[Matt_Ward]

Guys, Tiger spells it out very directly and right to the point.

Geeze, I guess what I and others have been saying is not off the mark since the world's #1 says much the same thing.

People are harping on what Trevor shot but one needs to analyze a bit more than that to get a read on the overall increased difficulty of ANGC now as it applied to the first full page of the leaderboard. It's not just the length -- but the sheer CARRY you need to CONSISTENTLY achieve to get into the preferred landing areas.

Take the 1st hole -- it used to be 410 yards and strong players could handle the fairway bunker with a real solid strike. NO MORE.

If anything Tiger's statements prove that the FUNDAMENTAL UNDERPINNINGS of Augusta have been drastically altered by people at the club who should know their own heritage and roots from the founders who created the course in the first place.

One other thing --

Guys, lets get off the "blame the weather" thing for what ails Augusta. The simple fact is that the "new" Augusta is a turnoff -- unless the folks manipulate the pins and tee locations the overall course you find today is spot on to what Tiger mentioned.

The Masters had a special place because of it own IDENTITY -- not being an early version of the US Open. Not that Tiger has said as much I would think that folks in this peanut gallery would adjust their thinking. Wishful thinking on my part though.

[Rick Shefchik]

Matt,

I'll get off the "blame the weather thing" as soon as I see a balmy Sunday at Augusta where no one goes low. Till then, I don't think anything's been settled.

[Matt_Ward]

Rick:

The folks at ANGC had a perfect Sunday when Phil beat Ernie but only got the scoring in their favor WHEN THEY PUSHED UP TEE BOXES AND PUT THE PINS IN GATHERING SPOTS FOR APPROACHES. If there was ever an admission that something needed to be done it was that adjustment for that final round.

If they played the course from the max with pins in the places they occupied prior to that Sunday final round the say thing would have happened.

Rick, don't know how much you have really reviewed the course changes but Augusta prior to Tiger's win in '97 was not BROKEN to such a degree that it needed to be turned upside down to get what you see now.

No doubt the wind blew on Sunday but the wind has blown before and scores were made. Tiger hit the nail squarley on the head and this is a guy who's inside the ropes.

The weather argument is nothing more than a smoke screen to the ill-considered "improvements" that were made. End of story ...

[Jerry Kluger]

Jon: My problem with Curtis is that he is very conservative and boring in his approach to the game which works well at an Open but should not work at the Masters.  If he had won a Masters it would have been very boring to watch and not much in the way of risk in a risk/reward situation.  I believe that Bobby Jones saw ANGC as a course with a great deal of strategy and many opportunities to be rewarded for a good aggressive play - that's now taken out of the equation.

Matt:  In looking at it now I think there are two problems with Tiger speaking out - 1.  He almost guaranteed a win and he looks like a sore loser when he didn't win. 2.  When he won his version of the Slam he had months and months to prepare to play a course he was very familiar with.  If on the other hand you complete a Slam starting with the Masters I view it as far more difficult.  The next 3 events are played at courses that are usually not seen by the players with any regularity and they don't have nearly the same amount of time to prepare themselves for those courses.  It was especially difficult when the PGA was still a match play event.  Yes, this year the US Open will be an exception at TP.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Enough with the weather already. The reason Jones chose the first week of April was for dry and windy conditions -- Sunday's conditions and not Saturday's:

"When weather conditions are such that the golf course is wet and the wind quiet, it is much easier to play. We always hope it will not be that way during the first week in April."

His 1959 description of the 1st hole:

"Ordinarily, the fairway bunker on the right presents no problem for the tournament player. With a heavy wind against, however, as often happens, a half-hit tee shot may catch this bunker.

"At the same time a drive down the right side of the fairway is only important when the wind is behind and the hole is cut immediately behind the bunker at the left front of the green. Under these circumstances the drive down the right side makes it possible to play more nearly for the pin with the second shot."

He wanted the wind to blow and from different directions.  The play of the holes thus could vary from day to day.

