In February, Phil Wahl Jr. and a few friends were invited to a round of golf at Augusta National Golf Club.

The club member who invited the group also gave them a tour of the storied clubhouse, the 153-year-old former plantation home that is one of the most recognizable landmarks in golf.

It wasn't until the Augusta banker ventured up to the Crow's Nest (the dormitory under the cupola) that the smell hit him - the sweet, musty aroma of an old home. In Mr. Wahl's childhood memories, it was a scent that permeated the entire building.

In an instant, 30 years of time were erased. He was no longer a senior vice president with Wachovia Bank. He was a child again, and his father, Phillip Russell Wahl Sr., was still alive, working as general manager of the world's most famous golf club.

"I pretty much know every square inch of that property," Mr. Wahl said.

As the general manager's son, Mr. Wahl had access to the golf mecca that most fans could only dream of. He was a clubhouse "runner" at a dozen Masters Tournaments. He fished balls out of the course's many ponds. He hung out with longtime employees such as caddiemaster Freddie Bennett and groundskeepers Hadley Clemmons and Dick Harper.

In the off season, the exclusive club was Mr. Wahl's playground.

"During the summer, it was closed," he said. "I pretty much had free rein."

The idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end a month shy of his 15th birthday - Sept. 15, 1978 - the day his father was hit by a drunken driver on Berckmans Road just as he was pulling out of the gates of Augusta National. He died early the next morning from the injuries at age 43, the same age his son is today.

The man Mr. Wahl has become was shaped by lessons learned during his father's lifetime and, even more so, by what happened after his death.

Coming to Augusta

"I enjoy the inherent satisfaction of pleasing even the most discriminating people."

That is the final sentence of Phillip R. Wahl Sr.'s 1962 cover letter to Augusta National founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts.

The letter is one of several items Mr. Wahl recently uncovered in storage when helping his mother, Janice, move from the family home in Montclair to a townhome closer to Mr. Wahl's home on Henry Street. Copies of the letter, in addition to other personal items of his father, are on display at the Augusta Museum of History exhibit, Stories & Legends: Remembering the Augusta National, which runs through September.

Mr. Wahl Sr. was a 27-year-old assistant manager at the Catawba Cliffs Beach Club on Lake Erie in Port Clinton, Ohio, when he landed the job at Augusta National. He was chosen from a pool of more than 100 applicants.

"We never had that discussion, of what that must have felt like," Mr. Wahl said over lunch at The Pinnacle Club. "I would have certainly had that conversation with him today. I can only imagine how that must have felt. I would have been shaking in my shoes."

Almost immediately, the Wahl family moved from Ohio into a cabin on the grounds of the club while their permanent home in the National Hills neighborhood was being built. They moved in just a few months after Mr. Wahl Jr. was born at University Hospital on Oct. 23, 1963.

In addition to managing the club during some of the most historic Masters Tournaments of the 1960s and '70s, Mr. Wahl Sr. had the distinction of helping make the tournament a worldwide event through negotiations with the BBC and Tokyo Broadcasting.

His visits to Japan, in particular, made him somewhat of a celebrity there. He was even featured in television, newspaper and billboard ads for Suntory whiskey, a company whose marketing relied on American celebrities and was the inspiration for a memorable scene in the 2003 film Lost in Translation.

Around the grounds of Augusta National, Mr. Wahl Sr. was well-respected and well-liked among the staff and club members. He forged a close relationship with President Eisenhower, the club's most famous member, whose regular visits helped it garner national attention and mystique. When the former commander-in-chief felt like getting away from his entourage and having a beer, it was Mr. Wahl Sr. whom he called to take him to Squeaky's Tip-Top.

"My father certainly had a way with people," Mr. Wahl said. "He knew how to relate to everyone, from the guy trimming the grass around the bunker to the president of the United States."

The elder Mr. Wahl even managed to thaw Mr. Roberts, the notoriously cranky club chairman.

"(Mr. Roberts) disliked ever being asked how he was, because he believed - no doubt correctly - that the asker wasn't interested in the response," David Owen wrote in his 1999 book The Making of The Masters. "When Phil Wahl asked him that one day, Roberts replied, '(Expletive) it, I feel terrible, and don't you ever ask me how I feel again.' "

By 1977, as Mr. Roberts was on his deathbed, only Mr. Wahl was allowed to tend to him. Mr. Roberts, in ailing health, committed suicide on the southern edge of the Par-3 course at age 83.

On the morning his body was found, the call to the general manager's home was answered by his 14-year-old son.

"When I told my father that someone was on the phone from the club and said that Mr. Roberts was missing, he rocketed out of bed and immediately answered the phone," Mr. Wahl wrote for the Augusta Museum of History magazine, Archive. "It seemed like only seconds before he was on his way out the door. The rest is history."

In the months preceding his death, Mr. Roberts sent out autographed copies of his favorite photo to his closest friends, most of whom considered it Mr. Roberts' way of saying goodbye.

Mr. Wahl's photo bears this inscription:

"The best club manager the Augusta National ever had or expects to have.

"April 11, 1977

"Clifford Roberts."

Man of the house

Mr. Wahl would lose his father not more than a year after the death of Mr. Roberts.

Mr. Wahl Sr. was headed home in his sunburst-orange MG convertible, a sports car he restored from the frame up, a car he had planned to give to his oldest son on his 16th birthday.

