The Peper Files

Another gem from the "When Good Editors Move To St. Andrews and Don't Care Anymore" Files, has Links Magazine columnist George Peper dismantling the claim that Jones and MacKenzie would approve of recent Augusta National changes.

This appears to be another sign that the club's pre-tournament media offensive has backfired.

Let’s face it. If Jones and Mackenzie had been cryogenically preserved and brought back to life, they’d take one look at what has happened to their course and head straight back to the freezer. Augusta National is no longer a Jones/Mackenzie course—it’s a Jones/Mackenzie/Clifford Roberts/Perry Maxwell/ Robert Trent Jones/George Cobb/John LaFoy/George Fazio/Joe Finger/Byron Nelson/Jay Morrish/Bob Cupp/Jack Nicklaus/Tom Fazio course—and in the process of all that revision the guys at the wheel have, to borrow a Scot’s expression, lost the plot.

Hootie, if you think your founding architects would approve of what you and your predecessor chairmen have wrought, it’s time you started reading something other than putts. Pick up a copy of Mackenzie’s The Spirit of St. Andrews, written in 1932, the year he completed Augusta National.

Peper goes on to look at various holes, contrasting the changes that have taken place with MacKenzie's own writings.