The Masters: Golf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia

Me llego en tiempo record, excelente calidad, comparada con el precio, este libro no lo encontre en México

What a gut check sports book. This portrait is so much more than a shrewd indictment of Augustan golf elitists. With an expose tone that takes to task the southern good old boy mentality behind the Masters mystique, this book outs all the wheeling and dealing of a Wall St. businessman's tournament that played favorites and treated outsiders who were different, unliked or unwanted as subject to inside power play influence. In other words, talent and luck weren't enough to wear a green jacket. The big wigs had to like you for you to get a fair shot or you had to shock the world. Take for instance a telling excerpt from the story of Gene Sarazen, who in a scene straight out of The Natural was visited at night by a mysterious lady Masters week. Who sent her and what was her mission? Was it perhaps to temp the little guy off of his golf game because he was not white enough for the local blue bloods to win? This brings to mind a statement of Johnny Miller who never won there and once said that guys like Rocco Mediate cleaned your pool and did not get their names on champion trophies. Were snobs who think like him gatekeepers of Augusta National? Eugenio Saraceni who put the Masters on the map in 1935 with his famous double eagle Shot Heard Around The World and was the first champ to win all 4 modern majors had to change his name because of guys like this. This along with many other interesting tidbits leaves you with the feeling this that this tournament was once run by hard, cold rogues with too many biases and prejudices. Today the event is too international in scope and global in scale to get away with that. But the history of its exclusionary evolution is as fascinating as any story in American sports lore. Must read.

A great insight into the history of the Masters

This is part of a Birthday Present to a keen Golfer. Very happy with the order.

Not one of Curt Sampson' s best books, but an interesting read all the same. Clever integration of the establishment of Augusta National and the history of the local area. Fascinating to understand the complexity and character of Clifford Roberts.