Does Augusta National need to be saved from the big hitters?

It’s the poster child for those who wanted to roll back the golf ball. Augusta National is the classic course we’re told must be saved – the one advocates yearn to be “played as Dr Alister MacKenzie intended”.

It’s also the layout that’s constantly trying to find new ways of stretching its confines. Drone images of bulldozers carving out another niche in the Georgian parkland are part of the build-up to any Masters Tournament. Last time it was the 13th.

The R&A and USGA’s decision to roll the ball back for all golfers from 2030 has been hailed by golf course architects as respecting the “intended design strategies of older golf courses”.

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Augusta has seen its fair share of change down the decades – with the golf ball or, more specifically, the distance competitors in the modern game hit it, cited as cause.

They tried to “Tiger- proof” the course in the wake of the Big Cat’s dominance and the introduction of the Pro V1 ball in the early noughties.

More recently, the 5th had 40 yards added in 2019 and, two years ago, 20 yards was stuck on to the 15th. There must have been a shortage of crystal before that one. Not a single eagle was made on the hole over the four days of competition.

All in all, it’s said they’ve added more than 600 yards since the 90s.

Masters chairman Fred Ridley was unequivocal about the most recent construction on 13. “We believe this modification will put a driver in play more often and restore the element of risk and reward that was intended in the original design of the hole.”

But A Golf Digest article, citing every alteration made to the historic layout, shows how the course has always been evolving.

And the 13th to which Ridley refers was originally envisaged by MacKenzie as a par 4. He is even said to have regarded it as one of his best.

So given the way the course has moved with the times, is big hitting at Augusta such a big deal?

Data expert Lou Stagner could never be described as in the “roll back” camp. And if the advancements in technology were allowed to continue unabated, he happily dismisses the worries about the future of classic courses.

“We’re talking about a golf course that literally bought a neighbourhood and overpaid to every house in the neighbourhood – except one – and knocked them all down so they could have a parking lot,” he told The NCG Golf Podcast.

“I don’t really care what Augusta does and where it ends up. I still enjoy watching it. I’ve always enjoyed watching it, and that’s not going to change. I’m not sure what we’re protecting it from.

Augusta National: “We hope there will not come a day when the Masters… will have to be played at 8,000 yards”

“And we’re only focussed on the professional game here. We’re not even talking about amateurs, and amateurs make up 99.9 per cent or more of golfers. We’re talking about a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.”

Stagner also argued that very few approaches on 13 were under 190 yards and almost none were under 160.

Are the clubs used, though, now completely different?

How many long irons do you see being struck at the Masters now compared to years gone by? Yet some of those shots are the stuff of major legend.

Who can forget Bernhard Langer’s 3-iron from a hanging lie at the 13th in 1993, or Nick Faldo’s back-and-forth between 2-iron and 5-wood on the same hole when hunting down Greg Norman three years later?

Augusta has had seemingly endless ability to find or buy new land, or tweak what they’ve got, but there will surely come a time when they hit their boundaries and have nowhere to go.

“We hope there will not come a day when the Masters, or any golf championship, will have to be played at 8,000 yards,” he said when considering the R&A and USGA’s Distance Insights report that concluded increased hitting was harming the game.

Perhaps the final word is best left to MacKenzie himself, who addressed the issue of golf balls going too far nearly a century ago.

As players now try to calculate whether they’ll lose 15 yards – as predicted for the very biggest hitters on the professional tours – or up to five for amateurs, the architect believed the teeth gnashing was all largely irrelevant.

“Players at first sight would dislike driving an appreciably shorter distance than they had been accustomed to,” he wrote in his posthumously released book, The Spirit of St Andrews.

“They would, however, soon get over this when they found their usual opponents were similarly limited, and particularly when they found they got more golf with less golfing.”

Now have your say?

Should Augusta National be protected from the game’s big hitters? Does it need lengthening at all, and does it take anything away from the course? Is the golf ball roll back a lot of fuss? Let me know by leaving me a comment on X.

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