Please, please, please, let me get what I want - to watch some golf

TV VIEW:DAY TWO of watching the Masters but not watching the Masters (because the all-powerful blazers who run the Masters don't feel you should be allowed to watch very much of the Masters at all) began on Masters.com.

Day two was going to be a tough day because it was the one where Rory McIlroy had a morning tee-time. On Good Friday. When no half-interested golf watcher in the land had work to be at and would have happily kicked back for the late afternoon to see if our boy could make a burst at this thing.

But no. Just as McIlroy was inching his way bit by little bit up the leaderboard, we had no choice but to keep hitting F5 on the keyboard to update the leaderboard on the website. It’s the modern day equivalent of spending a Saturday afternoon on Ceefax page 316 to keep track of the English soccer scores. In two-thousand-and-flipping-twelve!

You can pay for everything these days as a sports fan. Damn near everything anyway. Okay, in England they still won’t broadcast a Premier League match at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon but that’s only to stop people saying to hell with it and staying at home rather than going to the actual games.

Augusta doesn’t have that concern. Quite the opposite, actually. In Augusta, believe it or not, they let fewer people in through the gate during the tournament than on the practice days. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they have anything up to 50,000 paying customers on the grounds but once the real action begins, they slash it in half. Can’t have the riff-raff scuffing up the place, you see. And still they won’t let you see anything more than three hours of play on TV, without even the option of paying through the nose to watch the full day’s play. You’d hate them for it if the whole thing wasn’t so bewitching once it came on.

By the time we got to see him, Rory was just two back. First glimpse – a missed put on 12. Next glimpse – birdie on 13. And then another on 15.

Meanwhile, Lee Westwood was double-bogeying the last. And Sergio Garcia was holing everything, and Tiger was stitching two birdies into his first three holes and Mickelson was picking up three shots on four holes on the back nine and, and, and . . . See, Augusta? That wasn’t so hard, was it? This was all within 25 minutes of the damn coverage starting.

Freddie Couples strolled to the top of the leaderboard like he does every year and Bubba Watson reeled off a few tap-in birdies and all of a sudden you were glued to the screen, not moving for anyone or anything. Which, of course, is how they get away with it all. It’s how they can stop women becoming members of Augusta National and still be sure that the world will still turn up on their doorstep in the second week of April every year. Oh sure, they’ll take some heat from the media but will we walk away?

Not a hope. We know we’re complicit but we know also that we’ll probably never stop watching. Especially when it’s this compelling.

Rocking an indie band beard, Sergio fired into the crowd to the left of the 18th green like a riot cop gone postal. Five minutes later, Rory did the same. Couples and Jason Dufner got into the house just as the day started to get long. Nobody but Freddie was looking particularly happy with their lot.

“There are some holes here I don’t really like,” said Sergio afterwards. “I just like to get away from them as quickly as possible.” Good feeling for the weekend then? “I don’t know. I’m just going to play. I wish I could see the future.” The future, Sergio? You’ll be lucky. This is the Masters – most of us would be delighted if we could only see some golf.