Aiken resident ends long career at Masters scoring center

When the final putt dropped Sunday in the 77th Masters Tournament, Berry Crain’s long career in Scoring Control ended with it.

Crain, who lives in Aiken, wrapped up 40 years of working in scoring at the tournament.

“We’ve had some fun,” said Crain, who oversees Scoring Control, located on the second floor of the Media Center.

The biggest change he’s seen in scoring is when it became computerized in 1987.

It wasn’t a smooth transition, at least not in its debut.

“The program ran on the club computer that they did all the bookkeeping with,” Crain said. “We were going great with that. Then about noon that first day after the whole golf course got full of players, they decided to start entering charges up in the Trophy Room (in the clubhouse).”

“The computer got slower and slower and all of a sudden scores are coming in faster than we can enter them,” Crain said. “It took a little while to figure out what was causing it. They went up and asked them to stop for a while and let us catch up. By that time, we were like 45 minutes behind and had this pile of scores written down that we had to enter in the computer. It took a little while, but we finally got it going again.”

In typical Augusta National fashion, the problem was solved by the next morning.

“Overnight, another computer showed up for us to do scoring on,” he said. “So we were good to go for the rest of that tournament.”

One of Crain’s favorite stories involves then-Augusta National and Masters Chairman Clifford Roberts. It has to do with the leaderboards around the course, where the names and numbers are changed by hand.

At the start of the first round of each Masters, the top two names on the board are always the defending Masters champion followed by the U.S. Amateur champion. They are followed by the U.S. Open champion, British Open champion, PGA Championship winner and the British Amateur champion, but not always in that order. For those four names, their slots are determined by their starting times, with the earliest ones going first to create a diagonal effect on the leaderboard.

“This goes back to a number of years ago,” Crain said. “I don’t know if I was on the committee or I heard the story. But one year Jack Nicklaus was the defending champion and went out something like bogey, bogey, bogey and double bogey. After about five or six holes, they said it was kind of embarrassing and we need to probably take him down. So they took him down. Not too much later, Mr. Roberts called and said, ‘Who told ya’ll to take Jack Nicklaus down?’ They said, ‘Well, he’s playing bad.’ He said, ‘I’m making a rule right now: the defending champion will stay on the board for at least nine holes; I don’t care if he shoots 100.’ So that’s been the rule.”

Crain, now 71, was a top amateur in his day, playing out of Aiken’s Palmetto Golf Club. He plays golf left-handed, so one of his favorite Masters participants is three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson, who is a lefty.

“One the most exciting Masters to me was when Phil won and hit that shot from behind that tree on 13 to win (in 2010),” Crain said. “I’m a Phil fan. That was fun to watch. He can do some funny things both ways. He can drive it off the world or he can play a shot you wouldn’t believe anybody would be able to play.”

Because of his length of service at the Masters at the time of his retirement – and his age – Crain will be allowed to buy two series badges starting in 2014.

“So I’ll be back next year – out there (as a spectator),” Crain said.

“I’m sure I’ll miss it, but I’ve missed watching golf for a long time,” he said. “Typically, I watch a shot or two on No. 1 but that’s about it.”