What we do have, however, is a lifelong Masters patron and Augusta food blogger who wasn’t above reverse-engineering the ingredients list from the back of the wrapper in 2016. It’s an imitation of an imitation of an approximation...
That's such a delightful description.
When a new building is constructed, he says, it simply appears the day of the tournament’s opening, already inexplicably covered in vines.
(Insert joke about how fast kudzu grows -- This is Georgia, after all.)
The pimento cheese he sold from his store, Woodruff Drug in Aiken, South Carolina, won so many fans across the region that in the 1960s, Masters organizers dropped the husband-and-wife catering team they’d hired since the 1940s to make way for Rangos.
For those not familiar with the area, Augusta is in Georgia and smooshed up against the Georgia-South Carolina state border. Aiken, South Carolina is about 20 miles away, about a thirty minute drive to some parts of Augusta. Augusta is a sprawling city. You can probably drive thirty minutes from point A to point B within Augusta, so reaching out to a unique business in a small town a few miles away is completely reasonable and not some big huge deal, logistically.
Not to take anything away from the small business, just saying that "going to a whole other state!!!" is like tossing a rock across the river in this case, because some river no doubt serves as the demarcation for the state border.
It seems there is no readily available canned answer for average river width and I've already grown bored with this rabbit hole. Note to self: Vernacular measures unwelcome on HN.
Nah. I have had one whole class in Hydrology. I read books about water (rights and development history, for example) for fun. [1]
I just tuckered out before getting to the part of trying to look up average river width for my home state of Georgia. I'm just tired today, as is often the case, or I would be all over that.
FYI, my point about river width was not a put down in any way. I'm not sure if you took it that way. It seems like other people did.
Average river width is not representative because there are often big population centers near wider parts of rivers. For example, when the east cost of the US was settled, people built cities on the wide, navigable (for big ships) parts of rivers that were close to the ocean.
While his follow-up comment isn't ideal, it is in response to an ugly personal attack. I deleted my reply to that now flagged-to-death comment because I don't want to make this about me.
I'm quite confident the intent was to be kind to me, not commentary aimed at javert at all.
One of the challenges of interacting on the internet is that it's very hard to say a thing aimed at one person that cannot be wildly misconstrued as being something ugly about someone else. I think that's all that happened here. The comment was aimed at me because my behavior looked extremely defensive rather than looking like "Oh, river factoids! I wonder how wide rivers are? (starts googling)"
I wish people would drop this. It's an unfortunate incident rooted in a well-meaning comment and I hate seeing this go sideways.
The triple-jump event is literally described as "a hop, skip, and jump." The three bounding motions are done in a sequence without breaking forward momentum, so "triple jump" is an accurate description of the combination, while "hop, skip and jump" is an accurate description of each of the three bounds individually.
So was the secret ingredient... the tiny amount of finely minced fresh onion?
Looking at the final recipe they came up with, that's the only one that seems like you might not guess.
Garlic powder is the only other non-standard ingredient, but I feel like whenever you're looking for the "missing secret ingredient" in a savory dish, garlic powder, onion powder and mustard powder are the first things you'd think of, along with MSG and very occasionally nutmeg or pickles/pickle juice. (While paprika can only be secret in darkly colored dishes, otherwise you can see its specks.)
freshly minced onion does wonders in more than a few recipes, it certainly can add that final kick to tartar sauce if not any recipe with a good creamy base. you don't even need to add much.
I think the point of that quote from the guy is that he realized what it was but he's not ever going to tell. The recipe in the article is the guessed one not the secret one.
I love golf, and I love the Masters! To me, it has always been the unofficial ‘start of spring’. Congrats to Mr. Matsuyama on his victory this year!
What a great story! Notice the prices of the concessions. They are only trying to break even at best, probably lose money. I still haven’t been in person, but these stories are legendary.
This is one of the reasons it is considered the best pro sports event you can attend. Doesn’t matter if your a golf fan or not.
You will enjoy the day walking around one of the most beautiful and pristinely manicured properties in the world. I dare you to find a blade of grass, or needle of pine straw, that is out of place!
You will be treated like you’re worth something. You’re a ‘patron’ gosh darn it! Not just some shlub who scalped a ticket.
Concessions and souvenirs are cheap. Augusta National is not there to gouge you for $12 beers and burgers like every other pro sports event in the world.
