Flesch is 1-under par after two rounds of the Masters, five shots off the lead, having posted the best score of the day Friday. It wasn't as astounding to him as the lack of broken tees.

"I got up on the par-3 6th, I just wanted to use a broken tee," he said. Even pros use broken tees on par-3s. "Most courses, there's broken tees everywhere. There wasn't a broken tee to be found. The attention to detail here is something you could never dream of. You drop a gum wrapper out here, a camo guy comes out of the woods and" picks it up.

One of the many course workers at Augusta puts Arnold Palmer's name plate up on the first tee. (AP photo)

When he's not on the PGA Tour winning lots of money, Flesch plays golf at Triple Crown Country Club in Union, Ky. This is only his second Masters. Friday was just his fourth Masters round. (He missed the cut in 2001.) The place wows him.

"Every hole you come up, your score is posted. But there's nobody walking with us. How do they know what we're shooting? On the PGA Tour, they've got a walking scorer with a Palm Pilot that does every hole. Here, it's like a video game. When your ball hits the hole, automatically it registers what you made."

On one tee Thursday, he scraped some grass from the spikes of his shoes. A worker swept it from the tee box before his threesome left the box. He watched just after the rain delay Thursday, as legions of workers bearing hand-held blowers marched in formation across the soggy greens, drying them out while looking like a land-based bunch of Blue Angels.

He arrived in 2001, a no-name rookie. Everyone in the clubhouse knew his name. "It's almost like they give them mug shots and say, 'memorize the faces,' " he said. "I'm just common folk. I'm not used to this stuff."

Flesch didn't even ask about the grove of 36 mature pine trees that magically materialized this year, just off the 11th fairway. These are 25-foot-tall trees. Where do they get them? Pines-R-Us? What sort of monster backhoe can dig a hole big enough to pry a tree and all its roots from the ground?

How do they transport mature trees? This is an instant forest we have here. Last year, grass mound. This year, picnic grove. "You're walking around thinking it's like DisneyWorld," Flesch decided. "There's gotta be substructure underneath here with tunnels and escape hatches."

It's the most pampered piece of ground on the planet. Augusta National makes the White House Rose Garden look like a yard sale. Twenty-three years ago, they decided to switch from Bermuda grass greens to bent grass. Bent isn't native to Georgia, so they hauled in sod from New Jersey. To get grass to grow on the shaded, fabled 12th green, they turn on 16 sunlamps for 12 hours a night, from October to February.

And so on. Flesch wasn't so awed he couldn't reel off four birdies and that eagle, taking advantage of softer greens that held his approach shots. He aimed right at the flags. Normally, this is like throwing into triple coverage, when every cornerback is named Deion.

"I'm sure the guys in the green coats (club members) aren't real happy about me being able to say that," he said. "My third shot into 13 was a low bump and run. It was like hitting into a beanbag chair. It hit and stopped dead. Normally, you get a big first hop and you have to rely on a bit of spin."

Flesch had 11 fewer putts Friday, mostly because he landed his ball in friendly places on the green. It all seemed so easy. He birdied the par-4 17th after slipping his 157-yard approach through a hole in the trees.

"I caught a perfect gap," Flesch said. "I'm sure there will be a new pine tree there tomorrow."

No one would be surprised.

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E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com