The Masters began this morning at Augusta National Golf Club, and few "could have imagined" what club Chair BILLY PAYNE "has done in his near decade” at the helm, according to a profile by Michael Bamberger of GOLF magazine. The club "has never had a chairman" like Payne, and no other "has thought to focus on the borders of the course, and the great, green world beyond them." Payne has "taken on grow-the-game with evangelical verve," and he wants tournament experience for players, fans and television viewers "to meet his own outsized standards." Bamberger notes Payne in '12 invited three women to "join the club" after he had "inherited an all-male membership." He also "started two major amateur events, the Latin America Amateur and the Asia-Pacific Amateur." In '14, Payne worked with the USGA and the PGA of America to found the Drive, Chip & Putt junior competition. Payne has also "overseen an enormous expansion, nationally and internationally, of the tournament's coverage on broadcast and cable TV and particularly by way of the Internet." Additionally, Payne has "vastly improved" the club's balance sheet. He oversaw both the construction of a 90,000-square-foot "sprawling entertainment complex of high-end restaurants, bars and flat-screen TV's off the 5th hole called Berckmans Place," which opened in '13, and "the building of an 18-acre driving range." Bamberger: "Payne's efforts have made attending the Masters more convenient than ever. ... His grow-the-game initiatives will introduce millions of people to golf" (GOLF magazine, 4/4 issue).
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY: The NATIONAL POST's Cam Cole noted on television, it may "always look like your father's Masters," but "outside the ropes, on Billy Payne's watch, it's not the same old Augusta National." Since Payne "took over, change has been on amphetamines." In '10, the gravel lot "inside the club's treed boundary fence, where the media and assorted other quasi-VIPs had always parked, was just ... gone." In its place was the most "beautiful practice area in the history of practice areas." The same year the new practice area opened, a group of "eye-popping hospitality cottages appeared ... between the main spectator entrance and the current press building." Berckmans Place has "five full-service restaurants, an Irish pub, a pro shop, and replicas of the seventh, 14th and 16th greens" (NATIONAL POST, 4/4).
