Capital area man returns from “Dream Come True” at Augusta

RAFFLE GOT THEM THERE

Steiner won a raffle held by the Schenectady ARC, which sold chances for $100 each. The winner got two tickets and was flown down to the opening day of the Masters. Steiner, who thought he would just be making a donation, and Caso both earned what they call “a dream come true” to make it to the Masters. The ARC raised $2,200 from the raffle, according to its director of Public Relations.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited,” Chuck’s wife Marcy said, admitting he didn’t sleep much the night before he left or when he got back. “It was everything, and so much more, than I expected,” Steiner said.

A GOOD WALK NOT SPOILED

Before he left, Steiner said his main goal was to walk the famed course that was designed by Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie. He said he had heard from others that television images don’t do it justice and he found just how hilly it was.

“Every second shot, it seemed like, they’re going uphill,” Steiner said. “Even if you were going downhill off the tee shot, the second shot was coming up over another ridge.” Steiner said he was amazed at some of the sight lines the players faced, and what he could see and not see.

“I wanted to walk the golf course,” he said. “I was on a different mission for three quarters of the day.” When they arrived, they happened to walk with Greg Norman’s group on Thursday, including Bernhard Langer and Lee Westwood. Norman made his first appearance at the Masters in seven years and shot even par that day. Steiner also saw Ben Crenshaw play a hole or two. At some point, Steiner was on the right hand side of the 11th, about 300 yards from the tee.

“You’ve got to smash it off the tee.”

TEN FEET FROM TIGER

The first ball of the second to last group of the day was smashed, landing about ten feet from them on the pine straw among the trees. It didn’t belong to Stewart Cink or Jeev Milkha Singh.

“We knew, the crowd was already talking about it, it was Tiger,” he said. There was the number one player in the world, facing a shot that most golfers term as “in jail.”

“This dude, he hits under two trees and brings the ball high enough to go over the third. Lands it on the 11th green and two putts for a regulation par. Where he was standing, most of us would knock it out on the fairway and give it another shot,” Steiner remembers.

GIFTS GALORE

Just in case Steiner wouldn’t remember that for the rest of his life, he has a print of both the 11th and 12th holes to remind him. “I gotta frame those, put those in my den,” he said. He bought those in the gift shop, along with several hats, a shirt, a flag for his son, glassware with the Masters logo etched on them, ball markers – three bags full of souvenirs.

“I’m going to be all decked out. I look like a walking billboard,” Steiner said with a laugh. “I did the State of Georgia and Augusta some very good favors. I left a few northern dollars down there, quite a few.”

Steiner and Caso flew back Thursday night and watched the rest of the tournament from their respective homes. They had been friends from their days at a radio station and then at the Niagara Falls Chamber of Commerce.

INSIDER’S VIEW

Steiner spent the weekend watching the tournament with friends and family members, saying proudly “I was there” when TV would show one angle or another. He says that TV did capture the colors of the Masters but he’s sure most viewers never saw the detail around the cart paths.

“It’s all green colored sand and all the pebbles are green too where they fill in any rough,” he said. Unlike most golf tournaments, at the Masters there are no corporate tents and not even any portable toilets tucked in under trees.

“Everything is permanent. You walk into the bathrooms the walls are tiled. It’s unbelievable.” There are people there to fix all the divots and there are workers in yellow jumpsuits, similar to the white coveralls the caddies wear, to pick up the trash.

“You can’t drop a gum wrapper without it picked up within 30 seconds of you dropping it,” Steiner said. Not that he did. Sure, Augusta National is made up of a membership that is from corporate America, however, “at Augusta, it’s Augusta,” Steiner said.

A FEW MORE OBSERVATIONS

At 58, Steiner said that he was rooting for Perry on Sunday afternoon. If he had won, he would have been the oldest man to ever win a major tournament. But he says everyone, especially junior golfers, can learn from the 39-year old Cabrera who gets over the ball and gives it a whack.

“Every kid should take a lesson from him,” he said. “His speed of play is great.”

Steiner was at the final day of the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot in Westchester County and says it’s “night and day” compared to his first day at the 73rd Masters. He means from the crowds to the organization. As the head of the Schenectady County Chamber, his thoughts wandered from golf, to a conference table.

“I’d love to go sit in on their organization meetings,” Steiner said. “They have this thing down to a science.”

pre-masters outlook

RAFFLE WIN SENDS CAPITAL AREA MAN TO MASTERS By John Craig

What do PGA Tour winners Anthony Kim and Dustin Johnson have in common with the president of the Schenectady County Chamber of Commerce, Charles Steiner?

