By Steve Politi | NJ Advance Media

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- He was slammed facedown to the ground, handcuffed like the worst kind of felon and thrown onto the back of a golf cart.

Clayton Baker had come to Augusta National Golf Club to cross one item off his bucket list, but after a perfect day watching the final round of the Masters from a collapsible chair at Amen Corner, his trip had gone horribly wrong.

"You dirty piece of s---," one of his arresting officers spat at him. "You disrespected this national monument in Augusta."

"I hope you know you're going to jail for this," another cop sneered before moving him to the back of an unmarked police car.

Baker had figured that part out as he sat, windows rolled up tight so he couldn't escape, in that sweltering sedan. He didn't know, however, that getting locked up would be the least painful part of his ordeal.

He didn't know that he was about to see his bank account drained of about $20,000, that his mugshot would end up plastered on ESPN and on national websites, that his reputation would be so ravaged he wouldn't want to step foot out of his house in Oklahoma for weeks.

He didn't know that this terrible mistake -- this one transgression he didn't think anyone had noticed -- would nearly wreck his life.

His crime that day: He tried to steal some sand.

Don't Edit

AP

"The purest sand anywhere on earth"

The 44 bunkers at Augusta National -- 32 around the greens, 12 along the fairways -- are filled with a unique white sand found only in the Spruce Pine Mining District of western North Carolina.

"It is the purest silica sand that has ever been found anywhere on earth," said Vince Beiser, the man who, quite literally, wrote the book on sand. A more refined variation is used in the chips that make your iPhones and laptops work, but the quality at Augusta National is high enough that, from above, the bunkers look like patches of untouched snow.

In short: You can't buy it at the corner hardware store.

Baker wasn't thinking about any of that on April 8, 2012, as he walked up the 10th fairway. The final round was coming to an end with a dramatic finish for winner Bubba Watson. Baker had come to Augusta National with about a dozen friends and business associates, an act of kindness from a wealthy friend because Baker wasn't sure how much time he had left to enjoy moments like this.

"The previous fall, I had gotten really sick," he said. "They thought I had MS, but after all sorts of tests, it turns out I had Lyme Disease. But we didn't know that. We thought I was dying."

He had gone to the World Series in Arlington, Texas, with his son a few months earlier, and from their front-row seats, he was close enough to ask ESPN host Stuart Scott to scoop up some dirt from the infield as a special souvenir.

Don't Edit

Baker, now 47, had an idea: What if he added to that collection from Augusta? The final group had made it through the 10th already; the hole, as a result, was empty. Baker eyed the fairway bunker a few yards away.

"Hold my chair," he told his friend, Spencer Hoffman, before sliding under the gallery ropes and speed walking across the fairway. Hoffman, of course, thought he was nuts. But then Baker bent over, scooped out some sand with an empty beer cup, and slid back under the ropes on the other side.

Had he had gotten away with it?

Hoffman continued walking to the 10th tee box, which is just a short pitch from the stately clubhouse and putting green. Hoffman knew immediately that the heist had failed. Baker had three Augusta National guards around him. One of them, Hoffman said, slapped the cup of sand out of his hand.

The wingman kept walking.

"I'm thinking, 'I don't want to get in trouble because I'm holding his damn chair!'" Hoffman said.

The guards pushed Baker to the ground and radioed for backup. Still, he held out hope that he could sort this out. It was just a cup of sand, right? Then the deputies from the Richmond County Sheriff's Office arrived, and before he could protest again, he was cuffed and told to blow into a tube to check his blood-alcohol level.

He was transported to the county jail, where dozens of golf fans -- many in their Masters shirts and caps -- were sorting out citations for scalping tickets too close to the Augusta National gates. They were allowed to wait in a hallway.

"But not me," Baker said. "They took me in and they threw me in a jail with all the criminals. There was a big guy in the cell standing on the toilet, yelling at me, 'Tell them I need some (toilet) paper!'"

Baker was told he had one phone call. His wife, hearing that it was from a county jail, thought it was a wrong number and hung up the phone. He was booked for disorderly conduct, fingerprinted and photographed. His phone, his wallet and his Masters badge were all taken from him.

His friends were scheduled to leave that evening on a private jet. Would they even wait for him?

He wondered: How the hell was he going to get out of this mess?

Don't Edit

Richmond County Sheriff

"When you cross that line in the sand ..."

Walking through the gates at Augusta National is not just a trip into one golf's cathedrals. It feels like entering an azalea-lined maximum security prison.

Those sheriff deputies, with their round-brimmed hats, are everywhere. So are the private Securitas guards, in matching black coats and hats. Even the millionaire members, with their green jackets, patrol the grounds and enforce the rules.

And there are many, many rules.

No running. No cell phones. No sitting in designated standing areas. No standing in designated sitting areas. No chairs with arms. No hats worn backward. No flags or signs or coolers or radios or yelling nonsense like "you da man!" The list goes on and on.

