Colin Sheridan: Masters mythology trains us to forget the ordinary

LAND BEFORE TIME: A patron uses the courtesy phones during a practice around at the Masters golf tournament, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Augusta, Ga.(AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

This US Masters is a golf tournament that could never be accused of creeping up on you. It does not arrive; it announces itself. Weeks out, the promos begin to seep into your evenings - slow pans across dew-kissed fairways, syrupy piano notes, and camera work afforded more care than a Federico Fellini picture. Even the schedule bows in deference. The PGA Tour effectively tapers like a marathon runner: nothing too strenuous, plenty of rest, a collective exhale before the pilgrimage to Augusta National Golf Club.

If there is an art to the Masters, beyond the golf itself, it is nostalgia - not the accidental kind, but the curated, weaponised variety. Nostalgia, by definition, is a sentimental longing for the past, tinged with a pleasing melancholy. The Masters has industrialised it. Unlike the other majors, it does not roam from venue to venue. It stays put, rooted in the same Georgian soil, allowing memory to settle and compound interest to accrue.