Masters changes, stays same
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Golf is a much different game than it was 10 years ago.
Augusta National is a much different course than it was 10 months ago, before they finished some dramatic renovations. In fact, that has been all the buzz at the club all week: change, change, change.
Yet, the Masters is still the Masters.
“It still has the same feel, no question,” said Mike Weir, the 2003 champion who had been critical of the course lengthening and tightening before this week.
“It’s exactly the same,” said Gary Player, the three-time champion who is playing his 49th Masters. “You wait until the tournament starts. You’ll hear the cheers. It will be great.”
For weeks, all any Masters aficionado has heard have been dire predictions of how the character of the tournament was going to be different because of the course changes, how only a dozen or so golfers really will have a chance (the long hitters and not the guys like Weir), how it won’t be as exciting as it used to be.
Now that the event is here, though, the consensus is that it looks, feels and smells like the Masters always has. That was the idea behind the changes all along.
The club works hard to keep things the same – for good or bad. Augusta National still has no women members, although that didn’t come up once in Masters chairman Hootie Johnson’s news conference.
On the course, the club wants current players to have the same kinds of shots into greens as Jack Nicklaus and peers did 20 to 30 years ago. So it made some holes longer (the par-4 11th is 505 yards) and tighter.
It all is a way of keeping up with technology.
“It looks like it’s a gradual thing that keeps moving out on us,” Johnson said Wednesday in his annual state of the Masters news conference. “The clubhead gets bigger. The ball goes farther. And like Jack Nicklaus said, ‘I don’t know that anyone has the answer.’ “
Nicklaus, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his most unlikely Masters win as a 46-year-old, said, “I think that from the early ‘40s or the late ‘30s, the game didn’t change very much,” he said. “The game, in the last 10 years, has changed dramatically. Today, the game is 90 percent power. We have new equipment that doesn’t fit the golf course.”
He suggests that the long-range solution is to scale back the golf ball so it doesn’t travel so far. The Masters is such an institution that it could come up with its own specifications for a golf ball and players still would show up. Johnson doesn’t want to do it yet. So, the course gets lengthened. What will Augusta look like in 10 years? “I don’t know what the course is going to look like next year,” Johnson said, laughing.
Chances are, Masters week will look the same.
Wednesday at the 70th Masters looked awfully familiar: Players, caddies, friends and reporters mingled under the huge oak tree in front of the clubhouse (yes, some branches are supported by steel cables these days).
During practice rounds, players fooled around by skipping balls off the water on the par-3 16th. “You have to hit 3- or 4-iron and make sure you have a downhill slope,” Chris DiMarco said.
Added Chad Campbell, “a 5 is not enough.”
The nine-hole Par 3 contest was as breezy as ever. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Drew Bledsoe caddied for the winner, Ben Crane. Justin Leonard and Scott Verplank each arrived on the eighth tee carrying young daughters.
Nicklaus’ grandson Charlie caddied for him, and on the final hole, they switched roles. The legend kneeled down and lined up a 5-foot putt for the 11-year-old, who made it – and got a big hug from grandpa.
It gets serious today, when golfers try a “new” course that really isn’t all that new.
“I was so brainwashed about how abnormal this was going to be with all the changes. It’s not that abnormal,” Player said. “Even if the course is unbelievably tough, look at the beautiful trees and the flowers. It’s a paradise.”
Which is what someone always says.