Real disruptions, however, are rare. A review of a decade's worth of newspaper accounts after the tournament reveal only a few noteworthy arrests. In 2010, a Canadian man took off his shirt and jumped into the pond on the 16th hole (he said he did not know that swimming was illegal). In 2015, three men tried and failed to scale a fence to get onto the course.

"We're good people. We are not looking to arrest anybody," Capt. Scott Gay of the county sheriff's department insisted. "However, when you cross that line in the sand … no pun intended."

Gay was the law enforcement source quoted in the initial news reports on Baker's arrest, and the details, Baker and Hoffman said, did not match the actual incident. Baker was portrayed as a rowdy drunk who led police "on a short foot chase" when his blood-alcohol level was below the legal limit for a DUI.

And a foot chase? "All the reports about him running around like crazy are bull----," Hoffman said, but that hardly mattered.

Don't Edit

The media pounced on the story. ESPN. The Golf Channel. Golf Digest. Even big newspapers like the Washington Post picked it up, with his mugshot -- his face red, his eyes pointed down -- included nearly every time.

"Would-be sandbagger runs afoul of Augusta cops," Golfweek declared in a headline.

Baker paid a $285 bond and was released from jail. He reconnected with his group at the Augusta airport -- the delay would add thousands of dollars to the trip -- before flying back to Oklahoma.

That, Baker said, is when the real ordeal started. He didn't want to leave his house to go to work at the advertising agency where he is a partner. He was coaching a middle-school basketball team and had to explain to the players, including his son, what really happened. He said he found one story online that said he had a sexual sand fetish.

"I was playing in a golf tournament in my pissant hometown in Texas, and guys who didn't know me were walking up with sand and saying, 'Here you go!'" Baker said. "I was seriously depressed for weeks"

The episode took not only an emotional toll on him but a financial one. He lost a $4,500 security deposit on the Masters badge because of Augusta National's strict ticket policies. The man who sold him the badge had not only lost it for this year, he lost the ability to buy it forever.

He had to hire a pair of lawyers to defend him and pay for the time that the jet was idling on the runway.

"I did something I shouldn't have done and it cost me $20,000 and a lot of public shame," Baker said. "That seems like a lot for a handful of sand.

"They made an example out of me. I understand that. I regret that. But the way they handled it? That place is a bunch of bullies. From a fan's perspective, before I had seen it firsthand, that was hallowed ground for me. But it was just a bunch of a bullies."

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

"He rode a jet to Augusta to collect dirt?"

His court date was May 10, long after the snickering had stopped. Baker didn't have to appear. One of the lawyers he hired, Augusta-based Roger Claridge, told him he would "go down there and get this worked out for you."

That's what happened, too, but not without a few sardonic words from the judge and another front-page story in the Augusta Chronicle.

"Let me make sure I understand this," the judge, William D. Jennings III, said from his bench. "He rode a jet to Augusta to collect dirt? … Had he been successful in his attempt, what, pray tell, would he have done with it?"

The charges were dropped on the condition that Baker forfeit the $285 bond. He had suffered enough, everyone in the courtroom seemed to agree. But no one stopped to ask this: Why had he suffered at all?

Claridge said that the sheriff's deputies could have issued him a citation for a charge, he believes, that is "just above a speeding ticket." The official file on the case was nothing more than one sheet of carbon paper with three short sentences explaining the charges.

The handcuffs? The mug shot? The time in that jail cell? Claridge has no doubt about the origin of those marching orders.

"That stuff comes down from the top," he said. "Augusta National tells the sheriff deputies what to do. I'm not going to tell you that Mr. Baker did nothing wrong -- and, quite frankly, I told him that -- but it could have been handled a lot differently."

Gay denied that Augusta National had any influence over how his department does its job, adding that his deputies followed departmental policy with how they handled the sand incident. Baker, the captain said, was being disruptive to other patrons.

But disruptive how? No one was playing the hole. No property was destroyed. Gay's answer to the next question -- how did this crime justify the punishment? -- pointed back to a double standard that exists in this town.

"I know it seems kind of petty," Gay said. "However, you are talking about a golf icon. I certainly do not want anyone punished more than they deserve to be. But when people are here, they need to understand the traditions of Augusta and the Augusta National golf course."

Baker will never look at the place the same way. It took six months, but Baker has closed that chapter of his life. The sand caper is a source of good-natured ribbing from his friends and his kids.

No one, it should be noted, has tried anything quite as brazen at the Masters in the six years since.

"I understand what I did was wrong. I understand how precious the Masters is," Baker said, and then added with a quick chuckle. "I can't imagine what would have happened if I stole something from the gift shop."

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Don't Edit

MORE MASTERS COVERAGE

The green jacket dry-cleaning secrets of Augusta National

I played Augusta National and had my own Masters meltdown

The house that Augusta National’s millions can’t buy

For $5.35, you can wear at green jacket at the Masters, too