Total eclipse of the carts: Masters practice halts for one-off spectacle | Andy Bull

Augusta National taps into fever for pretty wild' moment with branded solar glasses - which rapidly become a must-have

They say bats come out during a solar eclipse, and owls too. Hippos have been seen to move towards their nighttime feeding grounds, bees to fly back to their hives and refuse to emerge until the sun comes back out, crickets begin to chirrup, mosquitoes come out for the evening, spiders take down their webs to protect them from the nighttime dew. Last time they had a solar eclipse one around these parts, scientists working at Riverbanks zoo over in South Carolina noticed that the gibbons started barking and a pair of Galapagos tortoises immediately began mating with each other.

During this one, the fauna around and about Augusta National was acting unusually, too. Novel behaviours included patrons gathering together away from the shade and craning their necks to stare up into the blue spring sky. There were also sudden, and repeated, oaths, sighs, and other unusual utterances. OH MY GOD! IT'S HAPPENING!" cried a man in the grandstand down at Amen Corner when the moon took its first little nibble out of the sun's bottomcorner.