ACROSS THE COUNTRY
The Landline’s Not Dead (at Least at the Masters)
Augusta National Golf Club has long forbidden cellphones for almost anyone at its hallowed tournament, but patrons delight in making free calls the old-school way.
WHY WE’RE HERE
We’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. In Georgia, an old-fashioned custom keeps one of the country’s most beloved golf tournaments connected to its past.
Reporting from Augusta National Golf Club, where Alan Blinder also called his wife (and remembered the number she’s had since high school).
They call to check in with their bosses or spouses. They call to brag. They call to offer up weather reports, food reviews, golf commentaries, celebrity sightings, souvenir spending confessions, legal advice and trips down memory lane. This year, they called to talk about the solar eclipse.
And no one used a cellphone.
Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia has long forbidden cellphones for almost anyone inside its gates for the Masters Tournament, which is scheduled to conclude Sunday. The event is a proudly aw-shucks anachronism — $1.50 sandwiches, fairways free of towering sponsor logos, spectators invariably described as “patrons,” not fans — but its ban on a device that is the most ubiquitous of our times may be the most reality-suspending throwback of all.
Augusta, though, offers an alternative: Anyone looking to place a call may repair to one of the simple, black courtesy phones with gray buttons and coiled black cords. One of the world’s most hallowed golf clubs, along with a handful of other places like prisons and hospitals, stands as one of the last refuges for the communal telephone.
“Dad, it’s Ali,” Ali Daschbach began this past week.
She paused, a shared moment of anticipation stretching from a phone near the 17th green in east Georgia to Washington State.
“I’m calling you from Augusta.”