The Amen Corner

[Ted O'Reilly]

Now, here's something: a sports writer (admittedly, of an earlier generation) who knew something about jazz, and contributed to the culture of an iconic course.... This comes from Toronto's Sunday Sun newspaper (2008/04/06). (Highlights in bold by me).

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Turning point

Augusta National's famed Amen Corner is often where fortunes, both good and bad, are reversed for Masters competitors

By KEN FIDLIN

Amen Corner. Sight unseen, the words themselves inspire immediate images of what this place must be.

A place of uncommon beauty, of peace and tranquillity. A place that speaks perhaps of divine intervention. A place of cruel reality that demands so much of those who pass this way, where the dividing line between triumph and failure is so thin as to be invisible. A place of such moment that, if inclined, a quiet word or two with your deity of choice might be in order because you're going to need all the help you can get.

Amen Corner is all of these things and more. If it has been said once, it has been said thousands of times: The Masters can be won only on the crucible of Augusta National's second nine on Sunday afternoon. If that is true, and it usually is, then the fitting for the famed green jacket begins at Amen Corner.

For practical purposes, Amen Corner describes Augusta National's routing of the par-4 11th, par-3 12th and par-5 13th holes. For the first 20-something years of the famed golf course's existence, the three holes at the southwest corner of the property were known to the members as "the water loop." But the dramatic events of the 1958 Masters, involving Arnold Palmer so impressed legendary writer Herbert Warren Wind, then of Sports Illustrated, that he felt moved to give the place a more lyrical identity.

In a 1984 interview with Golf Digest, Wind explained the origins of the nickname:

"That 1958 Masters was a memorable one. It hinged on how Arnold Palmer, paired with Ken Venturi, played the 12th and 13th on the final day ... I felt that I should try to come up with some appropriate name for that far corner of the course where the critical action had taken place -- some colourful tag like those that Grantland Rice and his contemporaries loved to devise: The Four Horsemen, the Manassa Mauler, the House that Ruth Built, the Georgia Peach, and so on.

"The only phrase with the word 'corner' I could think of (outside of football's 'coffin corner' and baseball's 'hot corner') was the title of a song on an old Bluebird record. On one side, a band under the direction of Milton (Mezz) Mezzrow, a Chicago clarinetist, had recorded 35th and Calumet -- most likely the site of a jazz joint in Chicago. The reverse side was Shouting in the Amen Corner. There was nothing unusual about the song, but apparently the title was catchy enough to stick in my mind.

"The more I thought about it, the more suitable I thought the Amen Corner was for that bend of the course. My article, in the issue dated April 21, was called The Fateful Corner, and the opening sentence went like this:

" 'On the afternoon before the start of the recent Masters golf tournament, a wonderfully evocative ceremony took place at the farthest reach of the Augusta National course -- down in the Amen Corner where Rae's Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee, then parallels the front edge of the green on the short 12th, and finally swirls alongside the 11th green ....' "

As perfect as the name Amen Corner is, it didn't catch on in a popular sense for another 15 to 20 years and it wasn't until just this year, a half-century after Palmer's win and Wind's article, that a jazz aficionado from Atlanta named Richard Moore, after extensive investigation, revealed that Wind had been mistaken about the recording. Turns out Mezzrow never did a recording of Shouting At The Amen Corner.

Several others did, however, and Wind must have got one confused with Mezzrow.

He was not confused about the 1958 drama, however. Palmer, looking for his first Masters win, came to the par-3 12th on Sunday holding a one-stroke lead over Venturi. Palmer's tee shot plugged in the rain-soaked back fringe.

In seeking a ruling, Palmer decided to play two balls. First he played the plugged ball and eventually made double-bogey five. Then he dropped a second ball at the place where the ball had plugged, chipped it up and made the putt for three. He then left the problem with the rules committee for a decision and promptly eagled the 13th. It wasn't until he was playing the par-5 15th that Palmer learned the rules officials had ruled in his favour. He went on to win his first of four green jackets.

Before Palmer's time, the Masters was always a big event, but only among that small population that took big league golf seriously. Palmer's charisma, simultaneous with television bringing golf into people's living rooms, put the game and the tournament on the map and he, himself, believes it all began at that 12th hole in 1958.

Palmer wasn't the first and is far from the last to have his fortunes reversed -- both good and bad -- while passing through Amen Corner. Next Sunday, a 72nd champion will be crowned in the 2008 Masters and he, too, will have found a way to negotiate his way past and over -- and maybe even through -- Rae's Creek to the title. Just as surely, someone or multiple someones, will leave their green-jacketed dream there.

One of the aspects that adds to the allure and mystery of Amen Corner is the fact spectators can view the action only from afar. Because the holes are right up against the course boundary, there is no gallery access. The closest the patrons get to the 11th green is perhaps 50 yards away.

When players are putting on the 12th green, they are as much as 150 yards removed from the mass of humanity. And then, on the 13th tee, they are even further from the crowd. This isolation from the galleries through the better part of three consecutive holes is unique in competitive golf and adds to Amen Corner's mystique.

"It is one of the greatest names. It is the corner of the course where anything can happen," two-time champ Ben Crenshaw said last year.

"It's immensely, almost alarmingly, quiet. The only thing you can hear is your heartbeat and the heartbeats of your fellow players and caddies. There is no spot like it in major championship golf."

The 11th hole is a brute of a par-4, 490 yards in length and punctuated by a green that seems to want to kick every approach shot toward the beckoning waters of Rae's Creek. It was here, in 1987, that local boy Larry Mize broke Greg Norman's heart and won a playoff by chipping in from 140 feet for birdie.

The 12th has often been described by players as the greatest par-3 in the world. Just 155 yards at its deepest pin position, the green is long and narrow, slanting away from the tee box, protected at the front by Rae's Creek, with bunkering both front and back.

"I call the 12th the 'Hole of Vultures,' " three-time Masters champ Gary Player said. "The spectators collect on the hill behind the tee, many of them there for the day, cheering when a shot lands on the green and groaning in sympathy when a ball plunges into the water. It's the toughest short par-3 ever. For excitement, drama and heartbreak, there has never been another like it."

"It can seem to play 30 yards longer at times due to the swirling winds," said Fred Couples, who is part of the hole's legend. When he won his green jacket in 1992, Couples' tee shot on Sunday landed on a steep bank and appeared headed into Rae's Creek until it came to rest, impossibly, on the slope. He chipped up and made par.

"I think I'm safe in saying that was the biggest break I ever got in golf," Couples said.

Some of the greatest theatre Augusta has to offer has played out at the banana-shaped 13th hole, a reachable par-5 that, at 510 yards, is one of the finest risk/reward propositions in golf.

The green is well-protected by water in front and bunkering behind, but most players in the field have enough length off the tee to take a run at eagle if needed. But it still requires a precise approach. Bogey or worse awaits anything less than that.

It's all part of the package -- the joys and the horrors -- wrapped up in Amen Corner.

Herbert Warren Wind, much revered in the annals of golf and its chroniclers, died three years ago at the age of 88.

His legacy lives on, down there amid the shouting at that Amen Corner.

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There's a terrific version of the song by The Spirits of Rhythm, BTW

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I thought you were talking about the Cardiff sixties rock band...

MG

[Ted O'Reilly]

I thought you were talking about the Cardiff sixties rock band...

MG

There was another band called Spirits of Rhythm ?!?

[Man with the Golden Arm]

Amen!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I thought you were talking about the Cardiff sixties rock band...

MG

There was another band called Spirits of Rhythm ?!?

MG