Sven - I asked in a recent thread about "what changed" at Augusta - in '65 Jack broke Hogan's tournament record, and was hitting mid iron 2nds into the par 5s. But besides a little tinkering, even 30 years later the course still played at basically the same length as it did in '65. In answer to my question, folks noted (probably rightly) that JN and his score had been seen as an outlier, and not indicative and so didn't lead to big changes; that the last decade of equipment advances has done more to increase distance than did all the advances from all previous decades combined; that Tiger, unlike Jack, was not an outlier in that sense, i.e. almost everyone is now hitting iron 2nds into the Par 5s. As I say, those are probably correct answers to what's changed -- but the article references a big one. Did you notice how, seemingly out of the blue and almost unconsciously even, Dave Anderson moves from the blather of the architects about continual change at Augusta to writing "but to defend par at Augusta National from graphite shafts and other equipment improvements..." Wait - where did THAT idea come from? (Even the architects quoted in the piece don't raise it, at least not overtly). Anderson writes it so confidently and matter-of-factly, AS IF Augusta had clearly cared about and been definitely trying to "defend par" for a long long time, but suddenly now had its hands full because of the new technology. But is that in any way true? Did they fret when Hogan shattered par by a big margin in the 50s, or when Jack shattered Hogan's record and par in the 60s? I've never seen anything that would suggest that - never seen anything that would suggest that Augusta was about defending par. And yet, there we are in the mid 90s, with a top flight writer at a top flight paper "framing" the whole issue and his whole article and all the changes to come based on this, what can I call it, "made up history" of the Masters trying to defend par. And in one stroke, he suddenly seems to have given permission to RTJ and Rees and Fazio etc to join in and agree and rationalize any changes they wanted -- "well, you know, we HAVE to defend par against today's best players". No one ever cared before, and then they did? What changed? Was it Hord Hardin, or Jack Stephens or Hootie Johnson? Because from what i can tell, even Cliff Roberts -- who seemed concerned just about EVERYTHING else -- wasn't concerned about 'defending par'.