Getting on the revered grounds at Augusta will likely cost you a week's wage.

BY ARASH MADANI
sportsnet.ca

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- While hogging some shade in the scorching heat of 94F temperatures this week in Augusta, a father and son approached us. Chip and Justin Jennings were their names.

"You guys got tickets?" Chip asked.

I looked to my left, and the producer we call Pep was carrying a tripod. To my right, Joel had a TV camera slung over his shoulder. Yup. This was the picture of scalpers, all right, four blocks from the gates of Augusta National.

Chip had been to The Masters a handful of times before, but never with his son. Mom, the smart one, was waiting in the air conditioned car, while eight-year-old Justin was just bouncing around, giddy, because John Daly had signed his green hat a few minutes before. But pops wanted his kid to walk the course before they left for Myrtle Beach the morning of the Par 3 -- and who can blame him.

So here they were in search of three badges, at almost 2 p.m. and the marquee names were already off the course. Face value to get in for a practice round: $36.

"The ones we do find are single tickets and $275 or $300 apiece," Chip tells me.

Tiger Woods may have altered the landscape of the golf world with his return, but he has destroyed the public's chance of watching him inside the hallowed grounds in 2010.

"With the economy the way it is, and companies not spending money, it was looking to be, not a non-event, but not anything like it normally is," explained Steve Parry, the president of Golden Tickets -- an on-site and on-line brokering agency, which has had its yellow and black bus on Washington Road for two months. "We've got a lot more people -- not companies, but the public -- coming in on Wednesday and coming in on Thursday, just for a glimpse, just for a day, not the whole tournament."

And it is costing those who do, if they can even get in at all. The dozens on lawn chairs with signs that screamed "WE NEED TICKETS" actually did; it wasn't a front, like usual. Chip and Justin couldn't find two for a practice round, let alone when they put the tee in the ground for real tomorrow.

When Pep and Joel and I asked scalpers throughout town for a badge to today's Par 3 tournament, they laughed at us. "Good luck"... "Wednesday is the new Thursday, guys"... "Three? THREE? For TODAY?"

After learning to not introduce ourselves as media -- which dismissed any conversation with these guys trying to hawk tickets, outside of our pal Steve (who lives in Dallas and actually is a Stars fan -- see, one actually still does exist!), since he is a legitimate, and smart business man -- to get a feel of what badges are going for, it makes you wonder who actually is able to go in and watch.

On Monday, one "I'm a ticket broker, not a scalper" quoted me with the following rates: $550 for Wednesday; $800 for Thursday ("but I'm out); $850 for Friday ("I'm sold out of those too") and $700 apiece for each weekend round. By Wednesday, a guy at VIP Sports Marketing Inc. -- who have set up shop next to StubHub -- told us a badge for Friday is now $2,500.

Two thousand five hundred dollars. For a day. Of watching golf.

If Tiger is in contention on the weekend, then what happens?

This is the Woods factor. Make no mistake about it. The Masters, along with the Final Four and the Super Bowl, still remains one of the continent's toughest tickets to get. But add the allure and the frenzy that accompanies the comeback of the world's best golfer -- who provided an insatiable thirst to tabloids, news media and the public alike -- and you have thousands of Chip and Justin's empty handed looking for a way in.

Put it this way: I asked Steve if he saw a spike in the demand in the hours and days after Tiger's announcement that Augusta is where he'd play for the first time since last November.

"Absolutely. Certainly. Immediately," Parry said, without hesitation. "It was an immediate factor change."

So what if Chip and Justin and mom couldn't get in to Augusta National this April?

"I guess we'll just go to Six Flags," shrugged dad.

Then Justin showed me the autographed cap again and asked where he could get a popsicle?