Masters Minutia--If you haven't been there, you won't know it

Spectacle though it is on television, The Masters is an event that should be experienced in person, though tickets (badges, actually) are almost as hard to come by as a date with Catherine Zeta-Jones. If you’ve never been, the wonders of Augusta National go well beyond the multitudes of flowering plants, or the “TV doesn’t do it justice” quality to the steepness of the terrain, heading down the first, up the last, etc. Here are a few other items that make the in-person experience so unique:
When the gates open in the morning, hundreds of “patrons” (not customers, or fans) hustle (race-walk style—there’s no running allowed at The Masters) to stake out prime seats on the back nine. And there’ll they’ll sit, not a golf shot in sight, for up to six consecutive hours, waiting for the first players to come through sometime in the afternoon.
Not only are the on-course refreshments remarkably inexpensive, they’re priced in such a way that when the Georgia sales tax is added, the final figure is a round number, normally a whole dollar amount. Not only is it a nice touch for the consumer but it helps keep a couple hundred thousand coins from jingling in their respective pockets, disturbing the players.
Grounds crew members are on hand with extended car antennae-like contraptions to clear the greens of leaves, pine needles and debris between groups.
It was 1960 when the Masters pioneered the use of red and green numbers on the scoreboard, signifying “over par” and “under par” to simplify the scoring process. It’s been a golf standard ever since.
And lastly, in honor of today’s Par-3 Contest, a shout-out to the late Claude Harmon, father of famed instructor Butch, and Augusta’s King of Aces. He made a ‘1’ on the dangerous 12th in 1947, the year before he won the tournament. Years later he made back-to-back aces during the par-3 contest, but didn’t win the title on the short course.