Shopping At Augusta National – Austin’s Daily Commentary

Austin: Monday was a great day at Augusta National for three of the Rhodes family. That's right, my wife, my son and myself had a great day out at the tournament. I did a lot of work, no doubt, but, my wife and I went out bright and early Monday morning, and I did something that I have never done in over 50 years of attending the Masters golf tournament, and that is wait in line over an hour to get into the pro shop.

That's right. My wife and I went to the backside pro shop near number 16, behind number 16. Over an hour in line, almost an hour and a half in line. And it was a great shopping experience. Didn't have all that we wanted. The gnomes were not in stock when we made our way in, but I call it an unusual day for me.

As someone who has a press credential at Augusta National, I would always spend very limited time in the pro shop shopping, but I would always wait until there was no line. In other words, I don't have the time nor the inclination to stand in line, and that kind of drove me a little bit batty Monday doing it. I did it with my wife. It was before I had to work, so I had the time to do it.

But the bottom line, while we're in line, my wife is looking at her ticket and she's looking at all these people. And she said, why don't they have us assigned shopping time periods? And said, well, how would that work? She said, color code the tickets. Gold, brown, blue, green, whatever it happens to be. Certain time shop, certain colors shop at certain times.

And I said, what if there's a rain delay or there's a, you know, something like that. She said, well, you know, at that point you have to go back to the old system.But how about under perfect conditions when the weather is good, you have color coded, assigned shopping times, and hey, you can get right in when it's your time to shop. And if it's not your time to shop, you can either get in the regular line or, you know, skip it, whatever it happens to be.

Great idea. Wow. How about that? She came up with the idea, comparing it to the situation of riding rides at Disney World. They give you an assigned time if you sign up for the ride program, and that way you don't have to wait quite as long in line and everybody's happy. You can spend the rest of the day doing whatever you want to do and not wasting your time in line.

You Augusta National folks. I'll give you Mrs. Rhodes contact information. I think she can make a great experience even better. Listen up. She can help you. And that's the comment, I'm Austin Rhodes, News Talk WGAC.