thing going.

Ridley talked about the “unrest that we have witnessed throughout our country.”

He talked about the national conversation “regarding race, equality and opportunity.”

“Although we strive to meet our duty and obligation to give back to the community that has given us so much,” he said, “the past six months prompted us to reflect and ask ourselves the question: What more can we do to move our city forward?”

Dent would never use that kind of language. He’s a golf pro, not a lawyer. But as Augusta National has a philanthropic bent, he does, too. Dent and his wife, Willye, have adopted children, and Dent has given both his money and his time to helping needy kids find their way to golf and stay in it. He bought a house on the outskirts of Augusta and allowed a pioneering Black touring pro, Pete Brown, to live there when he was old and infirm.

“When I was caddying at Augusta as a kid, there was no money, and nobody would ever have thought to do something like what the club is doing now,” Dent said. When he was a kid, Cliff Roberts was the club’s chairman, and Bobby Jones was the club president. “People didn’t look at things like they do today.”

He talked about how the Augusta National caddie yard was all Black, in his day, and how it’s “90 percent white today.” He’s not sure if that represents progress or not, but it does represent change. And now change is coming, he hopes and Augusta National hopes, to these two old, tired neighborhoods.

Augusta National does things with a long-term view. A good guess is that in the next decade, the club and its corporate sponsors — and taxpayers — will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into those neighborhoods, and by 2030, they will look nothing like they do now. One of the first priorities is a reworked Boys & Girls Club.

An artist’s rendering of what it could look like flashed on a screen while Ridley was talking, with a tall Black boy and a tall white girl walking out of its front door.

The future.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael_Bamberger@Golf.com

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The 13th hole at Augusta National is iconic for a number of reasons. Not only is it stunningly beautiful, with its green framed by a multitude of azaleas and four gleaming white-sand bunkers, its risk/reward opportunity is also pivotal. The 510-yard par-5 comprises the final leg of Amen Corner, and presents as excellent an opportunity for a birdie or even eagle as it does for a disastrous bogey or worse — a supremely consequential decision for players coming down the stretch, especially on Sunday.

But in today’s bomb-and-gouge era, the decision of whether or not to go for the green in two has become a lot less taxing, as many players can reach the green in two with a mid-iron — or even a short iron! — instead of a fairway wood. That’s not what course designers Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie originally intended, and Augusta National’s desire to stay true to their vision has resulted in a not-if-but-when scenario regarding the lengthening of the 13th hole.

The club already has the land to do it, but making a major change to such an iconic area of the course is not something ANGC’s leadership takes lightly.

“I’ve been reluctant thus far to make any major changes regarding adding distance to the golf course,” Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said in his annual pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday. “I think sometimes when you do that, I mean, I think there are unintended consequences that come out of that. The scale and the scope of the hole, it changes when you add distance. It changes more than just adding distance.  The look of the hole changes. And the design philosophy of the hole changes. And that’s something that we have always and I have always been very focused on is maintaining the design philosophy of MacKenzie and Jones.

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“Having said that, I think we are at a crossroads as relates to this issue,” Ridley continued. “And all I can say is that, as it relates to our golf course, we have options, and we will take the necessary action to make sure we stay relevant. But as it relates to the 13th hole […] It still provides a lot of drama, but its challenge is being diminished. We don’t think that’s good for the Masters. We don’t think it’s good for the game. But the issue is a lot larger than Augusta National and the Masters. We have options, as I said, we can make changes, but not every golf course can.”

While Ridley didn’t commit to any specific changes that are currently in the works with the 13th hole, regardless of what Augusta decides to do, Ridley was definitive about one thing: Nothing is going to happen before next April’s Masters.

“Our season is underway, and we would not make any changes in [the time period between now and April 2021],” Ridley said. “Beyond that, I wouldn’t speculate.”

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Add Augusta National to the growing list of golf clubs giving back during the coronavirus crisis. The club is donating $2 million toward coronavirus relief efforts, Augusta chairman Fred Ridley announced Monday.

“It is our hope these gifts will help address the many challenges brought about by the coronavirus throughout the City of Augusta and the greater region,” Ridley said in a statement. “We believe Augusta National has an important responsibility to support and protect the community who has so generously and consistently supported us for many years.”

A pair of local organizations working to stop the spread of the virus will split the gift equally. Augusta University will receive $1 million to expand testing capabilities in the area, while another million will be donated to the Central Savannah River Area’s COVID-19 relief fund.

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“These dollars will give our nonprofit partners the security to focus on helping others and not worry quite as much about how to fund their work,” CRSA Community Foundation President and CEO Shell Berry said. “The Community Foundation will continue leaning into its mission by using our resources generously when the community needs it most.”

For Augusta University, the donation represents a huge infusion of capital at a critical moment. As of March 19, Augusta University’s COVID-19 research lab could only conduct 300 tests per day, according to the Augusta Chronicle. In the weeks since, the University has expanded mobile testing and developed an app that allows doctors to practice telemedicine for those in the area. But still, more help is needed. On Monday, 107 people in the Augusta area had tested positive for the coronavirus.