They are there to host the greatest golf tournament in the world, and e sure every patron has a fantastic experience. It’s an ethos really. And the their way of doing things has become legendary. Long live The Masters!
true on the concessions, not quite as true on the souvenirs. I got to go to the kids drive-chip-putt competition a few years ago. The branded shirts, blankets, bags, etc all go for quite a premium and people love buying them anyway.
It is a very well put on event though, and it brings an absurd amount of money into the Augusta area. Many businesses make another month of revenue during Masters week and a lot of residents rent out their homes for several times their mortgage payment.
When I was more interested in golf, I used to love watching the Masters on TV. The organizers limit the amount of ads the network can insert so it's much less annoying than regular TV. Very calming and beautiful to look at.
If you can actually get a badge (not tickets) directly from Augusta National (likely via the lottery), it costs $115. If you're a random person trying to buy one on Stubhub, prepare to pay $6000+.
It used to be far, far easier to get in, but demand now is through the roof. At least the lottery means bots don't snap up all the tickets and if you win the tickets are cheap. My grandparents went all the time during the 80s and 90s and we have a closet full of masters hats and chairs as evidence.
If you don't win the lottery there are tour packages where you get guaranteed tickets. Expensive, but not really beyond what superbowl, world series or other really big events can cost.
I was lucky enough to go to the Masters in 1999, and 2014 and the change was remarkable. The 1999 course was very quaint and secluded, with the facilities mostly temporary structures. You parked in peoples front yards for $25 a day, and yes the food was great, yet cheap. Fast forward to 2014 and it's like the place had become a major sports park. Suddenly the houses are gone and you're parking in a huge field, going through metal detectors, large cafeterias, even a hotel has sprung up. What I liked about the 1999 course was how much it wasn't commercialized. In 2014 it felt overly commercialized, but I guess that's how they make money.
Overly commercialized is a strange way to put it. It's certainly the least commercialized of all the major golf tournaments. Daily tickets are the cheapest at $115. Food is incredibly inexpensive. And you can watch at home for free, with probably the best coverage of any tournament, on their website.
This is interesting to hear! They have multiple streams of the tournament on their website, including the TV broadcast, and the fact that they didn't charge for it always felt awesome to me. A few years ago, I was struck by how few commercials there were on the stream, but this year they were much more noticeable.
I wonder where they'll settle as far as commercialization.
Augusta National was purpose-built to host a major golf championship. However, when the USGA rejected the course as a candidate for the US Open due to the summer heat in Georgia, they decided to make their own major instead. They were successful in this because they invited a small field of only the world's most elite golfers, put together one of the largest prize pools in golf, and made the event extremely welcoming to fans. The inexpensive food sold on the grounds is one of the most well-known examples of this last point, but the limited advertising during television/radio broadcasts is another key component of the fan experience that vaulted the Masters to worldwide prestige.
Given that Augusta National is one of the most tradition-oriented places in the world, I doubt they will ever allow their broadcasting partners to significantly increase the volume of commercials. The leadership of Augusta National are firm believers in the adage "don't fix what isn't broken."
And to be frank, if you watched this week's broadcast and thought they showed a lot of commercials, then you haven't watched golf on television this year. I'd estimate the volume of commercials was probably a quarter of that shown for a regular PGA tour event.
I love that Bobby Jones got some of the money to build Augusta National by betting on himself to win all 4 majors in a single year (though at the time the majors were the British Am, the Open, US Open and US Am). Jones remains the only person to ever do that, though Tiger came close when he held all 4 majors at the same time but not in the same calendar year.
I also love that while CBS has broadcast the Masters every year since the mid 50s, it's always on a one year agreement that they re-up each and every year.
I don't love that Augusta has such a history of racism and sexism, but they are at least trying to address it (though they will likely never acknowledge the many, many mistakes of the past). Honouring Lee Elder and making sure new generations of golf fans know about him was a nice guesture this year. It was special to see a Japanese champion don the green jacket 10 years after coming to prominence in world golf due to winning the Asia-Pacific Am, getting a spot in the Masters and being low Am, all Augusta sponsored events to grow the game's inclusivity (though a little rich from one of the most exclusive clubs in the world). The Am event for women is another step in the right direction, but I really want to see the top women in the world tee it up for 4 days with the same kind of coverage the man receive. Augusta has made a lot of positive changes, but they shouldn't get a free pass to ignore some very despicable behaviour, some of it far too recent.