Also, he wrote the wind is often heavily against the player on 1 -- meaning that the wind is also often heavily against the player on 15.  All this talk about 15 playing in  the "wrong" wind Sunday -- Jones would not have considered that the wrong wind.  It seems like the only wind he would have considered the wrong wind was no wind.

And in fact here's what he wrote about 15:
"This fairway, being on high ground, usually provides more run to the ball than most other holes of the course. It is also more exposed to the effect of any wind which may be present. Two tees, front and back are provided so that the length may be adjusted within wide limits according to playing conditions....

"Under almost any conceivable conditions, the second shot to this hole suggests precarious possibilities. With the wind against, the player must decide whether his power and the state of the game warrant an effort to reach. With a following wind he may have to consider whether he will be able to hold the green, even though it be well within reach."

It's clear that under both helping and hurting winds Jones thought players would give serious consideration to going for it in two.  The course setup had enough flexibility to rebalance the risk and reward depending on the conditions.

Does anyone really think he would have countenanced the play on 15 by the field on any day of the tournament?

The weather thing is a canard. The wind was against on Sunday, supposedly making the hole play not as it should.  On Saturday the hole gave up zero eagles and 16 birdies (-16 under par).  On Sunday it gave up 2 eagles and 12 birdies (-16 under par).  If the weather was as unfavorable on Sunday as it was favorable on Saturday, why so little difference on the reward end?

Mark

[BVince]

Mark, great argument but with all respect Sunday's wind was more than a prevailing wind which Bobby Jones was probably discussing.  It was extreme golfing conditions for that part of the country.  The scoring differential on 15 between Saturday and Sunday being the same is a result that the pin placement on Sunday was much more accessable.  I am not a fan of changing the original course design each year but on a professional golfer level, they are keeping it challenging.  How many people liked watching Tiger hit driver wedge on 15?  That was not the intent of the hole and hardly a par 5.  The changes made it harder, the weather played a factor, otherwise the winning score would have been 12-14 under par, which would allign with what the pros want to see. 

[Tom Birkert]

Tiger was -18 in 1997, which beat Nicklaus' scoring record by 1 shot. In the highlight film of The Masters from '97 they compared clubs hit into several holes, and with the exception of 2 and 15 they were actually remarkably similar.

Could it be that the increased media coverage of The Masters made them introduce the changes? I'm sure there wasn't as much coverage of Jack's win in the 60s due to the internet, press, TV etc... Would they have considered this analysis of the course too much, an embarrassment?

Finally, Tiger didn't 3 putt all week. They changed the course substantially based on an exceptional week of play by Woods. I don't see Pebble Beach or St Andrews doing the same.

[Jim Colton]

Personally, I didn't have any problem with the Sunday set-up at this year's Masters.  They just had tough conditions.  The hole locations are usually set-up so that it's possible to make birdie or better if you hit the right type of shot.  A lot of holes are set-up so if you play the right shot of the right slope, you can feed the ball back down to tap-in range or even hole it out.  The conditions, however, made this much more difficult to do this year.  Contrast that with some recent US Opens where on some holes virtually no shot - good, bad or otherwise - has a chance of getting close to the hole.

Wasn't Tiger the one hoping for tough conditions because it provided him the best chance of the leaders coming back to him?  The tough conditions did occur, the leaders did come back to him, he just didn't make enough putts to win.  What if they get beautiful weather on Sunday and Immelman shoots 68 instead of 75?  Or Tiger makes everything in sight and finishes -13 or -14.  Would we be having the exact opposite conversation...that the course is too easy?

[Jon Wiggett]

Jerry,

Finishing 2nd in 1985 after shooting 80 in the opening round Do the same to Tiger in 1997 and he only wins by 2. Maybe you should reapraise.

[Jim Nugent]

Suppose ANGC left its course untouched after 1997.  No changes at all.  What would Tiger shoot for 72 holes since his first win there?  Would he have won more Masters?


