Eat that pimento cheese sandwich, and say Amen

06 April 2016 - 02:14 By Archie Henderson

They're holding the Masters at Augusta - again!It's like always having the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, the Grand National at Aintree, the FA Cup Final at Wembley, the Boat Race on the Thames, or the national jukskei championships in Kroonstad.All a bit selfish.Why doesn't Newlands ever get the chance to stage the jukskei; there's enough sand?But some things never change, like Amen Corner and the pimento cheese sandwich, two of the most challenging ingredients at Augusta National.Amen Corner, so named by the sportswriter Herbert Warren Wind, begins with the second shot on the 11th hole and ends with the tee shot on the 13th, where many Masters have been won or lost. Australian golfer Jason Day, one of the favourites this year, said of that stretch: "You pray to get around it without running into disaster." Amen to that.There's a now-long-forgotten Otto's Corner at Newlands (where the grandstand meets the Craven Stand), where the WP wing Otto van Niekerk used to score many tries, including one that clinched the 1947 Currie Cup final. But that is another story.It's Herb Wind and the pimento cheese sandwich that I want to talk about today. I'd not heard of the former until last year about this time, when enlightened by Karen Crouse of the New York Times, and I'm not allowed the latter, although the ham sandwich they used to sell under the Oaks at Newlands many years ago must come close.Wind, who died in 2005, was not your average jock journalist; he was an artist. When he worked for Sports Illustrated, he found the turnaround time too strenuous at a weekly and joined The New Yorker, which gave him a month to craft a story that would cover 14 pages. One quotation alone (from his friend Ben Crenshaw, a two-time Masters champion) ran to 355 words. Today we joke that your average hack doesn't even know that many words.Wind played rugby at Cambridge and wrote about it more than golf, although, in Crouse's words, he "coaxed a timeless golf instructional book out of Ben Hogan, served as Jack Nicklaus's literary caddie and wrote The Story of American Golf, which is part encyclopaedia, part essay and wholly Herbert".So, for those insomniacs who will be following the Masters over the next four nights from tomorrow, you'll hear the TV people talk often of Amen Corner, and you'll know it's Herbert's.As for the pimento (a cherry pepper, really) cheese sandwich, it's said to be one of the "experiences" of watching golf at Augusta, along with the azaleas in their various hues of pink, red, lavender, the white and pink dogwood, indigenous honeysuckle in shades of orange and the pine trees, many of which are almost 30m tall.The caterers at Augusta, a precious bunch, won't divulge how they prepare the sandwich, but how secret can processed cheese on white bread be?The sarmie is said to be "iconic" at the Masters, but it seems more symbolic. No black player took part in the tournament until Lee Elder in 1975, the year that Nicklaus won the second-last of his five titles. Only since 1982 have the players been allowed to bring their regular tour caddies. Until then all the caddies in the tournament were black. Perhaps some things do change, and for the better, even if Augusta is still sticking to its white bread...

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