‘The final group on Sunday at The Masters is the greatest feeling in the world for a professional golfer.”
– Phil Mickelson, still my favorite active PGA Tour Player
Which is bigger? The star, or the stage?
It’s Masters week. Which pretty much means that with the exception of missing my annual Friday afternoon drinks tradition at the old Club with Tony Peksa, it’s the best. Week. Of. The. Year.
No matter who wins.
Some are saying that with one Eldrick T. Woods out due to back surgery that the event is somehow marginalized. That until Augusta National stops inviting back all the past champions, that the field will never be as strong as the other three majors. That with Phil posting a gosh-awful 76 on Thursday that it’s somehow not worth watching.
Um, wrong! Hellooooooooo?
I don’t care if Billy The Caddy wins that danged thing, this is the event of the year in golf. Because of where it is. Because it’s the same place, the same weekend, every year. For 78 years and counting.
The stage is bigger than whatever star wins the event. When a new country music star steps on the stage at The Grand Ol’ Opry, it is 99% about the venue and 1% about the artist. So it is with this 78th playing of the grand ol’ “tooniment” (anyone miss good ol’ Hootie Johnson?) on the hallowed grounds of The Augusta National Golf Club — the venue, the tradition, the repetitive camera angles and theme music on CBS make it larger than life, and certainly larger than any one player, be his name Eldrick, Jack, Phil or even Jones.
I’ve never played it, but I knew when Phil hit his 38-foot-putt on #10 today that it was going in. Because I’ve seen that putt a couple hundred times since 1986 when I first started watching. It’s the venue. It’s not the star. It’s the stage.
What if we saw the stages that we’re called to perform on as being bigger than we are?
Would that make a difference in the way we performed?
Jim Gordon says
Hess,
With the possible exception of the Gridiron Stage on which I trod for three decades, almost every other “stage” on which I have ever performed has been bigger than I am.
Make-A-Wish. Child Advocacy Center. The various courts in which I have tried cases. The United States Army in Vietnam. I could go on and on. It’s not so much “the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd.” Rather it is the opportunities we all are given to important things, great and small.