At Augusta National, every day is like Sunday.
You feel it from the first shots of a Thursday morning to those final groups, packed with big names to cater for television audiences around the world. This year's feature the likes of Rahm, Theegala, Matsuyama and Fleetwood. Last year Spieth, Koepka, Morikawa, Woods. Next year, who knows, except to say that this is one late Thursday tee-time you really have to earn.
The final shots in the first round of an Open might be played by a qualifier, perhaps some local whose friends and family are about the only ones left, along with the hacks waiting to file copy to their deadlines, just in case. At Augusta, they're played by some of the greatest players of the time. The writers would be staying for this regardless.
Perhaps one of those players will be striding as long as his shadow up the final hole, buoyed by the sort of start he'd dreamed about the night before and the night before that. Certainly, all three will now feel that climb to the 18th green, whether they've scaled Augusta's peaks or are scrapping around for hope among its troughs. Eighteen holes of physical and mental intensity behind, 54 still to go.
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That sense of immediate seriousness is one of the many quirks that makes the Masters oh so very different.
The rest of the year, a quiet first round is just one of those things. Shrug it off, try to make the cut the following day, perhaps climb to 15th or even 10th. Maybe the weather will save you in the Open, maybe things will get so hard that you can climb to 15th or even 10th by the end of day two in a US Open, where you're right back in the tournament.
Here, things are much more fragile. One bad swing might lead to one bad hole and one bad hole might lead to one bad round and... then it's over, over for another year, maybe for good. How many came here once and never again?
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Tiger was different. Tiger was always different. And if you take out Tiger, out in 40 for nine holes in '97, around in 74 for 18 holes in '05, then you see just how serious Thursday really is. Shoot 70 and you might just about have a chance to win. Then again, there's one player who managed that of late, and he was called Tiger, too. Any higher than 72 and you're cooked. Everyone shoots 73s and 74s, but almost no-one survives them here.
Friday is like Sunday because it's less about score, more about position. Twelfth is the answer to how far down you can be by the end of it and still think you can win, at least it should be because Charl Schwartzel did. Then again, he needed a round of 80 from the leader and then to birdie holes 15, 16, 17 and 18 on Sunday, actual Sunday. Maybe we should call that an outlier – and now the answer becomes eighth. Hold on, didn't Danny Willett need something even stranger to happen to pass the seventh and final player who had been ahead of him?
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Saturday is like Sunday because now we're waiting all day and so are they. Imagine it, for a moment. Imagine you're you, and you've watched this your whole life. Your grandad's bedroom, 11 years old, small, portable television, telling you that Faldo had caught the Shark. Your own house, years later, wishing he was there to witness what you had. Now you're there: you are waiting for your tee-time. How do you even stand up?
And now it really is all about position. Remember, Faldo was six behind. But remember this as well: six back of one might be better than one back of six. There's less you cannot control. Any more than four to pass and history suggests one of them won't be for passing – that puts you in the third-last group, fourth-last at a push. Ten of the last 11 champions came from the final one, though. Augusta is no place to be pushing things too far.
Sunday. How far back is too far back again? How early is too early to arrive, or to watch? How many shots will be too many strokes when everything is added up? Trevor Immelman went round in 75 and extended his lead, somehow. Hideki Matsuyama shot 73 and never looked like losing his. But what about those who didn't make it? Spieth, 73. Koepka, 75. Norman 78. McIlroy 80.
This, Masters Sunday, is one of the biggest days not just in our sport but in all of sport. Somebody, probably from the final group or else the one just before it, is going to play beautifully or else be lucky, likely both. Somebody is eventually going home with their entire world changed. They don't know it yet, but their Sunday is just beginning. It'll end long into the Augusta night.
They're here because Thursday was like Sunday and they coped with that. Friday was like Sunday, and they coped with that too. Saturday really was like Sunday and now, here, on Sunday, they're going to do it. They're going to become a Masters champion, and then they'll be here, greenside, every Masters Sunday for the rest of their lives.
They won't care how it happens, just that it happens. But what about us? If every day at the Masters really is like Sunday, why is it so hard to remember the last great renewal, until you do remember, vividly, and the answer is Tiger Woods' 15th major in 2019. Since then it's been Johnson by miles in November, Matsuyama barely threatened in April. Scheffler, dominant. Rahm, dominant. Scheffler, dominant again.
Why, in accepting that it wouldn't ever be better than that, why did we have to settle for, well, this?
And then you remember: the last great Sunday at the Masters began early in the morning, not even late in the afternoon. Perhaps, even here, even among the fairways and the birds and the patrons and the flags and the leaderboards and the holes whose yardages all end in zeros, perfection doesn't really exist. Golf, they say, was never meant to be a game of perfect.
But golf gets closer than anything else does in some ways, and it gets closest here, at Augusta National. Now, it's high time whatever spirits lurk among these trees conspire to produce something timely, something timeless. Perhaps even something altogether grand.
Every day at the Masters is like Sunday, until that is we get one of those real Masters Sundays, where tee shots on the 72nd hole still matter. The kind we are long overdue. The kind that, when it comes, will have been worth the wait.
