I covered the 1980 Masters for Gannett News Service. First golf tournament I ever covered, and I started with the biggest. True story. Kind of a sad story, too, because the experience largely was wasted on me.

Think of all the sports writers out there who could die happy if they got to cover the “tradition unlike any other.” Gotta be hundreds of them.

And I spent a long weekend in Augusta as a fluke. I didn’t even want to be there. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

This comes back to me as I’m watching the Masters on CBS … for the first time in, oh, forever. Generally, I’ve been out at ballgames on weekends, this time of year. Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, etc.

But in 1980 I found myself at Augusta National, feigning interest in “the tradition,” faking golf expertise. Hoping nothing too weird happened.

The circumstances: In early 1980, Gannett boss Al Neuharth secretly was getting ready to launch a national newspaper (two years later) he would call USA Today. As part of the long-range planning, Gannett News Service identified a handful of promising young writers from its holdings, and for three months at a pop had them work directly for GNS editor Jerry Langdon, in D.C., preferably covering topics of national interest. The idea being to see if they could find reporters worthy of working on Al’s Big Project.

Among the Gannettoids who got the tap on the shoulder were Mike Lopresti (still at GNS, and the greatest game-story writer of a generation), David Leon Moore (still at USAT), Karen Allen (who did two decades at USAT before the infamous “Al Head” episode) and, I think, Mark Woods, a columnist with at least two newspapers in Florida.

The program began in April of 1980, and it would have gone first to Lopresti, who even then was a star, but he was unavailable for some reason, so they started with me … and I went to most of the big sports events in the country in the spring of that year — Masters, Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500, among them. (My first, and only, experience with those three events.)

Ah, the Masters. We got credentialed at the last minute, and the folks at Augusta weren’t even going to cooperate with this unknown “GNS” entity until my editor at San Bernardino, a guy named Wayne Sargent, a golf nut and former publisher of the Nashville Banner, worked some insider magic and made it happen.

I flew from L.A. to Atlanta, rented a car and drove to Augusta. It was my first extended stretch of time in the deep South, and I remember how green and woodsy — and foreign — it seemed to me.

Augusta was a sprawling, slow-moving city with lots of fir trees, big lawns and high humidity. I could feel the moisture in the air, coming from the semi-desert of inland SoCal. It seemed as if there were a Hardee’s restaurant on every corner.

Since I was credentialed late, the hotels were full, and I was put up in a doctor’s house. Just me. In this sprawling house that the family vacated during the tournament. It had to be hugely expensive. I should have appreciated that, too. But I was 26 and worried about covering my backside, and I didn’t revel in knocking about that big old house in a nice section of town.

My Masters memories.

1. How weird it seemed to see zero, practically, black faces at Augusta National — aside from the caddies, ALL of whom were black, wearing white jump suits. That seemed weird. Uncomfortably weird. It subsequently changed, and golfers were allowed to use their regular caddies, but at the time … I wrote about it, and one of the older caddies told me he liked the system because he made a big chunk of his annual salary caddying for the pros. I could see that, but it still seemed weirdly anachronistic in “modern,” 1980 America.

2. Rain and threat of rain. It always seemed about to rain, and when that happened we all just sat around waiting. The only place where rain screws up your schedule more than Augusta National is Wimbledon.

3. The barbecue beef sandwiches in the press lounge. I lived on those for five days.

4. The clubhouse. Big and antebellum, practically a museum of the Old South. You approach it on a driveway that seems, literally, a half-mile long. It seems odd to be there. This manse overlooking the first tee and the 18th green. I went inside one day and felt severely out of place. I didn’t have a green jacket, I wasn’t a member, etc. I was allowed in there because of my credential … but I don’t think I was wanted. But it was nice inside. Lots of wood and a strong smell of old money.

5. Thinking I ought to be out walking the course … but knowing I could see 100 times more by watching television. Even in 1980. So I spent 90 percent of the tournament watching TV in the press room. I had played golf for a bit, a few years earlier, but I gave it up because it’s supposed to be a genteel game, and I was a club-throwing maniac who had reason to be angry because I never broke 100 — in about 50 tries. I knew just enough golf to make me dangerous, as a reporter, and I knew it.
6. The interview room. Stars and leaders were brought in for group interviews, and I remember Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus coming through, and Fuzzy Zoeller (defending champ). I also remember hardly any of us used tape-recorders back then, and almost nobody provided the “court reporter-caliber” transcriptions now common. You’d think we would have been accused of misquoting people, back then, because we all were taking notes by hand … but it happened no more than it does today.

7. Seve Ballesteros won. He was a big hitter whose accuracy off the tee was suspect, but that doesn’t hurt you at Augusta National, especially back then. There’s hardly any r0ugh to speak of, so a 300-yard drive on a par 5 that trickled into the pine needles was preferable to 250 yards in the middle of the fairway. That worked in Seve’s favor. He was a fun story, this emerging figure from northwest Spain. I didn’t even know they had serious golf, in Spain, in 1980. But there Seve was, winning by four shots over Gibby Gilbert and somebody named Jack Newton. I remember writing, on the last day, that we had just identified The Next Big Thing in golf. (Seve was good, but he was no Nicklaus.)

8. The Atlanta Hawks game on cable back at the rented house. Some guy named Ted Turner owned the Hawks as well as a cable TV station, and he ran Hawks games late at night. I remember falling asleep with the TV on, watching Hawks game — which seemed somehow comfortably familiar, after a day spent at a golf course overrun by people with drawls. ESPN had gone on the air a year earlier, but I have no recollection of watching those guys. They might still have been in their table tennis days, in 1980.

9. The long drive to Augusta from Atlanta, and the long drive back. The trees, the red-brick buildings. Exotic. Oh, and handing the keys to the house back over to the doctor, and talking a bit about the upcoming presidential election.

And now? I’m glad I was there. I have these mental pictures of the place; I can conjure an image. But I didn’t take advantage of it the way I know, now, I should have. I didn’t walk the course. I’m fairly certain I didn’t go look at Amen Corner. Which is a shame, because someone else would have wallowed joyfully in it all.

Though I will say … the self-importance of everyone around Augusta National was fairly oppressive. And can only be worse, 28 years later. We Matter So We Get What We Want was the clear message, and it doesn’t seem to have changed. You can do things the Augusta way or you can leave. Some of it was good, like insisting that TV cables be buried rather than clutter up the course. But a lot of it struck me as hoity-toity and exclusionary. I was left with a sense of mixing with rich people who gave way, way too much energy and devotion to a golf tournament. It was trees and grass, not a cathedral.

The whole episode, me just parachuting in to cover golf for the first time in my life, probably was emblematic of a time when lots of newspapers and news organizations traveled to big events. Papers wanted their own bylines on big stories back then, so there we were. At least 100 of us, and probably more like 200. I wonder if there are half as many now, in these days of print collapse.

I feel a little guilty about it. Some other person for whom this would be a massively precious memory — and not just a foggy one — probably should have been there. Can’t trade it in now, of course.