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Analyzing the legend and lore of golf's most celebrated tournament has become something of a cottage industry of late, but Owen, who displayed his personal golfing affections, frustrations, and obsessions so marvelously in My Usual Game, now goes where his competition hasn't gained access: to the source--via access to Augusta National's archives, records, and membership. The result is a sympathetic, yet still critical and complex portrait of the club and its founder, Clifford Roberts, to whom golf history has not been particularly kind. Indeed, for better--and for worse--Roberts and Augusta remain linked throughout what is essentially a volume that weaves biography with social history played against a sporting canvas. Naturally, finance, ego, Bobby Jones, television, and President Eisenhower figure into the tale, but Eisenhower's not the only leader of the free world to use the club's exclusivity to his benefit; Owen uncovers the delicious bit that Ronald Reagan and George Schultz helped finalize the invasion of Grenada there.
Of course, there is also some great golf. Augusta National would be just another golf club with a fancy pedigree and history of exclusion were it not for the remarkable tournament that it hosts every year. Owen, a graceful writer, tees up plenty of detail and anecdote in a hole-by-hole tour of the track, lined with perspective. Owen explains, If the Masters seems older than it is, that's largely because the tournament, alone among the majors, is conducted year after year on the same course. Every important shot is played against a backdrop that consists of every other important shot, all the way back to 1934. Every key drive, approach, chip, and putt is footnoted and cross-referenced across decades of championship play. Every swing--good or bad--has a context. The context that Owen provides makes The Making of the Masters as indispensable as a hot putter. --Jeff Silverman
From Publishers Weekly
Revered today as the most prestigious and tradition-rich tournament in American golf, the Masters, like the Augusta National Golf Club at which it is played, sprang from humble beginnings. As every ardent golf fan knows, Augusta National was the brainchild of legendary golfer Bobby Jones Jr., who teamed with stockbroker Cliff Roberts to build what is considered to be the cathedral of American golf courses on the site of a former flower nursery in Georgia. What is less well known is that financial problems nearly prevented the course from ever being built, and that Roberts conceived of the Masters as a way to promote the club, which was having trouble attracting members during the Depression. In describing the growth of the tournament, New Yorker staff writer Owen (My Usual Game) centers his story on Roberts, the hard-driving "benevolent dictator" who served as chairman of both the Masters and Augusta National from their inception until he committed suicide in 1971 at age 77. Owen portrays the often controversial Roberts in the most favorable light possible. In particular, he defends the Masters' (and by extension Roberts's) record of not having the first black golfer participate in the tournament until Lee Elder broke the barrier in 1975. Indeed, Owen treats everything connected with Roberts and the Masters in reverential terms, dismissing critics as ill informed. Despite this shortcoming, Owen has unearthed enough details and colorful anecdotes about the tournament and its playersAboth on the course and behind the scenesAto make this nearly irresistible reading for devoted golfers and weekend duffers. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Founded by golf legend Bobby Jones and his friend Cliff Roberts, the Masters has been held annually at the Augusta National Golf Club (GA) since 1934. Owen, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributing editor for Golf Digest, adeptly recounts the history of the tournament many consider golf's premier event. Although Jones has generally been given much of the credit for the tournament, Roberts was actually the driving force behind its creation and ultimate development into a major sports event. Often portrayed by golf historians as an uncompromising perfectionist, Roberts is here given a much more balanced treatment. Referring to archival material and the memories of club members, Owen dispels many of the popular myths about both Roberts and the tournament. Owen is also the author of My Usual Game: Adventures in Golf (Main Street, 1996). Recommended for all public libraries.APeter Ward, Lindenhurst Memorial Lib., West Islip, NYCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Jaime Diaz
...Owen accomplishes something ... important and long overdue in this sometimes revelatory work--Roberts is humanized.
The Wall Street Journal, Jay Nordlinger
Mr. Owen makes us wish we had known Roberts, if only to judge him for ourselves--no small achievement. He writes beautifully, too, meandering through the familiar byways, enveloping us in the Augusta-ness of it all.
