AUGUSTA, Ga. — Airplane rides, Antarctic expeditions and Augusta National are among the few remaining spots in which a cellphone isn’t a viable means of communication. If you’ve ever wondered how much you depend on one, the tournament’s infamous ban annually reintroduces a way of life that feels primitive by comparison.
Want to meet up with a friend? You’ll need to pick a spot before you leave your car.
Want to know how Spieth made a 9? Here’s hoping someone next to you saw it.
Hoping to savor your trip to Amen Corner? You’ll have to draw it from memory later.
So jarring is the Augusta National experience compared to every other sporting event, there is some inevitable clamoring from those who believe the tournament needs to get with the times.
The rest of us? We say we like the respite from ongoing connectivity. Forced to be honest, we’d probably admit life would be easier if we could text and tweet at will.
It turns out the strongest argument against letting modern technology loose at the Masters might come from the most modern of technologies. By asking Microsoft’s Copilot to approximate through artificial images what the Masters would look like with phones, you begin to see how the tournament would lose some of its identity.
The tournament experience would be more convenient.
It would begin to adapt more of the look of any other tournament.
It also would kind of suck.
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
