It's impossible to let a week like this come and go without even tipping a cap to the Masters Tournament.
A few years back I made a pilgrimage to this golfing mecca with a van load of buddies.  When I was there David Duvall was a skinny contender and Phil Mickelson was a dough boy...so it's been a while.

Here are a couple of my thoughts.

1. WOW! What a stunner. Television can never do the course justice.  High Def helps, but there is no substitute for a first person view.
2. Every hole there is memorable in it's own right.  There are no clunkers. I can still walk the course in my mind. If you get there, make sure you walk the course one through eighteen.  
3. Hills!  Big hills. This course is a rolling beast.  #10 for example drops about 115' from the tee to the low spot in front of the green.  All told the course has 175' of elevation change. (Think about playing the Monument without a cart.)
4. Don't roll your eyes, but I think of Augusta as a course you would get if The Arthur Hills Course and The Heather had a love child.  You would have the height and scale of the brawny Hills course with the classic beauty, white sand bunkering and beguiling risk reward water holes of The Heather. 
5. I would give any one of these to play this course: 
   • Finger
   • Toe
   • Earlobe
   • Tooth
   • My full head of hair
   • My car (not saying much). 
   The best part about that would be when people ask about what happened to my finger, toe, earlobe, etc. it would open the door to allow me to brag about my golfing coup.
   
   Go ahead. Ask me about my glass eye and I'll tell you about my round on Oakland Hills South.
   
   
6. Augusta is surrounded by a patchwork of dry counties.  Not that this matters to me, but if you have a van load of buddies with big plans for a weekend of poker that might be a talking point.
7. The gnarly trees that oversee all the spectacle have so much character that I was expecting one of them to start talking and pick me up. Oh the stories they could tell. 
8. With a Sunday pin placement and the vicious slope of the green I would get a nine on #16 Redbud.
9. I have an unnatural love for #7 Pampas. Probably because it reminds me of #14 on The Heather and I got a good score there once.

So those are some of my off kilter Augusta thoughts.
I hope you enjoy this harbinger of spring as much as I will.

-JJ