Thursday monitoring the Masters is a tradition unlike any other. Wake up after 361 excruciating days of waiting for that opening tee shot from a former champion who still has enough in the tank to gas one down a dew-covered fairway, only to realize that the waiting is not over. The greatest golf tournament in the world was once far too precious with the way it doled out its coverage and answered that legitimate complaint in the form of the Masters Live stream, a sleek and objectively beautiful corner of the internet where every shot is cataloged and memorialized but not in real time.
Instead it’s a window into the very recent past, an indispensable resource to catch up on all the shots that were nowhere to be found live. Those filter in with a pace of play that would make even the slowest players blush. Surely there are people out there who are specifically interested in watching the field come, three by three, to No. 4 through 6 and then disappear again until Amen Corner then re-emerge for No. 15 and 16. We know this because this byzantine coverage plan, which relegates those not blessed enough to be granted featured group status to complete non-entities, has a healthy amount of free public relations contractors who share memes about downloading the app every year and evangelize about its wonders.
And yes, an enormous part about what makes the Masters great is what makes it different. The first round still feels like Christmas morning. The enchanting greens and bright flowers feel like a fairytale on Earth. Throw in any other sappy observance as you see fit. But it’s worth wondering here in the Year of Our Lord 2025 if it would still feel as magical—perhaps even more so—if fans at home got to unwrap all their presents at once.
Perhaps it’s a first-world problem and perhaps it’s being spoiled but in the two hours between Davis Riley teeing off and Collin Morikawa’s marquee threesome taking the stage, I couldn’t help but think how much was being left on the table by choice. Throw a dart at any weekend and any lower-rung tournament and PGA Tour Live has already exposed me to every hole on the course and presented me with hundreds of shots by this time of the morning. Augusta runs everything through the first tee box and has a truncated field so one could make the argument that it is never easier for someone to curate the action on the course and present it to the person who wants to enjoy it.
The argument for doing things this way is that it puts the de facto remote in the hands of the public and empowers them to take in the Masters in their own preferred à la carte manner. That’s something that sounds good in theory but crucially misses out on a real-world problem: the pesky little annoyance that the first two days of this annual rite take place during traditional working hours. Meaning that, just like the NCAA tournament that it follows on the calendar, this weekday treat is something that must be consumed while doing more pressing matters. Again, we’re not talking about toiling away under the hot sun and any serious exertion, but clicking back and forth trying to keep an eye on the action, the scoreboard, the various doomed bets and early story lines can at times feel an awful lot like work.
It’s not lazy to want someone else to craft a narrative and tell a story. For there to be some sort of connecting fabric between the various feeds that weaves into the early tapestry. It should not feel harder to follow the state of play for a sport’s Super Bowl than it is for throwaway regular season events.
Look, the silver lining here is that the Masters can and should do whatever they want. For everyone who also finds this to be a less-than-ideal situation, there are 10 who are just thrilled to be awash in the crown jewel. Crucially, as well, Thursday is not Sunday and golf’s true beauty is that the deciding drama will be sorted out and presented in pristine fashion when it most matters. To the Masters’s credit they are very good at what they do—Shane Bacon is every bit the play-by-play voice to match the moments and every other voice commenting on the action does so with stately reverence and transportive calmness. It’s just that the way they do it can be frustrating, especially to devoted fans who experience near-instant gratification and all the action they can handle from the top almost every other Thursday.
Then 3 p.m. ET rolls around and all is forgotten. All of that decision-making—who to watch, what to focus on, when to smell the tea olive—is placed in the capable hands of ESPN and an honest-to-goodness broadcast. The network has done nothing since getting its foot in the door to present this event but knock it out of the park. Everything is class. There’s context and stillness and the same type of classic professionalism that’s become increasingly hard to find anymore between the sports shouting shows and gambling promos. The Masters feels like the one time they put on a nice pair of slacks and a sports coat and go all out to impress. Coming on the heels of being left largely to our own devices, it hammers home how there is no canvas like a big-time golf tournament for a sports television director to paint. It becomes clearer just how essential they are to the whole process.
At a place where time stands still perhaps it’s appropriate that all the bells and whistles and countless different avenues of entry take a backseat to the comforting tranquility of good old-fashioned television. Again, your mileage may vary. But to me the Masters are just as much about who you watched them with as who put on the green jacket. As much about the way a couch can still feel like a friend while the bird chirps as they are the spectacular imagery. As much about the way the on-air talents tell the story around the same shared campfire we might be telling for 30 years.
They say smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. For this rite of spring, though, it may be the artistic touches. Tradition is something to be shared and embarking on this journey without an expert caddie—someone to guide you through the action—feels inherently disconnected. The Masters are a time for the monoculture and all studying the same scorecard at the same time. What feels like progress can get us further from that experience.
A funny thing can happen, though, at the end of a day comparing and contrasting viewing options. You can conclude that no matter how anyone chooses to present this major above all other majors, a year from now it will still be everything it ever was and ever will be. There’s an overwhelming sense of acceptance that not everything has to be for specifically you. And that if the other option didn’t exist then other people wouldn’t have their desired option. That there’s no real point in spoiling someone else’s good walk. The real joy is realizing that it’s all worth waiting for. All roads are going to lead to the same familiar place.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as On the Masters Broadcast, All Roads Lead to the Same Familiar Place.
