Everybody's Augusta

Not far from the National's hushed greens you'll find a blue-collar paradise of minor league baseball, drag boats and pro rasslin'

By Michael Bamberger

Best known as the home of the Masters, Augusta was firmly established as a golf town when the National opened in 1933. (Shhh! That's Tiger Woods putting on the par-3 16th.) Heinz Kluetmeier

For one week a year, in mid-April, Augusta is the center of the sporting universe. There's no school in Augusta during Masters week, and good luck getting into the T-Bonz steak house, just down Washington Road from the Augusta National entrance, unless you're Fuzzy Zoeller or some other golfing notable. But then the tournament ends, and school resumes, and the old Southern city-slash-endless strip mall returns to its off-season ways. If you experience Augusta only through the genteel CBS Masters telecast -- the courtly Butler Cabin interviews, the whispering galleries, the string music interludes -- you probably think Augusta is tranquil and mossy, old-world, another Savannah.

Uh ... not exactly.

Greater Augusta has more than 500,000 residents (including 60,000 people associated with the Fort Gordon Army base), a dozen tattoo parlors, two T-Bonzes, one Hooters and a long association with professional wrestling. In Augusta, birthplace of Hulk Hogan, they wrestle for real. There are still folks in town who remember the wild night in the late '70s when Tommy (Wildfire) Rich and "Mad Dog" Buzz Sawyer couldn't settle their staged battle within the confines of the snug Bell Auditorium and took their dispute into the parking lot on Telfair Street, where all bets were off. Now when wrestling comes to town, it's held at the charmless Augusta- Richmond County Civic Center, but that doesn't mean everybody plays nice.

For 51 weeks a year Augusta's sporting life is conducted above the din; even at the bass fishing contests in the massive, man-made Thurmond Lake (named for the late Strom Thurmond, the U.S. senator from South Carolina) there's a whole lot of whooping going on. Yes, the rowing events in the Savannah River are subdued affairs, but that's an aberration. The engine rumble from the annual Southern National Drag Boat Racing Championships, held on the river each July, leaves women, children and fish holding their ears for mercy.

The 8,500-seat Civic Center is the hub of the city's sports life in the long off-season. It's where the occasional boxing match is held, where the Harlem Globetrotters play annually, where the monster truck competitions take place and where the Augusta Lynx, a minor league hockey team, play about three dozen home dates a year.

The Lynx, a member of the East Coast Hockey League, are only six years old, but their hard-skating style made them an instant hit; they now draw an average of 4,500 fans per game. Checking and brawling are sure ways to get into the sporting heart of lunch-bucket Augustans.

It's hard to escape from golf in Augusta. The hockey team's nickname plays off a golf term, links, and one of the team owners, Frank Lawrence, also owns a car dealership, Bobby Jones Ford, off the Bobby Jones Expressway. Another Lynx owner, William S. Morris III, publisher of The Augusta Chronicle and Gray's Sporting Journal, was the main force behind the creation of the Greater Augusta Sports Council. But what's really notable about him is this: He's an Augusta National member.

One of Morris's goals for the sports council is to make Augusta inviting to various sporting organizations. The Georgia Golf Hall of Fame is in Augusta, and the Professional Disc Golf Association is now relocating from Toronto to Augusta, where there are four disc golf courses. Disc golfers call real golf "ball golf," but they are golf buffs all the same. Pat Govang, now the association's former commissioner, thought he'd died and gone to heaven when, during his organization's recruitment by Augusta, he was invited to attend a Masters practice round, where he spent about $3,000 on souvenirs. "It's the ultimate carrot," says Tammy Stout, the sports council's executive director. A Masters badge is often said to be the toughest ticket in all of sports. In her job, knowing Augusta members is huge.

W.S. Morris -- that's Mr. Morris to the many folks who work for him -- is a horseman, and he's rich and persuasive, which explains why Augusta is the national home of the Atlantic Coast Cutting Horse Association and why the Augusta Futurity, an annual equine competition held in the Civic Center, has a $1 million purse. For the 10 days of the Augusta Futurity, Morris puts on a cowboy hat and asks to be called Billy, just like the other Futurity cowboys named William. The Chronicle's coverage of the Augusta Futurity is beyond comprehensive.

As in every city in the South -- small, medium and large -- football and baseball dominate high school athletic life in Augusta, where integration has made little headway in the public schools. Augusta had a professional Arena Football team for a while, and the Boston Red Sox have a Class A team in the South Atlantic League, the Augusta GreenJackets. (The name is another play on golf, although Augustans are as likely to call Augusta National members greencoats, as the colonial British soldiers were redcoats.) The GreenJackets usually draw a few hundred fans to their games at Lake Olmstead Stadium, but when they have a fireworks night, you can't hardly get a seat, as the locals would say. Ty Cobb, a.k.a. the Georgia Peach, played his first year of pro ball in Augusta, married an Augusta girl, lived in Augusta for years and knew Bobby Jones well. There's a plan under consideration in the city council to rename the stadium for baseball's most accomplished redneck.

The two colleges in Augusta make substantial contributions to the city's athletic life. Augusta State is a Division II school with a Division I golf team that's often ranked among the best in the country. Paine College, a historically black school, was attended by Jim Dent, a native Augustan, veteran professional golfer and early devotee of the Big Bertha driver. There are Augusta National caddies, related to Dent, who claim the driver was named for their mother or grandaunt or other kin. (Actually, the club was named after a German World War I cannon.) Uh-oh: Have we slipped into golf here? When the subject is the sporting life of Augusta, you can't hardly help it.

The world's most famous golfing garden -- Augusta natives call it the National -- is open only from October through May, but golf is a year-round game in Augusta, played by most everybody, it seems, rich and poor and in between. There's the bare-boned Augusta Municipal, five miles from the National and known as the Patch, where the Augusta National club caddies hang out, play golf cheap and gamble exuberantly. The Patch (so-called for the cabbage patch the old pro had near his shop) opened for play in 1928. Forest Hills, a very good Donald Ross public course, dates to '26. The socially prominent Augusta Country Club, abutting the National, was founded in 1899. Many people assume Bobby Jones made Augusta a golf town when he founded the National with Clifford Roberts. That's not the case; golf wasn't played at Augusta National until 1933. The truth is, Augusta was already a golf town when the legendary amateur chose it for his dream course. What he patented at the National was the hush, and what developed in the ensuing years was mystery and awe over a club and a course. Charles Howell III, an Augusta native competing in this week's Masters, grew up on that.

So did Ray Guy. The Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders' punter for 14 seasons, he was born and raised in Thomson, Ga. -- "a half hour from the front gate of the National," he says -- and still lives there. He's a five-handicap golfer, and for decades he dreamed about playing Jones's course. Two years ago, at age 52, he finally did, with old Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler in his group. He played it again last year, with Dan Reeves, then the Falcons coach, in his group. He doesn't know if he'll ever get to play it again, but he's O.K. with that. "I got to play it, and that's more than most can say," he says.

Anyway, he can always get on the Patch. His brother, Larry, is the course superintendent there. In Augusta all roads lead to golf. Hockey, football, baseball, Washington -- you name it. Can't hardly think of one that doesn't.

Issue date: April 12, 2004