“This gift is an immediate and important contribution to the expansion of our COVID-19 screening and testing efforts,” Augusta University president Brad Keel told the Augusta Chronicle. “It provides us with needed resources to limit the spread of the virus through quicker identification and treatment. There is no doubt that because of this gift, many lives will be saved.”

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Augusta is just the latest golf heavyweight to contribute toward coronavirus relief efforts. Over the weekend, Pinehurst began auctioning off a series of once-in-a-lifetime vacation opportunities to support workers whose jobs were displaced when the resort’s hotels and restaurants closed. While membership at Riviera, led by Larry David, is engaged in a crowd-funding campaign for the course’s caddies. Both efforts have raised more than $250,000 for displaced workers in only a few days.

On March 13, the last time we heard from Ridley, the Augusta National chairman announced the Masters’ postponement. Now, seven days before Masters week was supposed to begin, Ridley expressed hope — not for the tournament, but for the donation.

“We are grateful to the Community Foundation for their continued partnership during this unprecedented time and especially appreciative to the dedicated healthcare providers, first responders and many others working tirelessly to fight the effects of this pandemic,” Ridley said. “We hope these contributions will inspire others to support their efforts.”

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Augusta National’s sentiment echoed that of the PGA Tour, which released a statement on Monday saying it also plans to stay the course.

“There are no planned schedule changes beyond what has already been decided with the PGA Tour Series-China,” the Tour said. Adding, “However, we are establishing additional protocols to promote the health and safety of all participants and fans at our tournaments, and we will regularly review our schedule in light of revised CDC and WHO reports and make any updates as necessary.”

To date, coronavirus has infected nearly 100,000 people and claimed more than 3,000 lives globally. Earlier this week, the United States reported its first death from the virus as cases began to spread throughout the country.

The 84th Masters Tournament is scheduled to be played from April 9-12.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — The 2019 Masters officially started when Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player hit the ceremonial tee shots at 8:15 a.m. A little-known Masters tradition is that the GOLF staffer making their first trip to Augusta National is assigned to cover the opening ceremony. Their tradition and our tradition led to me, a Masters rookie, watching the legends tee off from outside the rope this morning.

Unfortunately, Nicklaus and Player’s prime playing days came before my time. I was never given the pleasure to witness them each play Augusta at the height of their powers. I live vicariously through highlight footage, YouTube final-round videos and “A Pod Unlike Any Other” to get a sense of the impact they’ve made at Augusta and beyond. Now, I’m ready to add the Masters ceremonial tee shots to the list of examples that further demonstrate how much these two legends truly mean to the golf world.

Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player share a laugh following the ceremonial tee shot at the 2019 Masters.

Getty Images

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I arrived early for the festivities, and the crowded first tee box was reminiscent to one of a Sunday crowd when Woods is in contention. There was a strong sense of anticipation in the crowd as fans worldwide travel to Augusta to be a part of this moment. Like a true Augusta roar, you could hear Nicklaus and Player approaching before they were even visible.

I perched myself up on a hill off the right side of the tee box to get a bird’s-eye view of Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley, The Golden Bear and The Black Knight. Ridley was stoic in his introductions and there was a sea of green jacket members in attendance as a friendly reminder that yeah, they belong here. Let’s just say no one was standing 20-deep on their tippy toes to watch one the members strike the ball, though. It might be their club but, in this moment, it belonged to Nicklaus and Player.

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Masters 2019: Tiger Woods hits opening fairway, crowd goes nuts at Augusta

Player was first up and I’m still shocked he’s 83-years-old. He’s truly a genetic freak. The man is as limber as a flex shaft and still has a swing that men half his age would die for. With great ease, Player laid out a perfect drive onto the fairway. Nicklaus’ body language said it all. He shrugged and shook his head in disbelief.

After a long, lustrous introduction from Ridley, Nicklaus was up. He took slow, methodical steps to the tee and took what looked like a stiff practice swing. “How did you get loose so quick?” he asked Player. Nicklaus then stepped up and hit a line drive off the left side. While Player might hold the distance advantage these days, something tells me Nicklaus is fine with the tradeoff (he’s got six green jackets to Player’s three).

2019 #themasters Honorary Starters Ceremony@jacknicklaus @garyplayer pic.twitter.com/WRkE2RcB5F

— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 11, 2019

The legends shared a few laughs and Nicklaus made a point to approach fans standing along the ropes. After making the commitment to arrive early enough to snag one of those coveted spots, there’s no better reward than leaving with friendly exchanges with Nicklaus. That will last a lifetime.

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Masters 2019: Augusta National has a secret green that no one knows about

As Nicklaus and Player dispersed, their names were replaced with the first official tee time: Andrew Landry, Adam Lang, Corey Conners. At that point, you could see patrons with chairs in hand ready to make their way out to Amen Corner and camp out.

In the press conference that followed, Player said that, in his opinion, you must win six majors to be considered a golf superstar. Nicklaus corrected him and said he feels the number is 10. Player has won nine.

It was Nicklaus that came away with the final laugh on a morning full of smiles between two of the sport’s greatest legends.

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