"Where are you going to make up for it?"

In the April Golf Digest, Jaime Diaz writes about the lack of excitement at recent Masters and concludes that simple tweaks are all the place needs.

This is a significant story for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that it's a major shift from Diaz who penned a Golf World story just three years ago with the subtitle: "On Second Thought, Masters officials knew precisely what they were doing when they executed the most recent changes to Augusta National."

But as with that story, embedded you will find more telling details that speak to the impact of architectural changes at Augusta National. While he focuses on "tweaks," it's clear that Diaz talked to many figures and few feel the course has evolved in a positive way.

For the record, what I thought was a slightly misleading headline (just in case five years from now he writes something titled, "Cut the Rough And The Silly Trees Down Mr. Chairman Ridley, Please":

Adjusting the Volume: For all the fretting that the Masters is trading roars for bores, a few tweaks (and good weather) might be all that Augusta National needs

That's a bit misleading since Diaz proposes restoring two of the most famous tournament holes in golf, which seem like they were recklessly altered when you read some of the really interesting tidbits Diaz picked up from players.

In excusing the defensive nature of the event in recent years, Diaz writes:

The 10 yards that have been added to the front of the tee on the par-4 seventh were sorely needed. The hole was the redesign's worst effort in terms of strategy and aesthetics. Lengthened by 85 yards since 2001, to 450 yards, it was also counter-intuitively tightened with more trees. Even after a good drive, the super-shallow green--which was built in the '30s to receive an exacting short iron or wedge--is unreasonably small for a middle-iron approach. As Woods has said, "I don't have that shot." What used to be a tricky and tantalizing risk-reward has become a hard par where the mandated conservative play is a competitive buzz kill.

I don't see how 10 yards and no tree removal fixes No. 7? Television does not do justice to how absurdly narrow this hole has become (it wasn't exactly wide before!).

Alright, here's where Diaz gets to the main point in all of the ANGC change discussion. The once beautiful balance is gone, putting players in a constant state of defensiveness.

"The whole thought process of playing the golf course used to be, get through the first six holes around par, and you can birdie 7, 8 and 9 ... and you have a great round," Phil Mickelson said last year. "It changes when you can be aggressive--and the whole complexion and the mind-set of how to play the first six or seven holes."

Diaz focuses on the 13th and 15th as the keys to restoring Augusta National to its former self. He explains why players lay up more than ever, then writes:

It's a procession of almost laughably mundane short-iron lay ups to what essentially becomes two 100-yard par 3s, giving the Masters another wedge-fest. The 13th, in particular, used to be considered the best tournament hole in the world, but that reputation is being diminished.

It also contributes to boring golf to play. Without a payoff looming on 13 and 15, players, to use Faldo's term, get "switched off" to creative, aggressive shotmaking and go into a sort of play-for-par U.S. Open mode that has hurt the Masters.

His solutions, which all make sense:

So here's a simple stimulus package: Make the 13th and 15th worth going for in two again.

Augusta National has all the options. The club can move up some tees, soften greens, set less-dangerous hole locations, cut the fairway grass in the direction of the green instead of toward the tee, flatten some speed slot-killing fairway humps, trim some overhanging branches and take out a tree or six, grow the grass around the water hazards just a hair longer--or any combination of the above. The goal, as Jim Furyk succinctly states, should be to "put the gamble back in."

A first step has been taken, with the tee on 15 being moved forward about eight yards. Something similar should happen on 13. The landing area on 13 since the hole was lengthened is much more sidehill than the old one. The awkwardness of the lie, versus the more level former landing area, is a big inhibitor to players going for the green. Length isn't the issue as much as loss of control.

While those are great suggestions, it's hard to imagine 13 and 15 reclaiming their former glory without removing all of the recently planted trees. (Look how absurdly narrow 15 is in the photo accompanying the story. And remember, it plays narrower than that due to the tilt of the fairway.)

Losing the second cut would compensate for restored width by sending errant balls further into trouble. More importantly, the look of width might subliminally encourage more aggressive play.

Ultimately the entire sense of defensiveness established by the club and Tom Fazio has to be eliminated from the architecture in order for The Masters to regain its place as golf's greatest championship. This means losing the rough, having more tee placement options, removing the silly trees and restoring holes like 1, 2, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17 to resemble their riskier, more volatile selves.

Two Weeks Of Green

Yes, we're starting the Masters coverage early here, with all due respect to this week's first ladies major, the Nabisco. After lengthy discussions with my staff, it was determined that most of the site content and daily quotes will be Masters or Augusta related. Therefore I made the executive decision to subject you to Masters green with hints of red and yellow.

I'll be posting more about what's coming up tournament week, but expect daily live blogging using CoverItLive's interactive format, daily clippings from the five newspapers remaining, and everything else you need to know to make your pool picks get you through what has the makings of an exciting week. In the mean time, notice the sidebar links to just some of the major media and official sites. More to come!