Oh for sure, I know they show way fewer commercials than any other golf broadcast, I was mostly surprised at the increase, because I also got the impression of them being super tradition oriented and I assumed as long as the tournament broke even, they wouldn't do anything else to monetize it.
Also, the Masters phone app is wonderful compared to other sports apps and virtually ad free. (You will see IBM, AT&T logo in the top right, but it is barely noticeable.) You can see every shot, videos, live coverage, interviews. Just a joy to use.
It's happened to greater or lesser degrees with a lot of events. The Head of the Charles (big rowing event in Cambridge MA) is still fairly casual with people watching from bridges and along the rivers. But it's commercialized a lot in the past 20 or 25 years.
There are now a ton of sponsor booths on the Cambridge side of the river. And rather than groups from colleges setting up wherever, they're now in a big roped off area on the Boston side.
Lifecycles vary but that's probably a reasonable description for a lot of events. Certainly, once an event is very corporate there are a lot of forces acting to keep it going long past its sell-by date.
That said, long-lived events can stay volunteer efforts.
It's sad, because it doesn't have to be commercialized. That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable, but someone decided that profits must be made, as opposed to hosting a challenging competition of the sport's top players.
You don't know anything about Augusta National or the Masters. It is most certainly a "challenging competition of the sport's top players," in fact it is likely the most coveted tournament by any pro golfer, and the Green Jacket is recognized worldwide. As far as commercialization, Augusta National could auction TV rights to the highest bidder, but it doesn't. It could sell VIP experiences, or skyboxes, or reserved seating, but it doesn't. It could charge $10 for a sandwich, but it doesn't. It could allow corporations to plaster their name all over the course, but it doesn't. It could sell official merchandise in retail stores or on the internet, but it doesn't. It could allow its TV partners to run the typical allotment of commercials per hour, but it doesn't. It could license its brands (either Augusta National, The Masters, Amen Corner, Unlike Any Other, etc) to golf courses around the world (like TPC) but it doesn't. It could leave amateur golf to the USGA or other organizations, but it doesn't... I could go on.
"That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable"
For better or worse, no it's not. If you tried to have the same event today, it would be flooded with far more people than were there in 1999. Demand has gone up. Some of the mentioned changes are just to accommodate that; for instance, as more people show up, you're going to need more security because the odds of someone needing to be removed go steadily up.
Tickets are probably easier to come by these days (COVID notwithstanding), but it's probably still not "easy" to get them.
Augusta National probably still has a policy [0] that if a spectator misbehaves in some fashion, they will trace the ticket back to the person who first acquired it, and ban them from future ticket sales. This is why you don't hear people yelling "git it!" at the tee or wearing brightly colored wigs [1] during the event - they get dis-invited and escorted off the property.
[0] Mom & Dad used to go back in the 1970's, using borrowed tickets. After he retired he lost his connection for getting them. They always ate the pimento-cheese sandwiches, and loved them.
Would you please stop breaking the HN guidelines with flamewar comments? That's not what this site is for. We've asked you repeatedly and you've still been doing it. We ban such accounts, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this.
Nationalistic and/or ideological battle comments are particularly harmful in the way they degrade the threads.
This is purely rhetorical, as I have no doubt you will never be invited to join. However, my question is whether you believe there is ever a level of change and progress and reconciliation that would allow an organization with a far-from-perfect past, to move forward and embrace current social values? Or does every organization that ever had a history of racism or sexism permanently on your "banned" list? If there is no chance of ever getting on your (and people who think like you) right side, why should organizations make an effort to change?
Is this a common rejoinder? I was struck by the other replies stating the same question.
Regardless, people who are black weren't invited until 1990, people with vaginas weren't invited until 2012, and the founder was rather infamously proud of this and loud-spoken about it. This is hardly a 'how many times do you need them to apologize' situation, in all cases they merely quietly began accepting people, after defending their position until then.
There is no doubt the club has a checkered history, but are there any organizations of historical significance that don't have cases of wrongful exclusion?
Assuming you are American, you are a 'member' of a club that has some history of 'excluding women and minorities' (as is the case with pretty much every country on the planet). Do you plan to renounce your membership? Things change over time, generally for the better.
If you are in the South, pick up a container of Palmetto cheese from the grocery store. That's my favorite pimento cheese. I eat it with Triscuit Thin Crisps.