 

[Matt_Ward]

Jim Nugent:

In my mind -- the 72 record would have been broken -- someone in good weather conditions would likely go below 270. But here's the rub -- it might have been Tiger and it might have been someone else.

But really who cares if the golf is that good and the event that much fun to watch.

The Brits didn't get all upset when Nicklaus and Watson dueled at Turnberry in '77 and they both shattered the 72-hole record at that time.

Jim, adding appropriate length to a few holes would make sense. But the extreme lengthening of #7 is inane -- ditto the shifting of the tee box angle on #11, the mega distances being added to the #1 and #18, also need to be re-examined. This is not mentioning also the second cut and added forests they've thrown into the picture too.

Jerry K:

Here's my take -- I applaud Tiger for speaking out. He has the utmost credibility and it's far from whining in my book. Unfortunately, the folks at ANGC believe they can operate in any manner they feel. No doubt they can do whatever they want -- but I'm glad someone of Tiger's standing is not afraid to say what needs to be said.

Byron Vincent:

Please -- when you say Tiger hit a PW into 15 -- how many times did he do that? I mean if it was EVERYTIME then fine lengthen the hole an appropriate amount of distance.

But, no, the folks at Augusta see a particular player do one thing one time and then they have to completely abort the hole and morph it into something insane like.

Let me mention this again in the event you missed it -- Nicklaus shot 271 in '65 and one year later shot 289 and won again. Same course -- no changes of any meaningful type.

The problem is a few stuffed shirts at ANGC got all wet in their pants because they see one or two guys do something and then they expand the solution to the entire field.

The Masters, used to follow a formula akin to the BO and the PGA -- which was a simple one -- allow the guys to play and don't fret about low scores. All of the majors have a unique perspective -- I, along with countless others, don't want to watch the US Open twice in the same year.

Tom B:

Spot on 10000000%

The folks at ANGC got all upset because of one particular guy. Geeze, Jack did the same thing in '65 and as I said above shot over par the next year. Same course.

[Rick Shefchik]

Far be it from me to keep a discussion going after Matt Ward has declared "end of story," but I decided to look up Jack Nicklaus's account of the 1966 Masters to see why the winning score was so much higher than in 1965. He writes:

"If [ANGC] had been at its best and easiest in 1965, it was at its worst and toughest in 1966.

"Despite some heroic efforts by the greens staff, an unusually cold and dry winter had left the Augusta National's fairways as sparsely grassed as I had ever encountered them. Because of strong drying winds immediately ahead of and going into the tournament, the club decided it dare not mow as tightly as normal for fear of losing them entirely. This made for 'fliers'... Compounding this problem was the condition of the greens. They, too, were hard, dry and unreceptive [sounds like 2007 -- my interjection], and they too had been mown less tightly than normal. In consequence, althought the ball rolled a long way on tee shots, getting approaches close to the toughly located cups and putts into the hole set, for me at least, a new kind of Masters examination. One thing was certain as we wound up practice: There would be no record scores this year.

"Under the course conditions I've described, and with the wind gusting up to thirty miles and hour, I felt it [his opening 68] was a notable round of golf. No one else broke 70...

"...in the third round on Saturday...with the wind dropping to a balmy breeze, conditions had become much easier, enabling me after eleven holes played in three under par to regain the lead by a stroke..."

If the conditions can be credited for a 17-shot swing in the winning total between 1965 and 1966, couldn't the conditions the last two years be at least partly the cause of fewer birdies and eagles at the Masters?
 

[BVince]

Matt,

Is it ever ok to hit Driver Wedge into a par 5?  Something had to be done.

[A.G._Crockett]

Mark, great argument but with all respect Sunday's wind was more than a prevailing wind which Bobby Jones was probably discussing.  It was extreme golfing conditions for that part of the country... 
...The changes made it harder, the weather played a factor, otherwise the winning score would have been 12-14 under par, which would allign with what the pros want to see. 

