Un-blessed relief

The best thing to happen at Augusta National yesterday was not Justin Rose's opening 65, which made him the first-round leader for a record fifth time. Nor was it 65-year-old Fred Couples shooting a 1-under 71, or poor Nick Dunlap -- who became the patron saint of weekend hackers everywhere by machete-ing his way through the pines and azaleas in 90 getting-his-money's-worth strokes.

No, sir. The best thing was Jose Luis Ballester, a 21-year-old amateur out of Spain and Arizona State.

And what he did was, he pissed on the Masters. 

OK, so not on the Masters, exactly. What he actually did was piss in Rae's Creek. 

And, OK, so not in Rae's Creek, exactly, but in one of the tributaries that feed into it.

He and playing partner Justin Thomas were on the 12th hole, and Thomas was fiddling around up on the green, so Ballester ... well, followed the dictates of nature. Seems the dictates were really dictatin', and so, not knowing where the closest restroom was, he wandered down to the stream and unzipped.

"I'm like, I really need to pee," Ballester said later. "Didn't really know where to go, and since JT had an issue on the green, I'm like, I'm going to sneak here in the river and probably people would not see me much."

First rule of the Masters, young man: They're not "people" here at Augusta. They're not even a "gallery." They're "patrons."

Second rule: Augusta is not "a golf course." Bite your tongue and say ten Our Fathers.

It's actually a house of worship, a mighty cathedral where great men of faith in fades, draws and hybrid irons come to genuflect. The azaleas! The pines! Tinkly piano music, Sarazen's Bridge and, yes, Rae's Creek!

Where some goofy college kid decided to take a whiz. 

Good lord, what's next? John Wayne playing patty fingers in the holy water with Maureen O'Hara?*

(*Random "The Quiet Man" reference)

Surely Jim Nantz swooned, when he heard about it. Surely the tinkly piano music faltered, turned discordant, and then became Elton John banging out "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting." The azaleas wilted; the pines bowed their heads and wept; and. far away in Washington D.C., President and champion golfer Donald John "Legbreaker" Trump ordered an ICE hit squad to snatch Ballester, put a bag over his head and whisk him off to that country club in El Salvador.

Me?

I think Jose Luis Ballester is my new favorite golfer.

He had, after all, already tweaked the Masters' upturned nose by wearing a baseball cap with "Sun Devils" printed upside-down on the crown. Social media raked him for it, declaring such apparel inappropriate for THE MASTERS. And then ...

And then he drains the lizard in Rae's Creek. As if it were just another weekend round at Mudflap Hills Golf Club And Arcade, where the fairways are shredded wheat and the greens look less like bent grass than chewed grass.

Un-blessed relief, you might call that.

Also bit of comic relief, at a joint that could use some.