And to get us going, check out Will Hersey's short piece on why he loves Butler Cabin. I love it for slightly different reasons.

Masters App Coming To iphone

Thanks to reader Stan for noticing this on the Masters.org site.

Economic Crisis Ushers In A Dreaded Martha Burk Reference

Michael Buteau of Bloomberg talks to Augusta real estate agent Diane Starr about the lackluster rental climate in Augusta as the Masters looms.

Week-long rentals of private homes have dropped to $7,000 from $9,000 for a typical four-bedroom, three-bath property, and to $15,000 from $30,000 for five-bedroom estate homes used for private parties, said Starr, who spent 15 years working for the Augusta Chamber of Commerce’s Masters Housing rental unit before starting her own company two decades ago.

“I’ve been doing this longer than anybody in this town and this is as bad as I’ve seen it,” Starr said during an interview in her office four miles from the club. “We had 9/11 and then Martha Burk. This has hurt us worse than either one of those.”

I don't know about you, but it sure sounds like ticket prices still need to come way down.

Tickets for this year’s tournament, which have a face value of $200 for all four competition rounds, have sold for an average of $3,377 on EBay’s Stubhub, down from $3,930 in 2008.

Sean Pate, a spokesman for Stubhub, said he expects prices to keep falling as the tournament approaches.

The company has sold “hundreds” of one-day passes for an average price of $400, Pate said. Tickets for Monday and Tuesday practice rounds have a face value of $36. Wednesday tickets cost $41. Stubhub has sold just four of the approximately 100 four-day “competition round” passes it has listed. 

"Some of the rounds we've played there, it's been almost to the point where it's laughable."

Ernie Els was asked a couple of interesting Masters related questions on the eve of the Honda Classic.

Q. There's been a lot written about how some of the fireworks are gone, going back to the year you and Phil basically through everything you had at the golf course and there were some dividends for it. Was the course too hard, or do you think that was just a function of weather or have they made it so difficult that there's no wiggle room to allow for weather now, and that's the tipping the point?

ERNIE ELS: Well, I think you've said it all. (Laughter).

I think you're right. 2004 was the last time there was really a nice shootout. I think even if you look at years before 2004, there were a lot more years where there were more exciting finishes.

You could reach a lot of the par 5s. You could take on some of the holes with shorter irons, especially like No. 7, like No. 11. 17 was even shorter. 15, the par 5, you could reach, longer hitters, with maybe a long middle iron. 13 you could get to the green a lot easier. And as I said, 11 was short, so you could go in there with a short iron.

And these greens are all very difficult. They were built by Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones, and there's a lot of slope on that golf course, as you guys know; you've walked it. So there's going to be a lot of slope on the greens naturally; and with the speed of the greens, and as we've seen the weather last couple of years, it's going to be very difficult.

To be honest, the guys are very good on TOUR, but then they will play away from flags, and it's just natural. Like 11, you're coming in with a 3-iron or maybe even a 5-wood with the wind whipping into you, 50-degrees, you're not going to go for the flag. It's impossible. Whether you say hey, the players are not good enough or whatever, the fact of the matter is, professionals are not going to go for a par 4 with water on the left, flag tucked left with wind figured in; you're playing safe.

So that's been the case. I think the last couple of years, especially the final rounds, it's been a bit subdued, and that's going to keep happening if they keep the golf course the same way.

I hear they have changed some things, so we will wait and see. I'll go check out the golf course and see what it's all about, and see where to go from there. But they have definitely -- you know, Mr. Johnson, when he took over as Chairman, he made a lot of changes, and we've got to live by those changes now. And the course is one of the toughest courses in the world now.

They're just getting a little less vague and a lot less diplomatic each year, aren't they?

Q. Geoff Ogilvy said last week, getting back to the Masters, he said if somebody built that golf course today, Augusta National and it didn't have the tradition and the aura and it was the same green complexes and the same speeds and the same difficulty, the pros would walk off it after nine holes and say it's ridiculous.
ERNIE ELS: Well, I won't go that far. (Laughter) It is what it is.

As I said, you know, I'm a fan of Alister MacKenzie's design. We play Royal Melbourne down in Australia where Geoff is from. He plays at Victoria, which is across the road. It has some of the greens, some of the speeds and more wind than Augusta has. And we play golf tournaments down there, too.

He is right in the fact that he says that they kept on, how shall I say, massaging the golf course, to the point where, yes, at times when the weather turns and flag positions are in certain parts, it becomes very much on the edge.

In some cases, yeah, some of the years, some of the rounds we've played there, it's been almost to the point where it's laughable. But, hey, we play a major there. It's still a very good layout, and they just try and test the players. At times, they have gone maybe past the point.

But other than that, they're doing a super job.

"So you feel for Jack a little bit because you're not allowed to do it any more."

