Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.
- Lamentations 1:5
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
- Matthew 6:24
I was exhausted from recent medical procedures, and maybe I had developed a little laziness.
But with neither of my parents ever having touched a golf club, it was a family tradition to watch the Masters. Maybe they would stomach having the Open Championship in Great Britain on the television, or maybe Pebble Beach, but the rest of the year it was more interesting to watch paint dry, or so my parents thought.
My wife got into the Masters, but she would have hated the coverage. If it were not for the “azalea cam”, where the bottom third of the picture were azaleas, you would not have known that the tournament was being played in Augusta, GA. And the azalea cam was for less than a minute total, or so it seemed. The photo above has more azaleas than the entirety of the Saturday and Sunday broadcasts, or so it seems.
My wife and I lived in South Carolina, just across the river from Augusta, GA for ten years. We could never get tickets, but we watched the coverage on television. During those years, we saw Jack Nicklaus, a local favorite, win his last. Having just moved back not long before from Germany, we saw Bernhard Langer win his first. And my wife having lived in El Paso, Texas, we rooted for Lee Trevino who never won the Masters, his missing link to the career Grand Slam. And we loved seeing the azaleas.
But yesterday, the golf stories were interesting.
Rory McElroy won the tournament, becoming only the sixth person in the current definition of the Golfing Grand Slam to complete the feat for someone’s career, the first since Tiger Woods 25 years ago. And McElroy took the longest after having won three of the four tournaments eleven years ago. Nicklaus and Player got their Career Grand Slams on the third try, McElroy on his eleventh. Everyone else? On their first try. The emotions were running high which led to a lot of mistakes.
Justin Rose would have been the oldest to win his first masters, but he lost in a playoff.
Bryson DeChambeau had made slurs against the Masters several years ago. He apologized and has cleaned up his act since then, but he fell apart late.
Others were not far behind, each having a story behind their attempt at winning the honor of wearing a green jacket.
Maybe the green jacket is McElroy’s color. He is from Northern Ireland.
There are not many references to “masters” in the Bible, usually slave masters or servants being obedient to their masters, but this was just a quick note.
With all the times the Bible talks of not being arrogant (and it seemed McElroy was humbled by the experience), being the “Master” of anything is dangerous ground.
Now to get back into the groove of writing…
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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