Mysterious limbs, trees without birds… and a line for John Daly at Hooters. Augusta is wonderful, funny and very strange.

John Daly is back in Augusta and the local Hooters are happy to have him. We know this because a sign outside his restaurant on Washington Road, about a mile from a very different type of establishment, bears a message: Meet John Daly here all week. And that’s precisely what people do: line up around the corner until they meet their huffing and puffing master of chaos.

But a year ago it seemed a little less welcome. Some of us had gone to make the annual inquiries into the wildest parts of golf and he was nowhere to be seen in the place he had frequented for 26 years.

The table where he sells his autographs and equipment was gone. The motorhome in the parking lot was no longer there. Her Marlboro packs and his Diet Cokes disappeared. So what happened? What had scared off the 57-year-old two-time major winner, whose presence on this strip had become as familiar as the monuments to artifice ahead?

Well, there was sort of a response to that from a waitress. “Choiceless behavior,” she said, and those two words joined with a few others to provoke a variety of curiosities.

The mind boggles, but then there’s a bit of that around here, in this enclave of strange and wonderful contradictions and sensory contortions.

It is a place where the most exclusive golf club in the world is located and one in five inhabitants lives in poverty. A place where a black golfer has been its biggest draw for almost 30 years and where the first black member was not accepted until 1990.

A place where a one-legged Tiger Woods can waltz into the weekend and a fully fit Rory McIlroy can sing a life-or-death tango with the cut. A place where some legends of the game celebrate the Masters opening ceremony and a different kind of star was temporarily excluded from Hooters.

Those thoughts may echo clumsily in your mind, like a McIlroy record bouncing from branch to branch along perfectly ordered rows of pine trees. You may love it, as I do, but you may also surprise yourself by asking yourself a question: where the hell are the squirrels and birds?

That has become a strange fixation in my mind over the past week, just as it did this time last year. One of the charming buggy drivers who ferry the media from the sport’s most opulent media center to the manicured golf course because they don’t want us to walk backstage, or maybe they just don’t want us to, says who saw one on Tuesday. She’s been doing that job for a few years and she’s asking the same question I am. “I didn’t see any squirrels last year, but they’re pretty strict about having a badge,” she said, and that was fun.

It’s all fun. The sport is fun, the sense of history around younger golf is fun, the environment is wonderfully fun. The quaint white clubhouse is fun and, surprisingly, we as journalists can go in there, if you allow yourself to chat a little about business.

Some colleagues with more privilege than me regularly wonder if that particular privilege will one day be revoked. If the green jackets end up saying no and they will lower the shutters, as has become the norm in so many sports. But that hasn’t happened yet.

And then you go in, past the fireplace on the right, where a former reporter a few years ago was taking a nap, and up the narrow staircase on the left, where I once passed Jack Nicklaus on my way to the surprisingly small room where they celebrated. the Champions Dinner on Tuesdays and always. This way you get to the balcony and the best view of the city. On Friday, I had coffee there and watched the most polite form of chaos below as Woods walked out the same front door and headed to the first tee. Again, a privilege.

To my left this time last year was Sir Nick Faldo; To my left on Friday was one of the older members, a business-like guy, but you think twice before striking up a conversation with some of those august guys from Augusta National. That could be the invasion that breaks the agreement. That could be the trigger for the drawbridge.

Because this is the thing about the clubhouse: it has one door open and one door closed at the same time. You can get in but you won’t get much out. They won’t tell us who is among their roughly 300 members, but we know it includes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. And we know of at least one former American president in the history of him: Dwight D. Eisenhower. As we know, one sticking point in the trivial business of golf course mergers is that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi wealth fund and a man for whom heads of state will approve an agenda, has yet to gain entry. .

We also know they probably didn’t want us to know too much about last year’s falling trees that nearly hit some customers. Or knowing where the squirrels go. Or knowing how much green paint is used to correct imperfections. Or to discuss the suggestion that hidden speakers play simulations of birdsong in trees. Or to explain why some get green jacket clearance (through a system some have assumed involves some sort of identification device and our passes) to ask questions at a press conference and others don’t. On that note, at least half a dozen wanted to ask about Woods’ recent golf meeting with Al-Rumayyan, and that whole controversial LIV merger deal, and curiously none of them made it.

Few things, actually, in a place where utopia is very well preserved. In a place that can provoke the idea that it exists under a glorious dome painted in the colors of a perfect blue sky and that occasionally introduces a gale for fun. A place where you would rather be inside than outside.

And it’s all wonderfully fun. But would it be a form of involuntary behavior to ask why the wonderful can also seem a little strange?

Let Woods move on

There were many who wanted to see Tiger Woods retire when he limped out of the Masters seven holes into his third round last year.

We heard the same argument around Andy Murray and we could soon have something similar with Ronnie O’Sullivan if the world championship doesn’t go his way next week.

It’s selfishness coming from a good place and our desire to preserve heroes in a state closer to their greater form. It’s also silly and counterproductive: Watching Woods use his brains instead of his diminished strength to make the cut this week was as encouraging as some of his best wins with two good legs. Let them move on.

Kane and Haaland should be treasured

Harry Kane scored his 39th goal of the season for Bayern Munich against Arsenal in midweek.

Meanwhile, Erling Haaland was blanked for the fourth time in five games, making for a minor drama that overlooks the fact that he scored 21 in the previous 20.

Kane is a better all-around player; Haaland is becoming one of the biggest sports killers of all time and is giving peace a brief chance.

Using one to hit the other feels an awful lot like a distraction when you can just sit back and treasure watching them both.