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AUGUSTA, Ga. — The backroads leading here are long and narrow, tree-lined lanes through Carolina towns stuck in another time. The sun came out in the South on the Wednesday before the Masters, thawing winter's hold and deflecting the worst fate in all of golf — GGO weather.

The nights here have been bitterly cold, the mornings braced against the hushed reports of possible flurries and the aroma of coffee overpowering the azaleas. Those stomping around the grounds of Augusta National Golf Club on a cool practice day invested in bright Masters sweaters and muttered a lot.

The old-timers, those wearing faded Masters sweaters and sensible shoes, invested in Chap-Stick and avoided the Par-3 Contest.

Of course, this is the way it used to be when the PGA Tour rolled out of North Carolina down to the Bobby Jones course near the South Carolina line. They'd go to Wilmington for the old Azalea Open, then Charlotte and Pinehurst and Greensboro.

Then everyone would trade their winter coats for argyle sweaters and come to Augusta. The tour has been altered so many times, it's hard to remember what it was like in those days, when Greensboro led logically to Augusta and no one thought anything of it.

Over time, they thought more and more about it, complained a lot, moved the GGO to the week afterward, then to the fall and then to summer. It hasn't really felt the same since it was snug up against the Masters as the lead-in to spring's annual outing.

The old roads out of Greensboro led through Asheboro and Mount Pleasant, crossing into South Carolina below Kings Mountain and down toward Spartanburg. They led through Clinton and Greenwood and Edgefield, "The home of 10 South Carolina governors."

The closer you get to Augusta, the more it seems you've gone back in time. The towns seem out of touch with the economic downturn, the folks here making money the same way they always made it. Fruit stands and craft stores, nurseries and local grocers, the kind with the Merita Breads screen door that slaps shut behind you and the old man behind the counter who looks at you over his reading glasses.

"Augusta's right where it's always been," the old man told a stranger passing through Wednesday morning. "Just follow this road till you see the cars backed up."

The road in front of his store was empty. No one comes this way anymore, he said. The road behind his store was dirt.

They cling to the old ways in Augusta, and that's not always a good thing. But the quaint traditions have a permanence that connect the tournament to its past. It's a shame Greensboro is no longer a part of it, and it would be wonderful if the Wyndham Championship could one day return to its rightful place alongside the Masters.

There's been talk. There always is. Below the surface of what looks to be a staid old tour is a realization that times are changing again. And change is sometimes good. Change sometimes means going back to the ways of old.

A few people drove the old way into old Augusta this week, following the train tracks out of Enoree, driving along the river through McCormick and finally arriving in the bustling city of Augusta just as the frost melted and winter receded in the rear-view mirror.

People arrived complaining, which they do a lot of here. The truth is, most of the people coming to the Masters aren't from around here.

They arrived Wednesday to watch the Par-3 Contest and try to get tickets for the rest of the week, an impossibility beyond their grasp. They bought sweaters and complained about the cold and the crowds and the quaint simplicity that is Augusta National.

The old-timers are all from here, or from the roads leading in. They walk to spots recognizable through the years, spots they found themselves a generation ago watching Snead and Hogan and Player and Sandy Lyle, who won at Greensboro and Augusta back-to-back and was briefly the best player in the world.

That seems like another time and place now, but it doesn't seem so long ago that we can't get back to it. It seems ludicrous now to think we once complained about being up against the Masters, a fate that probably cost us Jack Nicklaus playing in Greensboro but also gave our event a kind of credibility and an identity that no other tournament had.

The cold weather here this week brought back all those memories for the old folks, some of whom slipped into town on the tree-lined backroads leading logically out of the Carolinas and across the Savannah River and back in time for a tradition unlike any other.

The forecast for the rest of the week is for golf to be played under sunny skies with warm breezes swirling through the oaks and pines of spring's first outing. The azaleas are blooming, and the white dogwoods and Carolina cherry are swaying against a dark-green backdrop like an old familiar painting.

Was it so bad to be associated with something like this?

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com