It’s the first Masters Tournament for all three. “This is a dream come true and it will certainly be number one in my memory,” Steiner said Tuesday night as he packed for his trip to Augusta, Georgia. Now, unlike Kim and Johnson and 16 other first timers who will play in the 2009 Masters, Steiner will be attending. He’s making his first ever visit to the golf tournament he’s watched on TV all his life. “This sounds cliché-ish but this is a once-in-a-lifetime dream,” Steiner said. “I think you can be a non-golfer and want to walk the hallowed grounds of Augusta. It is all about going to see that golf course.”

WON ARC RAFFLE

Steiner is going to the Masters thanks to the Schenectady ARC, the organization that works with people with developmental disabilities. Its motto is “Advocacy, Resources, Choices.” Like many others, he bought a $100 raffle ticket for the advertised “Once-In-A-Lifetime” trip to this year’s first day of the Masters Tournament. Steiner, who has headed the Chamber for seven years, barely remembered entering the raffle through an e-mail. He figured it was just going to be a “contribution.’

“I have a great deal of respect for that organization and how they run it,” Steiner said. Since he received the call late last month that his name had been pulled, he’s been on Cloud-9. Make that Cloud-18!

“I’ll try to find the least amount of people that are following a golfer so that I can have the sight lines and appreciate that golf course,” he said. Steiner, 58, admits that it sounds odd but he wants to see the course more than the players. And he’s going to walk all 18 holes on Thursday. “I don’t even think you have to appreciate golf to know you’ll be walking into something very special,” he said. “I’m really excited.”

GOLF MEMORIES

It will become his top golf memory, eclipsing the time he followed Arnold Palmer around in Hartford, CT years ago. “That was just a thrill,” he said.

Steiner’s parents went to a practice day at Augusta National once, but never for a day of competition. “That was just a treasured moment for them and they just talked about the golf course,” he remembers. Steiner’s earliest memory of the Masters was when he and his father went to a friend’s house because the friend had a color television set.

“It was an incredible thing to have a color TV set,” he said. “I think the first Masters I remember vividly because of the color TV set was 1960.” That year, Arnold Palmer went wire-to-wire to win his second Green Jacket when he birdied the final two holes to win by one stroke.

BIG GOLF FAN

Steiner, a member at Mohawk Golf Club in Schenectady, says he “plays at it” referring to the game. But he does love it. For years, he put his communication degree to work as a radio commentator near Niagara Falls. Each year he would be part of the broadcast team that would cover the last few holes of the “Porter Cup.” That’s a tournament for amateurs, held since 1959. Ironically, the champion of the Porter Cup gets the same thing they give the champion of the Masters, a green blazer.

Among the greats to play in Western New York are Phil Mickelson, who won it in 1990, David Duval (1992 champ), Davis Love III, Tom Lehman, Hal Sutton, Justin Leonard, Ryuji Imada (1995 champ), Scott Simpson, Bobby Clampett and Tiger Woods. “Tiger played there, I watched him as an amateur,” he said.
But he didn’t win it.

“Ben Crenshaw was my favorite,” Steiner said. “He won the Porter Cup in ’72. “If I ran into Crenshaw, that would be a personal thrill only because I got to meet him a quite a few times. Not that he’d remember me, but I remember him.”

OFF TO AUGUSTA

At Augusta, Steiner says that “Amen Corner is going to be the thrill.” If he turns his eyes to some golf, he’d surely like to watch past Masters champions Tiger, Gentle Ben and “Freddy Couples is certainly in my era.”
Tuesday night, Steiner’s wife Marcy was ironing a couple of brand new golf shirts for him to wear. She went out and found a good deal and surprised him. Otherwise, he planned on wearing a shirt from the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, which he attended, and a shirt from St. Andrews in Scotland, a gift from his son during a trip to the Home of Golf.

Steiner has had other big trips. He got to fly a corporate jet to Super Bow XXV, when the Giants beat the Bills in Tampa, FL. While waiting to get back on the plane in January 1991, he chatted with none other than former Green Bay quarterback and boyhood idol Bart Starr. Steiner grew up just a few miles outside of Green Bay.

For Augusta, it’s an overnight. He flew out Wednesday afternoon from Albany International Airport and comes back after play has concluded Thursday evening. He plans on watching the rest of the tournament from home, but with a new perspective.

“I’m really anxious to see the whole geography of the golf course,” Steiner said. “That’s the piece that television still, I don’t think, can really capture.”

FIRST-TIMERS

Besides Imada, Kim and Johnson, the other first timers at the Masters are Ken Duke, Ross Fisher, Mathew Goggin, Drew Kittleson, Soren Kjeldsen, Danny Lee, Rory McIlroy, John Merrick, Jack Newman, Louis Oosthuizen, Alvaro Quiros, Reinier Saxton, Lin Wen-Tang, Oliver Wilson and Steve Wilson. Steiner may see them too, when he’s not smelling the azaleas.

“This is a fairy tale come true,” Steiner said.