Friday, April 06, 2001
Let Augusta be Augusta
AUGUSTA, Ga. — They worry it has become a home run hitter's golf course. High-tech clubs and golf balls have turned Augusta National into Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out. They even have hand-operated scoreboards.
Come to the Masters. Go yard.
This would be dire. If it weren't crazy.
“In the last five or six years, the golf course has played much shorter than it did for the players in the '50s, '60s and '70s,” Phil Mickelson said.
He's right. But what about the scores? If you hit it closer to the green off the tee, shouldn't scores be lower? As Steve Flesch said, “It's not as tough a golf course when you've got a short iron in
your hand.”
Makes sense. But the scoring average for everyone in the 2000 Masters was 74.001. In 1970, it was 73.994. In '80, 73.112. In fact, in 13 of the last 20 years, scores were lower than last year.
In '92, the average was 71.909. The equipment must have been fabulous that year.
Blame the ball
Jack Nicklaus blames the golf ball. The ball goes too far. Ball makers want to claim their ball goes farthest. The United States Golf Association won't ban certain golf balls because it doesn't want to be sued.
So professional golf is on its way to ruin, one juiced ball at a time. “Every golf course in this country (is) obsolete, including this one,” Nicklaus said. On Thursday, Augusta Obsolete caused Tiger Woods to shoot a thoroughly current 70. But never mind.
Nicklaus has warned against the evils of the new ball for 10 years. He's starting to sound like those people in Montana who stock their cellars with dried beans. Nicklaus would like it if everybody played an exploding ball. Everybody but him.
Repeat after me:
It's not the equipment. It's the weather. At Augusta, it's always the weather. And the greens.
When the wind is blowing and the greens are crackly dry, Augusta could be a pitch-and-putt and par would still be a good score. You can be Sammy Sosa on the tee. You still have to be Tony Gwynn around the green. In a typical wind, hitting the 12th green is like landing a blimp on a tennis court.
Yet Hootie Johnson, Masters chairman, says at least four of the course's 10 par-4s will be stiffened. They'll be longer. They'll demand more accuracy off the tee.
This will only change the entire character of the golf course. The Masters is fun. It's fun because players can score here. The place is full of go-for-it par-5s and wide, bomb-able fairways.
Take that away and you've got the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open is torture.
Back, back, back
They've already moved some tee boxes back. They've grown some peach-fuzz rough, to make it harder to spin a short-iron shot. They've added trees. Now, Johnson said, they'll push back the tees on some of the par-4s and, probably, narrow the fairways. All in the name of “attempting to have it current with the golf game today,” Johnson said.
Funny. But Thursday's leader, 32-year-old journeyman Chris DiMarco, credited his 65 to “never putting myself into a position where a putt got away from me.”
If the wind picks up and the rain stays away, putting will again be like fitting a manhole cover into a carry-on bag. And no one will say the course is too easy.
E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.
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