Masters Is Missing a Fixture As the sun set on the 75th Masters a year ago Sunday, the fertile brain inside Furman Bisher's head, partly hidden under a signature bucket hat, sent these words through his fingers to the keyboard: It was, if I may be allowed the freedom to say, one of the strangest Masters I have ever seen. Strange swings from one seeming champion to another. It also was the last Masters he would see. The passage was the final paragraph of his final column after 62 years of churning them out from the Augusta National Golf Club each April. Rarely, if ever, has a major sports competition been so enduringly linked with a sports journalist than the Masters with Bisher, the distinguished columnist who died at 93 of a heart attack last month. Bisher never missed a Masters after falling head-over-heels for the event in 1950, when Jimmy Demaret won his third and a patron's badge cost $10. He preceded Nicklaus and Palmer, television coverage and the advance sale of tickets, the champions dinner and the green jacket ceremony in Butler Cabin. Ye gods, to borrow one of his pet phrases, the gregarious Bisher saw more new coats slipped on than a tailor. In florid prose, he painted images as striking as the verdant visuals at the hallowed grounds. "The love, the worship, of golf seems to be everywhere as you stand there absorbed in it yourself," he wrote of the scene. It seems to ooze inside your skin; yet you can't touch it. He was an unabashed admirer of the tournament - "its place in the realm of world classics is secure" - and the system that has allowed men to run it czar-like. In the mid-"70s, Bisher defended the autocratic approach of chairman Clifford Roberts, suggesting that, "If you get to heaven and find it's run by committee, ask for a transfer." A decade ago, Bisher, believing that a private club should call its own shots, happily dismissed the efforts of the women's rights activist Martha Burk, who shepherded a small protest on-site intended to pressure Augusta National to admit a female member. "Hurricane Martha has wafted through, little more than a zephyr, making no more sound than a cat's meow," he razzed in print. Bisher occasionally snapped his pincers at unruly spectators or players who he felt dishonored the gentleman's game. Generally, he viewed the performers and their audience through a prism of respect. Among the Masters story angles that often intrigued him were foreigners (he was not one, having hailed from North Carolina), lefthanders (this, he was) and golf's roots in amateurism and gentility (he was an avid amateur player, more genteel on the course than off of it). For many golfers, Bisher was nearly as much a part of the Masters experience as the azaleas and Amen Corner. "There have been certain staples and traditions that have always reminded me that I am at the Masters," Jack Nicklaus said. One of those has been Furman Bisher. Some players would invite his questions after rounds. Once, Nicklaus seemed almost hurt when Bisher excused himself from the news conference. After he asked why, Bisher, well up in years, explained to him, "When you're my age and your kidneys talk, you have to listen to them." Arnold Palmer had become a largely ceremonial Masters participant when he spotted Bisher walking the course - as was his custom, regardless of his age. Palmer greeted him with a backslap, saying, "I'm just glad to see somebody out here as old as I am." Aside from his rookie stint at Augusta, when he represented The Charlotte News, Bisher filed dispatches for the Atlanta newspapers: first The Constitution, then The Journal, then their combined version. After he retired in 2009, he still corresponded for The Journal Constitution from the tournament, two hours east of his metro Atlanta residence. He continued to file for smaller papers" Web sites, and his own, on a variety of subjects. His last column in early March, fittingly, was Masters-related, and it closed with, "As some say, you're never too old." Bisher covered a spectrum of sports - including football, baseball, horse racing, auto racing and boxing - that reflected the tastes of his Southern readership. The Atlanta Braves owe their existence partly to him, Bisher having spearheaded the franchise's move from Milwaukee. He championed Atlanta's successful pursuit of the 1996 Summer Games soon after the notion was a gleam in the eye of the eventual Atlanta Olympics chief Billy Payne. "Furman Bisher, there will never be another one," Payne, current chairman of Augusta National, said Wednesday. Bisher was booked for this year's Masters after deciding against back surgery that would have confined him to home. On March 18, he was looking forward to the final round of the PGA Tour's Transitions Championship on television when he felt ill and checked into a hospital. Later that day, the heart attack ended his life. Marked by a gold nameplate, Bisher's permanent third-row seat in the press center is vacant this week, except for a replica of his trademark floppy yellow hat, placed there by an Augusta National official. Bisher's own hat was last seen resting atop his coffin at the funeral as it was being wheeled away for burial.