Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

I’ve taken a big first step for all of us, I hope. It isn’t an original thought on my part. Others have suggested doing this. I simply took it up a notch.

I mailed a letter to the Chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club suggesting that they credential a golf blogger for the Masters each year. I also decided I could make the sacrifice and be first. In fairness, I explained that the blogger attending should be someone different each year to keep the experience fresh. My goal, as I explained to the Chairman, is to present the tournament to readers as a vicarious visit to the grounds, with all the wide-eyed wonder of a first-time patron rather than as a typical sportswriter who knows all the players and has walked the course many times in the past.

A wonderful touch to your already-impressive web site would be real-time coverage on the internet. We already have coverage, with minimal commercial interruption, on television. But while the networks cover the leaders and extraordinary shots repetitively, it becomes like a vapor and diminishes with time. The written word does not. And someone coming late to the telecast misses something. Newspapers and magazines bring us the story–after it is done. I would like to be the first to change that by live-blogging the 2006 Masters Tournament.

I don’t know that I’ll even get a response, but I mentioned it to Jay Flemma, and he believes it can’t do anything but improve our opportunities in the future.

So, that becomes something of a challenge to you all. If there is a tour event in your neck of the woods, see if the organizers are willing to give you press credentials and allow you to wander to course with a notebook computer and wireless access. Maybe we can turn this into a regular feature of the Tour. Contact me via email, and I’ll provide you the text of my letter to Augusta as a template for your own request. If we build a network of golf bloggers and share experiences in both writing for permission and how we cover and blog a tournament we can enjoy up-close access and provide our readers with an experience unique in sports.

And we’d compete each year for the Majors!