From Booklist
Clifford Roberts, the self-made millionaire who founded the Augusta National Golf Club with Bobby Jones and ran the Masters Tournament with an iron glove for more than 30 years, took a beating in The Masters from author Curt Sampson, who blasted Roberts for racism and shady business dealings. Owen now takes the stand for the defense, offering his much more positive take on Roberts and the other dead white men who started Augusta in the midst of the Depression. Owen casts Roberts as a stern perfectionist who nevertheless exhibited great loyalty to the club's members and staff (black and white). On various points, including the exclusion of blacks from the tournament and Roberts' supposed blackballing of announcer Jack Whitaker, Owen supplies new information that, if not entirely exonerating Roberts, certainly helps balance the scales. All of this will seem arcane to all but the most devoted golf-history fans, but for this steadily growing audience, no fact about the Masters can ever be without interest. Bill Ott
From Kirkus Reviews
An involving and thorough look at pro golf's crown jewel and the driven individual who created it. Clifford Roberts, the martinet co-founder and chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, pursued his vision of excellence with a single-mindedness that would have impressed Captain Ahab. As Owen (My Usual Game, 1995) tells it, however, there was a more human side to the Masters steely cynosure. Tracing Roberts's childhood during the financially unsteady 1890s and his coming-of-age in the Roaring '20s, Owen reveals the emotional underpinnings of a man best known as a control freak. The son of an impractical father and a chronically ill mother, Roberts learned early how to do things for himself. In New York during the heady 1920s, he quickly insinuated himself into a fast crowd on Wall Street, where his passion for golf cemented many important business and personal relationships. One crucial bond was with the immortal Georgia-bred golfer Robert Jones, to whom Owen credits the idea for the course; the rest, he contends, was Roberts's doing. In 1931, Jones and Roberts acquired property near Augusta, Ga., with the latter securing financing and arranging construction. At first, owing to the Depression, Augusta National foundered. Before long, however, the club established itself, mostly as a result of the Masters' growing prominence. The tournament is unique among tour majors in being run by a private club rather than a national body, which enabled Roberts and his successors to impose their high standards on every element, from the contestants' attire to the amount and type of broadcast advertising. While severe, this regimentation has created an event beloved by all. This sort of warmth arising from a cold adherence to discipline, Owen suggests, was the very core of Roberts's personality. Yes, he craved control, but he also was warm, generous, and loyal; former employees interviewed fondly recall Roberts's fairness and genuine concern for their welfare. A most enjoyable, and surprisingly moving portrait of a man and the institution he crafted in his own image. (32 pages color photos, not seen) (Author to ur) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
The Wall Street Journal Owen makes us wish we had known Roberts, if only to judge him for ourselves -- no small achievement. He writes beautifully...meandering through the familiar byways, enveloping us in the Augusta-ness of it all.
Book Description
"If you asked golfers what tournament they would rather win over all the others," golfing great Sam Snead once said, "I think every one of them to a man would say the Masters." Played on the magnificent course designed by Bob Jones and Alister MacKenzie for the Augusta National Golf Club, the Masters has become the dividing line between winter and spring for even the casual golf fan -- and the hallmark of greatness for the pros who walk its fairways.Unlike the three other major tournaments that define the golf season, the Masters is not run by a national governing body, either of the game or of its professionals. It is run by a private club, which sets the requirements for qualification. The prize is not a championship title but the club's green blazer. So how is it that this private gathering has become the most glamorous, most watched, and most imitated golf tournament in the world?The usual answers to this question are: the prestige brought to the tournament from its beginnings by the presence of Bobby Jones, still listed on the Club's masthead as President in Perpetuity nearly three decades after his death; the beauty of the golf course, with its dogwoods and azaleas in dazzling April bloom; and the drama that develops on the back nine every annual Sunday, as the magnificent risk-reward aspects of the course permit great things to be achieved by great players.But the hidden and greatly misunderstood figure in the history of the Masters and Augusta National is Clifford Roberts, the club's chairman from its founding in 1931 until shortly before his suicide in 1977. Roberts's meticulous attention to detail, his firm authoritarian hand, and his skill at constantly imagining improvements where others already saw perfection helped build the Masters into the tournament it is today, and Augusta National into every golfer's view of how heaven should look.It was Roberts who saw the club through its troubled early years -- for, hard as it is to realize today, the survival of Augusta National was an open question until well after World War II. Roberts's was the most powerful voice in all club matters; business meetings were generally brief, since only one opinion mattered, and the meetings themselves were often a pretense to draw in members for friendly if fiercely waged matches. His friendship with Jones is what brought the club into being; his bond with Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the club its greatest cachet. And his dealings with CBS, which has televised the tournament since 1956, guided the network into the modern era of sports broadcasting.To tell the story of the club, the Masters, and its idiosyncratic founder, acclaimed author David Owen was granted unprecedented access to the archives, records, and membership of Augusta National Golf Club. Owen found Roberts to be a character every bit as intriguing and vibrant as his more celebrated co-founder. And he uncovered a wealth of evidence debunking the popular perception that all that is best about Augusta National should be credited primarily to Jones. As it was written of Sir Christopher Wren, architect of London's St. Paul's Cathedral, so it may be said of Clifford Roberts on Masters Sunday at the club he built and loved: If you seek his monument, look around you.
About the Author
David Owen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributing editor of Golf Digest. His books include High School, The Walls Around Us, My Usual Game, and Around the House. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and their two children.
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