He was heading down Berckmans Road near Gate 10 when he encountered an intoxicated 18-year-old who lost control turning the corner just north of Ingleside Drive. The collision killed the teenager's 14-year-old passenger and put Mr. Wahl in critical condition at Doctors Hospital.

The driver was indicted for vehicular homicide and was sentenced to one year of probation.

The night of the accident, Mr. Wahl was on a football field in Savannah, playing as fullback for Augusta Christian. He was delivered the news by an uncle, just after he walked through the front door still in uniform and carrying his gear.

When the mourning was over, he was put in the position of helping his mother care for his three younger brothers and sisters and two cousins whom the family had taken in after the death of their own mother several years earlier. At one point, nine children were living under the Wahls' roof.

"Phillip was the one I went to, to be man of the house," said his mother, Janice. "I leaned on him heavily, perhaps too heavily."

She said she didn't realize until years later that the reason her son always seemed to get sick around Christmas was from all the stress he was under planning the family's holiday season.

"It never occurred to me that I was overloading the poor guy, because he never complained," she said. "He did what I asked him to, and he did a million things I never asked him to do. He was just always there."

He baby-sat them, taxied them to and from school and sports practice in a 12-passenger van, and he learned how to do household repairs - a skill that his longtime friend John Markwalter said he still has.

"I'm sure some of that was born from the fact that he had to take care of the family," Mr. Markwalter said. "I've seen him take apart household items, hang Sheetrock - he's just extraordinarily talented."

The Richmond County assistant district attorney met Mr. Wahl more than 12 years ago through his wife, Amy, who went to high school with Mr. Wahl's wife, Catherine.

Mr. Wahl met Catherine Ruth Wade at Augusta Mall. Both were Augusta State University students. He was a junior working at the now-defunct D. Norris Ltd. menswear store; she was a freshman working at the nearby Naturalizer shoe store.

The Augusta Exchange Club Fair was their first date. He took her on the Ferris wheel that night. Two years later, on the same ride, he proposed marriage.

She immediately accepted, though it was a long time before she admitted to him that she was afraid of heights.

Bank on it

In college, Mr. Wahl studied business management, though he was unsure exactly what he wanted to do.

He entertained notions of following in his father's footsteps by going into hospitality management and running a club or resort. Shortly after graduation in 1987, however, he had an opportunity to sell mortgages for the Athens, Ga., office of Nationwide Lending Group, a subsidiary of a Pennsylvania-based savings and loan institution. The affable personality he inherited from his father served him well, and he was soon promoted to branch manager.

Mr. Wahl returned to Augusta in 1989 after the company dissolved, one of many casualties in the national savings and loan crisis. He went to work for First Atlanta Bank, which was later acquired by Wachovia and then First Union, which adopted the Wachovia name as its own.

"I've probably worked with every banker in the city at one point or another," Mr. Wahl said.

He rose through the ranks of Wachovia, and by the late 1990s was running the company's private banking division for then-market head Robert Osborne and Richard Fairey, who oversaw the bank's retail offices. After the First Union-Wachovia merger in 2001, Mr. Wahl joined Bank of America as city president.

The position put him in charge of the market's second-largest bank but also required him to work with commercial banking clients as far away as Florence, S.C. He was on the road three days a week, often not returning home until night.

When Mr. Fairey came back to Augusta last year after three years as Wachovia's market president in Dalton, Ga., he looked up his old co-worker almost immediately.

"My first lunch back was with a board member, my second lunch was with Phil," Mr. Fairey said. "I said, 'Phil, this might sound like a crazy idea, but let's get the old team back together again.' "

By October, Mr. Wahl was once again a Wachovia employee.

Catherine is most succinct when she talks about the upside of her husband's new job.

"He's not driving all over the backwoods of South Carolina," she said.

Getting involved

Mr. Wahl's new position, which he accepted in October, allows him to spend more time in Augusta, where has developed a reputation as one of its most civically active business leaders.

"Phil is really someone who believes in this community and is willing to get involved and do whatever it takes," Mr. Fairey said. "He really rolls up his sleeves and does the work that nobody else wants to do. He doesn't get involved unless he can make a difference."

Mr. Wahl is still affiliated with numerous community organizations, but his main interest in recent years has been his two daughters, 6-year-old Olivia and 3-year-old India.

"There's hardly a day that passes where I'm not asked to be on a board," Mr. Wahl said. "I used to say yes to everything, but I realize I can't do that anymore."

Most of his free time is spent on home improvement projects at his Henry Street home, where he can be found on most evenings lounging on the front porch with his family.

The man who was taught to play golf by Augusta National pros Bob Kletcke and Dave Spencer ("If they saw my game today, they would not claim that," Mr. Wahl says jokingly) tries to get out to the links as much as possible.

The frequency of his visits to Augusta National - his February visit notwithstanding - have obviously declined since the days his father was general manager. Mr. Wahl's work with the annual Red Carpet Tour and Augusta Showcase events, however, guarantees he will be a Masters Tournament spectator each year.

The hallowed grounds of the National mean many different things to people. For Mr. Wahl, it's a monumental object that has kept him in its gravitational pull his entire life.

"I've had numerous opportunities to move elsewhere," he said. "But it's hard to imagine, especially during the first week of April, living anywhere else."

Reach Damon Cline at (706) 823-3486 or damon.cline@augustachronicle.com.