I thought Geoff Ogilvy was kind (and insightful) on the subject of what appears to be another Jack Nicklaus design players don't care for. Geoff's typically original analysis:

Q. Tiger earlier in the week said these greens were quite severe. What's the difference between big curvaceous greens like these and big curvy greens like at Augusta National?

GEOFF OGILVY: The greens at Augusta look like they're supposed to -- they look like -- they look right. Most of them are built on the hill that they're on, their natural looking slopes, it doesn't look like people moved too much dirt to make those greens.

These ones look a little contrived. And they're a bit -- Augusta has the bigger sweeping kind of more natural looking hills. These ones have a few little steep things and such.
(Laughter.)

But it's probably almost genius greens. I mean, all the best golf courses in the world have really slopey greens. So you can see what he's trying to do. Greens are getting too flat probably because greens are getting too fast. You couldn't design Augusta right now, every player would walk off if we walked into Augusta the first time we had ever seen it, played a brand new golf course, we would all quit after nine holes. We would all say, "I can't play this, it's ridiculous."

So you feel for Jack a little bit because you're not allowed to do it any more. But they look -- I don't mind big slopes. I just don't -- they just don't look as natural as Oakmont or Saint Andrews or Augusta like the truly natural slopey ones.

So he's really saying that an architect can still pull off big, sloping greens if the contours are built properly.

Now, the three courses cited by Ogilvy all had one thing in common at the time of their creation: they were not constrained by USGA spec greens.  Augusta has since gone to USGA greens and according to the people I trust who played them before and after, have lost a great deal of their character in the way of neat little bumps and rolls.

Not that this is a legitimate defense of poor green design, but it is something to keep in mind as the players pile on The Ritz Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain. (And if they were lukewarm while at the tournament, it only gets worse when they get off property! Playing PGA National this week won't help.)

Masters' Infatuation With All Things Asia Becomes Officially Ridiculous

The exemption they gave Ryo Ishakawa was debatable, but at least he had won some decent tournaments. Last year's to Lliang Wen-Chong was also a bit of a stretch, but a nice gesture I suppose.

But giving a spot to an amateur tournament that has never been played, as they have announced in a weird joint R&A deal, is just nonsense when you consider that (A) the R&A is not exempting the winner to the Open Championship and (B) the winner of any number of amateur tournaments would be far more likely to provide a quality player with a chance of making the cut (NCAA Individual Champ before the coaches shortened it to 54-holes, the European Amateur, etc...).

I know, I know, those events don't sell TV rights to Asia like this will. Yada, yada.

Update on 2009-02-16 04:16 by Geoff

Bob Harig talks to Peter Dawson about the "ever-expanding" major fields and the sheer wonderfulness of this announcement.

Ishikawa Collecting Exemptions By The Day **

Doug Ferguson reports on the third (and biggest-The Masters) exemption this week for 17-year-old Japanese prodigy Ryo Ishikawa. In reading over his bio, I couldn't help but wonder if he really was the right person to kick off the Northern Trust Open's Sifford exemption.

First his bio:

Ishikawa, the youngest player to crack the top 100 in the world ranking, already is at No. 60 and might have been able to qualify on his own depending on he played over the next two months. He is the highest-ranked player to receive the foreign invitation since Shingo Katayama was No. 58 in 2005.

Known as the “Shy Prince” in Japan for his unassuming demeanor, Ishikawa made history two years ago when he won the Munsingwear Open KSB Cup on the Japan Golf Tour, becoming the youngest player to win on one of the six major tours around the world.

He turned pro last year and won the mynavi ABC Championship to go along with six top 10s and ranking No. 5 on Japan’s money list.

According to the AP story, Sifford had this to say about the new annual exemption in his name:

"It's something that should have been done a long time ago," Sifford said in a telephone interview. "This is a wonderful thing. It will give someone a chance."

And the story notes this about the exemption:

While the PGA TOUR this year features players from 19 countries, it has taken a step backward with U.S. minorities, particularly blacks. Tiger Woods is the only member with African-American heritage, but he joined the TOUR years after the success of black players such as Lee Elder, Calvin Peete, Jim Dent and Jim Thorpe.

Tim O'Neal has made it as far as the Nationwide Tour, while Kevin Hall, who is deaf also, has played the PGA TOUR on an occasional sponsor's exemption. Hall won a Hooters Tour event last year.

Sifford attributed to the lack of black PGA TOUR members in part on the high cost to play, and the need for corporate support. Even so, he said the exemption for the Northern Trust Open can only help.

I'm guessing it won't be long before Sifford (and rightfully so) questions how Ishikawa fits into the concept he is lending his name to.

Update on 2009-01-23 21:01 by Geoff

**I have checked with the good folks at Brener-Zwikel, PR gurus for the Northern Trust Open and they report the Izikawa exemption is NOT the Sifford exemption, but instead a Commissioner's exemption.