I have yet to have a "pimento cheese" at a restaurant that was actually any good.
The ingredient list on the sandwich label doesn't leave a lot of room for secret ingredients; it's just cheese (american and swiss), cream, emulsifiers, lactic acid and pimento, plus the white bread and mayonnaise.
Matters of taste are not debatable: they just exist.
There are many gradations of white sandwich bread, though. There is little beneath Wonder Bread, but that space does exist. Above it: some store brands, Pepperidge Farm, and then some ways up, Arnold's Country White (which is itself at the bottom of Arnold's pale offerings: the Italian is a nice step up, and then their Sourdough, while not holding a candle to a fresh-baked loaf from any reasonable establishment, exceeds that by far).
Other parts of the US may have their own challengers at any step of the ladder.
I'm not familiar with Arnold or his various bread varieties, but sourdough is certainly not what I mean when I say "white bread". Neither is French bread, nor challah, nor any other reasonably flavorful bread made with white flour. The sandwiches under discussion are made with Wonder Bread or something much like it. It is that questionable taste that astounds me.
I honestly don’t know what to make of this article. Interesting story of something completely unimportant. There is a recipe for said sandwiches at the end which I will try out.
It's more like source code, but anyway the vendor was presumably under contract which did not include divulging the recipe.
I wonder if they could have sued to recover the recipe as a "work for hire", where typically the employer is the owner of the work product. The law covers "instructional text" which sounds like a recipe to me.
It depends on the nature of the original agreement, whether the recipe was created especially and exclusively for the event, or the vendor developed it on their own time.
In the case of the original sandwich maker, Rangos, clearly not. He was making his pimento cheese and selling it in his store before the Masters ever hired him.
In the case of the second sandwich maker, Godfrey, who replaced Rangos and developed his pimento cheese recipe for the Masters, probably not.
First of all, work for hire concerns who owns the copyright to something and recipes are not subject to copyright.
It is possible, though, that there is some expression in the way that he wrote the recipe that could be copyrighted, so let's say the Masters wants to make a work for hire argument that they own the copyright of that.
To be a work for hire, something must either be (1) made by an employee within the scope of their employment, or (2) fall into one of several categories and be declared a work for hire by the parties in a written instrument signed by them.
It doesn't sound like the pimento cheese provider is an employee of the Masters. He sounds more like a contractor. That would take out #1 of the two ways something could be a work for hire.
As far as #2 goes, first they have to explicitly have said in their signed written contract that the expression of the recipe will be a work for hire. That seems unlikely.
But let us say they did, and let us assume that the particular expression of the recipe counts as an instructional text. Let's say that means that the Masters owns the copyright on that particular expression of the underlying, uncopyrighted, recipe.
So what?
That just means they get to stop people from making and distributing copies of that text. It doesn't give them any power to compel someone who has a copy to turn it (or a copy of it) over to them.
It could even be specific sources of the ingredients that lend to the secret. It's all well and good to get the exact recipe and even detailed instructions, but if the ingredients are sourced from a different place, it won't quite be the same.
Palmetto is no longer available at Costco. Some have attributed it to the founder (and mayor of Pawley's Island) making some less-than-tasteful comments about BLM protests in a neighboring city. I don't know that Costco ever officially confirmed that, though. Source: https://news.yahoo.com/costco-pulls-palmetto-cheese-120-1534...
That's such a delightful description.
When a new building is constructed, he says, it simply appears the day of the tournament’s opening, already inexplicably covered in vines.
(Insert joke about how fast kudzu grows -- This is Georgia, after all.)
The pimento cheese he sold from his store, Woodruff Drug in Aiken, South Carolina, won so many fans across the region that in the 1960s, Masters organizers dropped the husband-and-wife catering team they’d hired since the 1940s to make way for Rangos.
For those not familiar with the area, Augusta is in Georgia and smooshed up against the Georgia-South Carolina state border. Aiken, South Carolina is about 20 miles away, about a thirty minute drive to some parts of Augusta. Augusta is a sprawling city. You can probably drive thirty minutes from point A to point B within Augusta, so reaching out to a unique business in a small town a few miles away is completely reasonable and not some big huge deal, logistically.
Not to take anything away from the small business, just saying that "going to a whole other state!!!" is like tossing a rock across the river in this case, because some river no doubt serves as the demarcation for the state border.