Byron,
I live in north GA, and Sunday was just NOT extreme for an early April day.  Nearly 70 degrees, with gusty winds?  That's spring, and not bad at that.  I actually got bored with the tournament and went out and worked in the yard for awhile.  Not only did I have on shorts and a t-shirt, but ANY kind of bad weather will easily keep me from yard work! 

As to the scoring, if you consider ANGC to be a par 70, which it almost certainly would be for a US Open, then the scores are much, much more in line with Open scoring.  Besides, as I keep writing, forget the total; the low round of the WEEK was 67, and there were only 3.   With near perfect weather and the larger field of Thursday and Friday, why was no one able to shoot 66 or below?

Perhaps more telling, the low number on the back for the week was 33, and there were only 3 of those as well.  Hardly the numbers that we associate with the back nine at Augusta.

[Jon Wiggett]

If you think about it, Jack's 271 record stood for 32 years. Most courses alter their courses but how many have to wait that long to see some one go lower?

[JESII]

I think the green speeds are by far the greatest deterrent to the aggressive style of play so many people crave at Augusta. It's just not as sensible to go for 13 and 15 when the penalty for hitting it over those greens is a real likelyhood of chipping it into the water in 3.

The length is a requirement these days, and the trees are an acceptable experiment in my book when you consider how much the course really is the tournament, but the green speeds put everyone on the defensive...and I am a major proponent of fast greens.

Do we have a reliable measurement of the speed of the greens over the course of the week?

[Mark Bourgeois]

Well, in the radio interview Tiger says it's not possible to Stimp them because they couldn't find a green section of sufficient size given the speeds.

He put it at 12+.

Is that reliable enough?

Mark

PS Re the speeds severely penalizing going long on 15: the firmness + rough makes going long a greater probability, yes? In which case golfers will play defensively.

[Kalen Braley]

Far be it from me to keep a discussion going after Matt Ward has declared "end of story," but I decided to look up Jack Nicklaus's account of the 1966 Masters to see why the winning score was so much higher than in 1965. He writes:

"If [ANGC] had been at its best and easiest in 1965, it was at its worst and toughest in 1966.

"Despite some heroic efforts by the greens staff, an unusually cold and dry winter had left the Augusta National's fairways as sparsely grassed as I had ever encountered them. Because of strong drying winds immediately ahead of and going into the tournament, the club decided it dare not mow as tightly as normal for fear of losing them entirely. This made for 'fliers'... Compounding this problem was the condition of the greens. They, too, were hard, dry and unreceptive [sounds like 2007 -- my interjection], and they too had been mown less tightly than normal. In consequence, althought the ball rolled a long way on tee shots, getting approaches close to the toughly located cups and putts into the hole set, for me at least, a new kind of Masters examination. One thing was certain as we wound up practice: There would be no record scores this year.

"Under the course conditions I've described, and with the wind gusting up to thirty miles and hour, I felt it [his opening 68] was a notable round of golf. No one else broke 70...

"...in the third round on Saturday...with the wind dropping to a balmy breeze, conditions had become much easier, enabling me after eleven holes played in three under par to regain the lead by a stroke..."

If the conditions can be credited for a 17-shot swing in the winning total between 1965 and 1966, couldn't the conditions the last two years be at least partly the cause of fewer birdies and eagles at the Masters?
 

Amen Rick, amen.

We have very clear examples of this in Masters of the past, and its all right there for people to see some of the much high scores that have won in Augusta.

Yet even in a year when the finishing score was lower than average, the talk continues to rage on.

[Rick Shefchik]

By way of contrast, watching the Shells WWOG film yesterday from Pine Valley was a trip back to the days of slower greens, and it certainly didn't diminish my interest. Both Nelson and Littler were breaking their wrists on their backswings on putts of 20 feet, and the balls were often coming up short of the hole.

On 14, Nelson hit his tee shot short of the hole with a lot of backspin, and it looked like it was going to suck backward down a false front and end up well below the pushed-up green. but the ball drifted to a stop short of the false front; had it been an Augusta National green, the ball never would have held the green.

