Fátima Fernández Cano, in addition to being a sensational professional golfer, is a lover of her sport, tries to see everything, takes note, points out details, digests them and all this is accompanied by a budding passion for photography. She has recently started, but she likes it a lot, we could almost say that she is hooked.
Last week, the golfer from Santiago de Compostela had the opportunity to travel to Augusta and be present on two of the practice days of the Masters. It is not the first time she has done this, but she has made her debut as a photographer.
Just when a week has passed since one of the most beautiful Sundays of the year, which ended with the victory of Scottie Scheffler, we ask Fátima if she can give us an analysis of what she saw and how she saw it, through the viewfinder of her camera and her pen. The Galician woman agrees and offers us this other very interesting analysis of the Masters in seven flashes from her particular and non-transferable angle.
1.– Augusta is incredible. No matter how many times they tell you how incredible it is, you go and it’s ten times what you imagine. There is not a leaf, a blade of grass, nothing, out of place. Everything works perfectly. From the food stalls, to the shop. Huge queues that disappear in no time. Pure magic (or heaps of money).
2.– The obsession with merchandising is real. On Tuesday I arrived at the course at seven in the morning and there was almost no parking. The queue to access the shop reached almost the entrance. That’s about the size of the practice field. And people wait for it, and people buy the garden gnomes (or to sell them on eBay, who knows), but inside it’s like an amusement park. You can’t leave without the cap or the polo shirt, for you and all your mates.
3.– The slopes. Once again, no matter how many times they tell me: on TV you can’t see the slopes compared to what it is (the same with the greens). They are right. Starting with hole 1 as soon as you enter, or the exit of 10 (there you understand the draw they have to hit and the drop it has), or 9, how elevated the green is and the runoffs that unfold. For example, live you can see very well how complicated Morikawa’s bunker shot was on Sunday, when he tries to push too hard and it stays in the bunker again. I love having seen how complicated the shots are in person to then appreciate them better on TV.
4.– Tiger still has something. No matter what he does on the weekend. Many people are left with the fact that he makes the cut and thus gives a bit of hope that he is going to win again (many doubts but with him who knows…). Seeing him in person is also spectacular. I was lucky enough to be very close to him on the 9th tee, about three metres away and he gives off something that no one else has. The crowd he attracts (among whom I have to include myself) in a training round is amazing.
5.– People in Augusta are happy. Yes, I understand that in general, if you spend a Monday or Tuesday on the golf course instead of being in the office then you are going to be happy. But here there is something different in my opinion. I don’t know if it’s the absence of mobile phones that makes you be there in the moment and more present or what it will be, but people have a special mood, they talk more, they relate more.
6.– Scottie is unstoppable and with pressure the second nine holes on Sunday are very good. The shots he hits in the second nine on Sunday are spectacular. Not just the number of greens in regulation he gets (which if I’m not mistaken he wasn’t among the top ten of the Masters), but his statistics in terms of proximity to the flag… or how well he generally fails… or how easy he makes the short game… Many of us were hoping that the only way he wouldn’t dress in green on Sunday was if the baby decided to arrive early.
7.– Olazábal is incredible. There is not much more that can be said.
