The Original Master

Errie Ball is 101, played in the first Masters and still teaches golf every day.

Back in 1934, Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany, India was still 13 years from independence, Arnold Palmer was four years old and Errie Ball was one of 72 golfers playing in the very first Augusta National Invitational.

The 23-year-old got his chance at an infantile Augusta National courtesy of his victory at the 1931 Southeastern PGA Championship and his friendship with club co-founder Bobby Jones. Ball first met Jones at the 1930 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, and it was Jones who urged the young Welshman to move to America.

His uncle, Frank Ball, was the head pro at East Lake GC in Atlanta – Jones’ home course – so the pair combined to offer Errie a life he couldn’t dream of back home. On September 27, 1930, the same day Jones clinched his famous Grand Slam by winning the US Amateur, Ball landed in New York after an eight-day Atlantic crossing.

The Welshman spent the next few years practising and playing in the southeastern area and it was at Highlands GC, North Carolina, that Ball recalls another meeting with Jones. Ball was walking to the par-3 4th when the American emerged out of a nearby cabin where he’d been smoking and drinking with his friends.

“Errie,” Jones said, “what the hell you doing with that glove on your hand?” The young man was trying a radical new piece of apparel. “Take it off,” he followed up. Ball politely replied “Yes sir,” and duly removed the glove. “It was 10 years, maybe 15, until I wore a glove again,” recalls the 101-year-old.

Golf was a different game 78 years ago. “You could take a 5-iron and play all kinds of shots with it. Go down the shaft, play the little chip shots, or shots into the wind. You could play several shots with it. It was called a mashie in those days.”

Ball arrived at the very first Masters with his mashie in ungloved hand, and believing he could win. “It was an absolutely beautiful course, but I never imagined it would reach the magnitude it has today,” he remembers.

“I just thought it was going to be an invitation tournament and that would be the end of it.”

He recorded 74 and 75 the first two rounds to sit one shot ahead of Jones and seven behind leader and eventual winner Horton Smith at the halfway mark. A 74 on Saturday left him one behind Jones and out of contention for the win but he was still set up for a good finish.

The final round began with a couple of solid pars and then he hit a 6-iron to 12 feet on the par-3 3rd, the famous 12th today. He followed his routine, touching the putter down in front and then behind the ball, and then…

“I couldn’t move,” says Ball, reliving the awful moment as if it happened yesterday. “Finally, I putted.” He pauses. “You know that bunker in front? My putt almost went in that bunker.”

He’d fired his birdie putt 25 feet past and it took another three shaky putts before he got the ball in the hole for a double bogey. In the worst possible place imaginable, Ball had developed the yips. He battled on to an 86, the worst round of the week, finished in a tie for 38th and headed straight for the car park.

“Boom! Gone! I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Augusta,” he says. There is probably no one alive today who’s witnessed more champions’ golf swings. Gene Sarazen, Walter Hagen, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods have all been observed by Ball, who still teaches lessons today.

He even watched Harry Vardon. “I never met him but I saw him in the distance and watched him. My father was a good friend of Harry. He had a beautiful swing.” But when asked about the greatest player to grace Augusta National, he pauses for thought and replies: “I guess I would have to say Byron Nelson.”

The second and last time Ball teed it up at Augusta National was for the 1957 tournament. He made it back by finishing tied 22nd in the 1956 US Open. “The first Masters, they were having a lot of trouble getting it off to a good start. It was like a friendly deal. I didn’t feel too scared or nervous at all in the first one because it was more relaxed. Bob Jones made it that way. There was a lot of liquor floating around. Of course, in those days, I didn’t drink anyway, but it was more relaxing.

“When I played it again in 1957 it was a different story. It was really big time.” Ball shot rounds of 75 and 78 and missed the cut by three shots. Of course, he’s had many invites and opportunities to go back since, but to this day, he hasn’t set foot on Augusta since his last competitive round 55 years ago. “I never really wanted to go. I want to remember it the way it was when I was there.”