Bryson DeChambeau is leading the Masters with a first-round 65. About him I do not give a damn. He’s built like a middle linebacker and hits the ball just that violently. His swing, looks like he’s splitting rails inside a porta-potty.

But that’s not the problem.

The problem is That De Chambeau plays on the LIV Tour, sponsored by, among others, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who is prone to having his political opponents whacked and who believes, bless his heart, in the moral instruction conferred by public beheadings.

So I’m rooting for the guy in second place, Scottie Scheffler. I might even root for the ghost of Gene Sarazen. This guy:

In 1935, Sarazen, was very unlike Bryson DeChambeau. Sarazen’s legs, in his plus-fours, looked like toothpicks. He was playing in his first Masters. His partner was Walter Hagen, the suave party boy who urged Sarazen, as they marched down the 15th fairway, to hurry up for his second shot. Hagen had dinner to get to. There would be Martinis and honey-baked ham and smoked oysters. That was where he was headed, maybe in a yellow Stutz-Bearcat convertible.

Sarazen was diplomatically ignoring Hagen. He instead haggled with his caddie, invariably, back then, a Black man. The caddy, in the convention of the time, referred to Sarazen as “Mr. Gene.” They were debating which club to use. Sarazen thought he’d need a brassie, a 2-wood, a club that is today obsolete.

The holes at Augusta have nicknames. The fifteenth is called “Firethorn.” Sarazen’s caddy had a nickname, too, in the days when Black Americans were meant to be invisible. They called him Stovepipe.

No, Mr. Gene, Stovepipe must’ve said. A brassie is too much club, sir.

As Hagen lit another cigarette, Sarazen took his caddie’s advice. Stovepipe handed him a spoon–the modern equivalent of a 4-wood–and then Sarazen hit his shot. It must’ve felt good, but Sarazen didn’t know how good it was until he approached the 15th green and saw the crowd–that would be about twenty-five people, back in 1935–jumping up and down. Then he heard them hollering.

He didn’t know just yet why they were hollering, but among the golfers who did know, because they saw Sarazen hit the fairway wood, were Bobby Jones—the closest, outside Hobie Baker and Brad Pitt, that we Americans have ever come to blonde Adonis–Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan.

The spoon traveled 215 yards in the air, rolled another twenty, and dropped into the cup.

That’s a replica of the club Sarazen hit, thanks to Stovepipe. The ball is the original.

That did not win the comparatively elderly Masters rookie–Sarazen was 33–the tournament. It took him another day and 36 holes to break the tie with Craig Wood, who’d been three shots ahead going into the 15^th hole.

But the newspapers had already labeled Sarazen’s spoon at the 15th “the shot heard ’round the world.”

When I was a little boy, I used to watch Sarazen, as a commentator, on Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf, and I was charmed by both his knowledge of the game and the grace of his manners. I am sure the same things could be said about Stovepipe..

Call me old-fashioned. I don’t mind. But I’m not so old-fashioned as to wonder what became of Stovepipe, the man who made this moment possible. I hope to somehow find him someday and find out what his life was like after the 15th hole.