Jim Nantz' Pretentious Masters Opening is the Highlight of My Year

You know why today is a special day?  Because this afternoon at 2 we get to see my absolute favorite 2:30 of the sports calendar: Jim Nantz Masters Sunday Opening Montage.  It truly is A Tradition Unlike Any Other.  It’s that moment every year where any notion that CBS is about to show us a golf tournament goes out the window and is replaced with purple prose, mysticism, idolatry and the worst kind of pretentious, freshman level poetry.  It’s when Nantz wants us to forget that we’ve spent the last eight months grabassing Phil Simms and Clark Kellogg and reading promos for bad sitcoms (“What happens when Alan comes home to find Walden in bed with… Miley Cyrus?! Find out on an all new “Two and a Half Men…”) and all of a sudden tries to convince us he’s Kalil fucking Gibran.  And I love every second of it.  The tinkly piano music.  The old sepia footage of Bobby Jones swinging a mashee.  The goosebump-inducing highlights of champions celebrating.  And most of all, Jim Nantz’ soaring rhetoric.  The dogwoods and azaleas.  The ghost echoing through the pines at Amen Corner.  The shameless hagiography of everyone who’s ever played in the Masters.  And his over-the-top worship of the sacred, hallowed ground that is Augusta National.  Seriously, I could listen to it all year long, but all I get is a couple of minutes on a Sunday in April, so I have to make the most of it.

On that note, here’s my Jim Nantz Masters Opening Bingo card.  You can make your own, but I promise you, no one’s beating mine:

@JerryThornton1