AUGUSTA — What makes the Masters special was sitting directly in front of a black metal gate at 4:30 a.m. Saturday.
The sitter’s name was Ernie Rehnke, a retired surgeon from St. Petersburg, Floria. When I arrived at Augusta National Golf Club’s main public entrance at that dark hour, Rehnke had been there for an hour and a half. He had been the first to arrive. Four others were waiting with him.
They were queued up because of one of my favorite things about this tradition-bound tournament. There is no such thing as premium seating or even reserved seating. If you get there early enough, you can put down your folding chair and sit right alongside the 18th green.
It’s a seat that might command several thousand dollars on the open market, but it’s available at the Masters to anyone fortunate enough to get their hands on a ticket (tournament day passes have a face value of $140) and a willingness to head to the course really early.
And that was Rehnke’s plan.
Rehnke, who has been able to purchase Masters badges through a connection since 2001, loves the tournament. He hailed the club, for instance, for not charging for parking when they could, in his words, make a mint off it.
“To me, the other best part about the Masters is that me, a local nobody, has just as much right to sit up front as Donald Trump,” he told me.
On Saturday, I went looking for a part of the tournament that exists apart from what you see on television. And, in people like Rehnke, I found it.
Rossie Bryant is another, a security guard at the north gate where Rehnke and ultimately hundreds of people gathered to be let in for the 7 a.m. opening.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
When Bryant approached the locked gate entrance, he gave Rehnke a hug through the bars.
“There he is — the man, the myth, the legend,” another ticket holder said to Bryant.
The regulars who get in line way before the gates open have formed a community that flourishes beyond Augusta. They have each others’ phone numbers and are friends on social media. They welcome newcomers like me. They bring coffee for the group.
A Minnesota resident who comes to Augusta annually to provide security at the tournament, Bryant has traveled to Florida to visit Rehnke.
“You literally become family at the gate,” Rehnke said.
Through the gate bars, Bryant greeted many of the fans and asked about others that he hadn’t seen this week. Honestly, it felt a little bit like a pastor tending to his congregation.
“The people are very nice here, very respectful,” Bryant said.
A great thing about the club’s cellphone ban — virtually anywhere else, a group of people waiting for a couple of hours would have their heads in their phones. But here, they chatted and caught up with one another.
A man with a son who is a horticulturist at Augusta National offered what sounded like insider knowledge. Previously, he said, the club tried to pick up all the pine cones that fell to the ground.
Now, though, “they leave 30% of the pine cones on the ground to make it look natural,” Olin Martin said.
A member of the grounds crew that had been using blowers to clear the walkway of pine straw came to the gate bearing an azalea flower and handed it through the bars to Martin’s sister, Juanita Pickens. He offers that kindness to a female fan each morning, according to Rehnke.
“It’s kind of part of his routine, to make someone’s day,” he said.
It reinforced one of my primary observations about the Masters after covering three of them — just about everyone is happy to be there.
This may seem like an obvious sentiment. Why wouldn’t you be glad to be at the Masters?
But consider that a lot of patrons are wealthy and, to some degree, accustomed to having things their way. The course is expansive and hilly, and the weather doesn’t always cooperate. People must make do without their precious iPhones. There’s plenty of room to be grumpy if you want to be.
But you don’t see it. It seems like just about everyone is in a pleasant mood, including volunteers, employees and security.
Visitors marvel at the immaculate beauty of the grounds and are overwhelmed by how perfect just about everything is. They recognize that badges to the most renowned golf tournament in the world can be really hard to come by.
The edicts — including no running, no backward hats, no phones — are willingly followed. When you leave your folding chair by one of the holes to wander around the course, no one messes with it.
It’s the sort of place that compels a security guard to travel out of town to work a week’s worth of shifts lasting more than 12 hours a day. It’s an event that motivates a retired doctor to wake up in the middle of the night to wait for a prime spot at the 18th green, to share those priceless seats with others and to regale a stranger with his fondness for the tournament.
It’s a hackneyed thing to say, but the Masters really is unlike anything else, even at 4:30 a.m. outside the north gate.
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