Tea-Time at the Masters

By Katey Rich

It’s a tradition unlike any other,” as the CBS broadcast will tell you endlessly the first week in April. But for Aikenites who grew up around The Masters, “tradition” doesn’t really even begin to cover it. 

Maybe it’s something you notice best when you’re far away. In the years I lived in New York City, The Masters broadcast was like a portal back home. The azaleas and the birdsong, the green grass and the tall pine trees—all of it was what April ought to feel like, not the chill that would still be lingering in the Northeast. Even in the years when I wasn’t all that invested in the outcome, watching Masters Sunday was an annual duty, a reminder of the place that would always be home. 

With all due respect to the golfers who dream of winning the green jacket, or the fans—excuse me, “patrons” — who spend a fortune to walk inside the Augusta National, The Masters is only partly about the actual sport of golf. It’s true when you’re inside the gates, waiting in line for $1.50 pimento cheese sandwiches or stirring up the kind of conversations with strangers you can only have when everybody has been forced to come without their phones. It’s harder to notice but maybe even more true when you’re not even there, and the excitement of an event this big seems to permeate the air even on our side of the Savannah River. 

My Masters traditions have changed over the years, of course, and go back to before I was even born. Having moved to Aiken in the 1950s and 60s, when you could go to Aiken Drug downtown and get Masters tickets, my grandparents and great aunts and uncles had the kind of access to the event that people pay thousands of dollars for today. Tickets were passed around the family so that even the kids could have a chance to attend, and everyone in the family has a story about how it used to be—how you could see Berckmans Road from the 8th green, how constructed grandstands used to be empty hills. My mom still likes to tell my sister about how she stood on a rickety folding chair while pregnant with her to catch a glimpse of Larry Mize’s winning putt. 

With Aiken’s school spring breaks carefully timed to Masters week, there’s a hush that descends on the town whether or not you’re going anywhere near the golf course. There are brief part-time jobs to be found everywhere, local golf courses suddenly open to the flood of visitors and of course the unmissable fleet of private jets at the Aiken Regional Airport, all streaking away overhead each night. It’s strange to imagine all these people encountering Aiken for just a few hours, a stopover on their way to the real event. It’s also kind of fun to realize that for all their wealth, they have no idea what they’re missing. 

When I talk to friends who aren’t from Aiken about the deep connection I feel for The Masters, it’s a little hard to capture how such an exclusive event can feel like it belongs to all of us. For help, I usually turn to Tea-Time at the Masters. 

A cookbook first published by the Junior League of Augusta in 1977, Tea-Time at the Masters was a staple of my childhood and as the book itself puts it, “an absolute must for the serious collector of cookbooks, as well as the avid golfer who views the kitchen strictly as the nineteenth hole.” Reprinted 19 times since that original run of 10,000 copies, the book is a time capsule of recipes that can be glaringly old-fashioned but more often completely timeless. 

The cookbook boasts recipes submitted by the wives of past Masters champions—I’ve made the zucchini bread recipe from Mrs. Arnold Palmer, it’s delicious—as well as members of Augusta’s Junior League each of them brimming with personality. I don’t need to know who Lillian is to marvel over the quality of her lime tarts recipe, though I’d love to meet the person who came up with “Velvet Hammer” as the name for a cocktail that contains vanilla ice cream and brandy. 

Many of the most famous names in the book seem to be boasting their signature recipes—Mrs. Henry G. Picard, wife of the 1939 Masters champion, submitted a seafood casserole that calls for two pounds of shrimp and crab. Others seem to prefer simplicity that speaks for itself; First Lady Mamie Eisenhower offers a pastry recipe that includes just four ingredients, two of them salt and water. 

There’s not a pimento cheese or ham and swiss recipe in the book; the only thing you can find that’s also sold at Masters concessions stand is cheese straws. But the “tradition” that The Masters broadcast talks about so often is much more present in this cookbook than in the golf game. It’s a cookbook that transports you directly back to the era of my grandparents, to when Aiken’s population was booming and the golf tournament, just over the river, was still something nearly everyone could find a way to visit. 

I won’t be at The Masters in person this year, but I’ll certainly be watching, letting the sound of the birds and the glimpses of the azaleas on TV conjure up that same homesickness— and making Mrs. Arnold Palmer’s zucchini bread to go with it.