Augusta is an ideal setting for a Tom Watson bow

As he’s done for years in the opening round of the Masters, Tom Watson on Thursday will leave an egg-salad sandwich for his late caddie, Bruce Edwards, on the azalea-fringed 13th tee box.

Edwards, who died of ALS as the Masters started in 2004, always ate one of those right there at the final hole of Amen Corner at Augusta National.

“That’s part of the tradition, my Masters tradition,” said Watson.

Then the Kansas City native will continue along his imminent farewell to a tradition he first tasted as an amateur in 1970 — and that he first savored in 1977.

That’s when his triumph over Jack Nicklaus in the crucible of the final holes redefined him from being stigmatized as a “choker” and propelled him into being one of the game’s greats.

“I’d put him in one of the best five or six players that ever played the game,” said Nicklaus, alluding to Watson’s eight major tournament victories and adding, “I remember the first time he looked at me like a kid with blinders on.

“He was going to get someplace, and (it) didn’t matter who was in his way or what was there — he was going to get there.”

He got there through Augusta, where the proud Watson, 66, is conceding nothing immediate even as he acknowledges he can no longer keep pace with “the kids.”

So chances are that this could end for him Friday.

Whenever it ends, though, he has no notion of what he’ll feel other than a looming void.

“I’ll be missing being in the hunt, being in the arena, being down on the floor, being on the field,” he said.

Especially here, because of its history and splendor and impact on his career that included a second Masters championship in 1981.

Something I can appreciate in a new way since Watson’s last appearance here is the ticket to my first.

For the uninitiated, the scene already was a spectacle Wednesday with thousands watching practice rounds and the Par-3 Contest.

The vastness of it all was on a disorienting scale for the newcomer, including the approximately eight security checkpoints to get in.

That’s why veteran golf writer Melanie Hauser called me a “chipmunk,” her parlance for a Masters rookie who will scurry all over the course, head on a swivel, trying to absorb it all. She even made chipmunk sounds that can’t be replicated in print.

Perhaps they were subconsciously emitted, though, upon walking much of the course and getting some orientation time with former Star columnist Joe Posnanski at his 24th Masters.

My roaming included the striking sight of Amen Corner, thus dubbed in a 1958 Sports Illustrated story by Herbert Warren Wind as he described “where Rae’s Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee, then parallels the front edge of the green on the short 12th and finally swirls alongside the 11th green.”

This lyrical name, in fact, is rooted in an obscure song called “Shouting in the Amen Corner,” which Wind summoned to mind as he sought to find an apt name for that corner of the course and figured baseball’s “hot corner” and football’s “coffin corner” already were patented.

The fact that his term then came to confer some mystical meaning says a lot about the aura of the Masters.

For its considerable grandeur, its charm also is fundamentally entwined with mythology and embellishment — not to mention a certain willing suspension of the insulated, exclusionary elements of this.

The closely held membership list includes, for instance, NFL commissioner and multimillionaire Roger Goodell, who was spotted in a green member’s jacket Wednesday.

But, hey, Augusta does have three known female members since finally caving on that front in 2012.

Moreover, it’s also impossible not to notice this: 99 percent of observed patrons Wednesday were white, and 99 percent of the security workers were black.

Entering the grounds, you are tempted to look for a man behind the curtain as you consider what is and isn’t the way you might see it on TV.

Some are suspicious even of the timing of the blossoming of the azaleas, for instance.

Sure didn’t hear too many birds warbling Wednesday, either, and thanks to alert ornithologists, CBS has fessed up in the past to piping in that incessantly rhythmic chirping that you might know.

And that 150-year-old-plus oak tree in front of the clubhouse, gorgeous as it remains, still looks that way only because limbs are suspended by subtle but dense wires.

All that said, the tree makes for a fine symbol of it being a matter of interpretation how much of this is manipulation and how much is enhancement and reinforcement of the so-called tradition unlike any other.

And there is no debate about the Masters’ place in golf lore and an internationally appealing spectacular that brought out the pivotal best in Watson when he needed it most.

As such, all that surrounds him here makes for the perfect setting for him to take a grand bow as a tradition ends for him.

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 9:23 PM with the headline "Augusta is an ideal setting for a Tom Watson bow."