Masters Is Absolutely Not the Time to Test Your Best 'Get in the Hole' Shout

You thought you would go to Augusta, load up on the cheap eats and inexpensive beer before heading out with the rest of fans to line the tee box. That's when you were going to yell "Get in the hole" and leave chuckling. 

Well, don't. 

Yahoo! Sports' Jay Busbee witnessed firsthand what kind of stern vigilance Augusta officials are using against would-be miscreants. 

It seems Busbee was hanging around the 17th hole on Thursday to see Tiger Woodstee off, only to hear a very familiar call from the relatively respectable crowd. "Get in the hole!"

That's when all hell broke loose, at least how it can at the Masters: in a very reserved and sensible manner. 

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Before the second word was out, the Augusta National security team — well, security pair — shadowing Woods was snapping into action. A guard in white shirt and black slacks, earpiece crackling, and a supervisor in well-pressed khakis began craning their necks, trying to see along the rope line for who would have dared lift their leg on Augusta National's decorum.

Kind of sounds like teachers trying to figure out which wiseacre student shouted something awful at a school assembly. 

Busbee later asked a security guard about the anonymous shouter who would dare violate Augusta with such shtick. 

"You see who it was?" the supervisor said, in that kind of Southern-cop hint-of-menace voice that made it sound like this could go very well or very poorly for me, depending on what I said next.

"I didn't. But you'll take his badge, right?"

"Oh, yeah," the guard said, with more than a hint of anticipation, and resumed scanning the crowd. This time, alas, the screamer escaped to yell again. But if he did lose his badge, he wouldn't just lose it for this afternoon. He'd lose it for this year, and every year afterward, forever and ever, amen.

I am not quite sure if the golf reporter indeed confirmed that yelling "Get in the hole" would warrant a lifetime ban from Augusta, but it sure sounds like it. 

Like Busbee, I agree that the familiar crowd call jumped the shark roughly a decade ago. If I am pressed, I would have to say my favorite is the "Mashed potatoes" cry that brings a smile to my face when I am fatigued and don't know any better. 

Still, shouting any of the usual cries is just, for lack of a better word, lame. These are the people that go around quoting Dane Cook jokes from the 90s. 

Unless you are yelling something new and inventive, just keep quiet. In fact, take another bite of those super-cheap delicacies at the Masters. 

Sure, the calories will go straight to your hips, but they won't get you axed from one of the best sports locales around. 

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