Nothin's sacred

 The big story in golf this morning is not Xander Schauffle filching a majors-record 62 from Valhalla in Louisville in the first round of the PGA Championship. Although that was pretty big.

No, the big story is what happened in Chicago. In a federal courtroom, to be exact.

What happened was a 39-year-old man named Richard Globensky pled guilty to a wholly different sort of filching -- the kind where you actually steal stuff. Globensky, it turns out, stole a pile of Masters memorabilia from a warehouse at Augusta National, where Globensky was once employed as an assistant. And when we say "memorabilia," we mean memorabilia.

One of Arnold Palmer's green jackets, for instance. Yep, Globensky stole it.

Also green jackets belonging to Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.

Also Masters tickets dating to the 1930s, chairs, and assorted commemorative T-shirts and mugs.

It was all part of a scheme that lasted more than a decade and allowed Globensky to supplement his income by, oh, about $5 million. He'd steal an item here and an item there and sell them to various oily memorabilia dealers in Florida, who'd then sell the items at a significant markup. To hide the whole disgusting enterprise, the dealers paid Globensky through a limited liability company set up in his wife's name.

And now I'm thinking about the guardians of the Sacred Kingdom of Augusta, and just how tight a twist their shorts must be in over all this.

No one wallows in self-reverence the way those folks do every April, when CBS is compelled to bend a knee to the Sacred Kingdom and its signature event, the Masters. The azaleas! Amen Corner! The Cathedral of Pines! Those world-famous pimento cheese sandwiches!

Oh, they are fierce protectors and myth-makers, the guardians. They even insist the Masters doesn't have fans. It has "patrons." "Fans", it seems, is for the little people -- or the little tournaments, which includes every tournament except the Masters.

And woe betide a broadcaster who refers to the Masters gallery as a "mob," as Jack Whitaker once did in the 1960s. That got him banished from the premises for six years.

Now to find out that the premises was regularly being robbed by a warehouse worker? And that among the victims (in absentia, anyway) were Masters icons like Palmer, Hogan and Gene Sarazen? The guy for whom Augusta named the Sarazen Bridge?

Why, Globensky might as well have unzipped and relieved himself in Rae's Creek. Or gone all Carl Spackler on the azaleas. I mean, if you can steal Mr. Sarazen Bridge's green jacket and sell it for filthy lucre, surely nothing is sacred anymore.

Not even in the Sacred Kingdom.