The Atlantic

Why Tiger Woods’s Masters Win Was Different This Time

The most appealing aspect of the golf pro’s 15th major championship is that it doesn’t quite signal a return to dominance.
Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

To watch the Masters Tournament, held every spring at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, is to be caught between times. On the one hand, there is the usual 21st century sports futurism, as in every golf tournament. Players are forever driving the ball further with more refined equipment, the cameras that capture them do so in higher and higher definitions, and tracing lines appear on-screen to track the flight of the ball. On the other hand, the Masters and its broadcast partners take pains to create the illusion that time’s forward march and pine trees appear annually, and announcers’ tranquil voices refer to the same scenes atAmen Corner and Butler Cabin. The patrons—not “fans,” pointedly—are from taking their cell phones onto the course.

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