The Surprising Link between College of Charleston and the Masters Golf Tournament

It is to golf fans what the ubiquitous Monday Night Football intro is to NFL devotees. The theme song for CBS’s annual coverage of the Masters Golf Tournament, which will tee off on April 11, 2019, is a tranquil tribute to the rolling greens and abundant pines of Augusta National and the revered history of the tournament itself.

The song and the annual golf spectacle are so closely associated that golf fanatics are said to have a Pavlovian response to hearing the tune. How the song came to be is an interesting story.

But you might not know that there is a CofC connection to the Masters song, which was written by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Dave Loggins and unveiled for the 1982 Masters.

Just three years after Loggins, a highly accomplished Nashville recording artist, penned the Masters song, he wrote and recorded a special song for the College of Charleston as part of a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the College’s 1785 charter. The CofC song that Loggins wrote, “Finding Roots and Gaining Wings,” has its own unique backstory, which was the subject of an article in the College of Charleston Magazine.

So if you are a golf fan – and even if you aren’t – tune in to this year’s Masters coverage on CBS to listen to the enduring theme song, and take pride in knowing that the talented artist who wrote that tune also created a musical tribute to another historic and enduring institution – the College of Charleston.

And the CofC song that Dave Loggins wrote in 1985…