THey, say bats come out during an eclipse, and owls too. Hippos have been seen heading to their nighttime feeding grounds, bees flying back to their hives and refusing to come out until the sun comes out again, crickets starting to chirp, mosquitoes coming out for the evening, spiders pulling down their webs around them to protect from the nightly dew. The last time a solar eclipse occurred around these areas, scientists working at the Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina noticed that the gibbons started barking and a few Galapagos tortoises immediately began mating with each other.
During this event, wildlife in and around Augusta National also behaved unusually. New behaviors included customers gathering out of the shade and craning their necks to gaze up at the blue spring sky. There were also sudden and repeated oaths, sighs and other unusual statements. “OH MY GOD! IT HAPPENED!” shouted a man in the stands at Amen Corner as the moon took its first little bite from the bottom corner of the sun.
“Ninety minutes until the end of the world,” said someone else, sitting a few rows behind him. “Well,” said his deadpan friend, “I can think of worse ways to spend the money.”
There had been dire warnings. Republican floater Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th District, on the other side of the state, had warned X: “God is sending America strong signs to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things will happen.” Outside the golf course, a pickup truck drove around the parking lot with a sign on its roof warning, “God sends national disasters to punish national sins.” Well, the finishing times turned out to be a good time at Augusta National. “I timed it pretty well, right?” said Brian Harman, who was just coming around the bend as the eclipse began, “to see the end of the world at Augusta National.”
The club had provided everyone present with their own sunglasses. They were of course colored green, provided with the well-known yellow logo and on the inside it said ‘Created exclusive for the Masters Tournament’. It turned Monday’s practice session into one of the bigger viewing parties in the US. By midday, the club appeared to be one of the few places in the city where protective eyewear was still available. Messages circulated on social media asking if anyone knew of a store that still had stock. There were rumors that the Circle K on the west side of the city still had some available.
By noon, even Augusta National came up short. Camillo Villegas, Vijay Singh and Emiliano Grillo, all watching together from the oak tree in front of the clubhouse, had to borrow their glasses from some spectators, who made sure to ask for them back afterwards. “I will absolutely keep my pair for the rest of my life,” said Will Zalatoris, “these will be some collectibles that will stay in my office forever.”
The only disappointment was that the club had failed to arrange matters so that the center line of the eclipse passed directly overhead. Given the way they do things around here, you wondered if perhaps the chairman, Fred Ridley, had simply arranged it so that the sun could take a short detour south. As it was, Augusta was 400 miles away from the whole thing. At zenith, at 3:08 p.m., just over three-quarters of the sun was covered. The air turned chilly and the light became so hazy that the club decided to flip the switch on the driving range floodlights, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Sahith Theegala, who watched from the green at age 18, said it was so blurry it hurt his eyes to play in the light: “It was pretty wild.” And for those few moments, everyone stood still: the patrons, the stewards, the guards, the officials, the players, the caddies, the journalists, cameramen, photographers and TV presenters. It was, whisper it, a beautiful moment.
No one here was old enough to remember the last time there was a solar eclipse during Masters week. That was in 1940, when it fell at 5 p.m. Sunday, just as Jimmy Demaret arrived around the back nine. It made for a tough day, with no one breaking 70, but Demaret completed his final round at one under par, with a solitary birdie on 15, to win by four from Lloyd Mangrum.
And no one here was young enough to be alive the next time there’s anything close to a total solar eclipse here during Masters Week.