Forget birdies and eagles -- maybe this is what's left of the thrills at ANGC: will Immelman's ball suck back into the water on 15, or will it somehow manage to stop rolling?

[A.G._Crockett]

Far be it from me to keep a discussion going after Matt Ward has declared "end of story," but I decided to look up Jack Nicklaus's account of the 1966 Masters to see why the winning score was so much higher than in 1965. He writes:

"If [ANGC] had been at its best and easiest in 1965, it was at its worst and toughest in 1966.

"Despite some heroic efforts by the greens staff, an unusually cold and dry winter had left the Augusta National's fairways as sparsely grassed as I had ever encountered them. Because of strong drying winds immediately ahead of and going into the tournament, the club decided it dare not mow as tightly as normal for fear of losing them entirely. This made for 'fliers'... Compounding this problem was the condition of the greens. They, too, were hard, dry and unreceptive [sounds like 2007 -- my interjection], and they too had been mown less tightly than normal. In consequence, althought the ball rolled a long way on tee shots, getting approaches close to the toughly located cups and putts into the hole set, for me at least, a new kind of Masters examination. One thing was certain as we wound up practice: There would be no record scores this year.

"Under the course conditions I've described, and with the wind gusting up to thirty miles and hour, I felt it [his opening 68] was a notable round of golf. No one else broke 70...

"...in the third round on Saturday...with the wind dropping to a balmy breeze, conditions had become much easier, enabling me after eleven holes played in three under par to regain the lead by a stroke..."

If the conditions can be credited for a 17-shot swing in the winning total between 1965 and 1966, couldn't the conditions the last two years be at least partly the cause of fewer birdies and eagles at the Masters?
 

Amen Rick, amen.

We have very clear examples of this in Masters of the past, and its all right there for people to see some of the much high scores that have won in Augusta.

Yet even in a year when the finishing score was lower than average, the talk continues to rage on.

I don't see how you can compare this year at Augusta to 1966; absolute apples to oranges comparison.  There are far more differences than similarities.  We did NOT have a cold, dry winter in GA this year, and the course was lush, not sparse.  Nicklaus is writing about the first two days being tough weather; the first two days (as well as the third) were near-perfect.  And the greens then were still bermuda, I believe, and very tough to compare to the current version; bermuda greens are inherently harder to hold on approach shots than bent.

Forget the average score for a minute, and forget Sunday and its wind.  The LOW round of the week was a 67, and there were only three, and the full field got a shot at the course on Thursday and Friday in perfect scoring conditions. 

The whole point of the discussion, and Tiger's comments is NOT the average, but the ability to mount a charge.  Show me one shred of evidence from Thurs-Sat that Tiger is wrong.

[John_Cullum]

I think the green speeds are by far the greatest deterrent to the aggressive style of play so many people crave at Augusta. It's just not as sensible to go for 13 and 15 when the penalty for hitting it over those greens is a real likelyhood of chipping it into the water in 3.

The length is a requirement these days, and the trees are an acceptable experiment in my book when you consider how much the course really is the tournament, but the green speeds put everyone on the defensive...and I am a major proponent of fast greens.

That's basically my take on it as well

[A.G._Crockett]

I think the green speeds are by far the greatest deterrent to the aggressive style of play so many people crave at Augusta. It's just not as sensible to go for 13 and 15 when the penalty for hitting it over those greens is a real likelyhood of chipping it into the water in 3.

The length is a requirement these days, and the trees are an acceptable experiment in my book when you consider how much the course really is the tournament, but the green speeds put everyone on the defensive...and I am a major proponent of fast greens.

That's basically my take on it as well

A very good point.  Green contours built for bermuda, with the fastest bent grass on Earth.  Tough, tough combo.

[Jon Wiggett]

A.G.,

you are of course right. The lowest back nine on Sunday was 33 by Jimenez and this was I think the low score of the week.

