The Masters Tournament is eternal.

What happens here this week seems as intrinsically tied with what happened 73 years ago as it will be 100 and 200 years from now.

That's the magic of this golf tournament and this place. It makes you feel like you're part of something forever.

That's what makes covering the Masters Tournament simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest things a journalist will ever do. Writers are always searching for the perfect word. But when it comes to describing one of the most hallowed events in sport, words can't do it justice.

For 10 years - a pittance compared with the 14 writers being honored this week for covering from 40 to 58 Masters - I've been trying to convey the meaning of the Masters to newspaper readers. Words such as tradition and history and beauty and mystique have all been thrown into the mix to try to relate what happens here every April. Critics have lobbed harsher terms, but those never seem to stick.

After all the effort, the best term is appropriately borrowed from antiquity. Rome is the "eternal city." The Masters is the eternal tournament. Augusta National Golf Club won't fall into ruin anytime soon.

History isn't just made here every year, it lives here. It's reborn each spring with the blooming of the azaleas. It's relived over dinner and cocktails by the past champions. It's celebrated by the galleries who are as much a part of the Masters story as the tournament itself.

"When you walk down the fairways at Augusta, it's unlike any other tournament for us as a player," said reigning champion Phil Mickelson. "It's a different feeling. You have people taking pictures of you and you feel like you're almost an artifact in a museum, if you will."

There are golf museums in other prominent corners of the world, but none comes to life like Augusta National. And it's open to the public only one week a year.

This is why Arnold Palmer will probably step to the first tee Thursday morning for a ceremonial tee shot that will provide as much of a thrill as whoever drains the winning putt come Sunday evening.

Masters traditions are important, which is why Palmer needs to be on that tee Thursday. And it's why Gary Player needs to join him (and will) as soon as he's done competing. And it's why Jack Nicklaus needs to get over his general distaste for ceremonial golf to reunite the Big Three on the first tee as soon as he can.

These are the living legends who need to carry the mantle from the legends who passed on before them. It's their duty as much as it's ours to honor them. It's what makes the Masters special.

Champions come and go - but not without coming back here year after year after year. Their names aren't just engraved on trophies. Masters winners reconvene annually as living reminders of golf's enduring legacy. They don't come back because they feel like they have to. They come back because they want to. Desire, not obligation, compels them.

"Being able to hang out with the guys who have won here is an amazing feeling," Mickelson said. "When I attend the Champions Dinner and get to relive and rehash some of the victories of some other past champions, I feel as though there's that sense of history, and being a part of the tournament, which is so special."

Even the champions no longer with us seem tangible in this place. The monuments for Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Gene Sarazen aren't just bridges to the past. The ghosts of those legends and tournament founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts are palpable on these grounds. You half expect one of them to step out of the shadows under the great oak tree behind the clubhouse and start reminiscing about bygone rounds with President Eisenhower.

"There's still a mystique here," said Davis Love III, a major winner who desperately wants to etch his name in that eternal ledger at Augusta National.

That mystique lingers no matter how much the course and the world outside the gates changes. The Masters stays the same.

The course is constantly evolving, and the one played this week is very different from the one that crowned Horton Smith in 1934.

But it doesn't feel that way.

For the former champions who are eternally enshrined in the fabric of the Masters, it's easy to understand.

Yet even for the new faces just entering the world of Augusta National, the feeling of being a part of something bigger than just a golf tournament comes through.

Englishman Paul Casey understands. Not yet 30 years old and making only his third appearance in the tournament, Casey calls Augusta National "everybody's home course."

"When I first turned up in 2004, I certainly felt a familiarity with Augusta National," he said. "You know, I wanted to stand there on certain holes and try and replicate shots that I had seen on TV or putts that I had seen go in. So I think, yeah, everybody knows it."

Everybody will keep coming to know Augusta just as it was in the beginning and will be forever and ever.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.