[Phil McDade]

Some more statistics:

Average winning score, Masters, 1978-1989: -7.75

Average winning score, Masters, 1990-2001: -11.75

Average winning score, Masters, 2002-2008 (after major lengthening and modifications): -7.71

Earlier in the thread, Shivas suggested what has been missing in recent Masters has been the dramatic moves both up and down the board, or what he calls the Beta factor. Others (me included) have suggested what's missing is the ability of a golfer to make a charge, i.e, a sustained sequence of under-par holes.

Question: Are our views of Augusta largely formed by a (roughly) 12-year period (1990-2001) that saw both historically low winning scores and drama of the highest order (the Faldo-Floyd playoff, Woosie's putt on 18, the Couples-Floyd duel, Crenshaw's ode to Harvey, the Norman collapse/Faldo charge, Tiger's historic 12-stroke win, the O'Meara/Couples/Duval shootout that also featured Jack's front-nine charge at the age of 52, the Olazabal-Norman duel, the Tiger/Duval/Mickelson shoot-out)?

Second question (I don't know the answers): When did players move from persimmion to steel/titanium-head drivers? When did ball technology (both length and the "straighter" ball) really take off? Was it sometime during the 1990-2001 run of historically low scores at Augusta? Did technology in effect catch up to Augusta sometime around 1990, and eventually lead to the changes that the Masters committee thought it had to adopt prior to the 2002 tourney?

One other interesting set of numbers: Hogan's 274 in 1953 (when he was at the absolute peak of his game) and to a large extent Jack's 271 in 1965 (when he was at the absolute peak of his game) are arguably historically anomalous scores. Hogan beat the old scoring record by five shots, and no one (other than Palmer's 276 in 1964) came close until Jack in 1965. Between Jack in 1965 and Tiger in 1997, only Floyd (playing the last year I believe in which the greens were bermuda) in 1976 matched it (in a tourney he won by eight shots), and only Seve in 1980 came within four shots of it, before Tiger.

[Matt_Ward]

Phil McDade:

Love all the stats but just answer one key question -- why were all the massive changes to the fundamental core architecture for Augusta needed post Tiger's win in '97?

Please let me know the answer to that FIRST because all other stuff is secondary.

Tiger's comments are spot on in my book.

p.s. Phil, you left out all the exciting Masters that happened from '75 to '89.

Byron:

Beg your pardon -- but if the world's #1 player does something one time or a very limtied few times what's the harm? It's not like Larry Mize or Corey Pavin was hitting PW into the hole. Try to realize that when Tiger does something it's super human and as a result people should not overreated simply because of him.

If you were to take the solution to baseball terms -- then the fences for a home run would be moved back to 500 feet in all situations. It's frankly overkill.

Oh, by the way, what did Tiger actually SCORE on the hole when he hit PW into the hole. That's the more important question to me.

Rick S:

After Jack torched the layout in '65 he faced the same course -- minus the weather factor -- the following year. The folks then didn't massively overreact and make wholese changes of a monumental sort.

Rick, no one can truthfully answer what was "wrong" with August prior to Tiger's win in '97. I see no problem with adding length in certain areas but the whole premise of what Augusta signified was turned on its head by people who simply got way out of control with the solutions they offered.

Rick, I am not going to say weather didn't play a factor the last two years but the architectural changes made were the much bigger story. How bout you come clean and admit as much? The idea of Augusta was to be similar to TOC -- it is not fastly becoming the April version of the US Open and I don't see how the unique nature of what Augusta was for so many years needed to be modified to such a wholesale extent.

JES II:

If you think the trees that have been ADDED are an "acceptable experiment" then you should take the time to read what Jones / Mackenzie really wanted for Augusta. For all the talk I hear about restoring the nature of such courses as Merion -- the same belief should follow for August as well. The word in a nutshell is consistency of thought and application of remedy.

The trees simply go completely against the grain of what for so many years was the core of Augusta's greatness from an architectural standpoint. If you don't see that then you are truly misunderstanding what made August so very special for so many years until recently.

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