The Green Jackets filled the back left portion of the press room well before the world’s media was encouraged down the steep stairs from the auditorium.
Former US Amateur champion and Augusta’s chairman Fred Ridley took centre stage between Jim Hyler, chairman of the competition committees, and Tom Nelson, chairman of the media committee – and they between portraits of club co-founders Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones.
It was time for a grand discussion about the existential topics that have caused debate and fury in professional golf in the last 12 months since Ridley last took to the wooden podium at the Masters. He became Augusta chairman in 2017.
He’ll do the same again next year, but right now, golf still has the impossible task of shaking off slow play complaints, taking on questions with no answers about the divide between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf and the implementation of a ball that travels shorter that virtually no player wants.
With the joy of the Par 3 contest starting at noon, a tradition exclusive to the Masters that encourages family communion and general fun, Ridley had only just wrapped up on the serious stuff – the issues that lie behind the greenery and beauty of the Masters tournament.
Here are the key topics I scribbled in my notebook at the back of the press room, topics chairman Ridley discussed that concern you the most.
Fred Ridley Masters press conference
Does the golf ball go too far?
In December 2023, the R&A and the USGA announced a universal roll back that would see anyone who plays the game play a ball that travels a lesser distance, starting in 2028.
The governing bodies see the trend of booming distance as detrimental to the game’s future with a perceived risk that the skill involved in the sport could become obsolete.
There’s a school of thought that these plans aim to protect classic courses like Augusta National and the Old Course at St Andrews, landmarks that are forced to shapeshift to maintain a stiff challenge for the professionals.
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“I am here reaffirming our support of the governing bodies and their efforts to address the issue of distance. Together, the R&A and the USGA have been deliberative and collaborative on their efforts on this topic to arrive at a decision which was, in fact, announced in 2023,” Ridley said on Masters Wednesday, asserting support for the governing bodies.
“Implementation is the next challenge, as we all knew it would be. It is critical for the good of the game that all stakeholders work together as this issue evolves. I’m encouraged by the constructive and positive discussions that are aimed at successfully implementing this important change.”
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Tackling pace of play
As well as the distance debate, Ridley made a marked effort to address pace of play, a debate as old as the game itself but one that has gathered pace in recent months.
The LPGA Tour is aiming to crackdown on slow players in 2025, and the PGA Tour is trialling a stroke-penalty initiative on the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA Tour Americas too. The general perception of slow play is that it makes golf less entertaining and more difficult to watch and engage with.
“Because of the size of our field this year and also because of the commentary in recent weeks, the subject of pace of play is top of mind. Playing without undue delay, as the rules and the game’s traditions dictate, is an essential skill of golf at all levels. Recognising the challenges professionals face each week, I also believe pace of play is an important element of the examination of the world’s best players.
“Golf is a special game because it requires us to be considerate while also being competitive. Respecting other people’s time, including, importantly, the fans who support the game, is a fundamental courtesy. Therefore, I want to encourage continued dialogue on this topic, especially at the professional levels which serve as the most visible representation of our sport.
“I think that example really illustrates the problem,” he added to a question that used an example of slow play during the junior golfer’s Drive, Chip & Putt contest in the week before the tournament. “And unfortunately, these young people are looking to their heroes who play the game each week for a living as to how they’re going to approach competitively playing the game.
“I think it’s been – a good thing that knowledgeable people such as Dottie Pepper have commented on this recently – she made the point, which I alluded to in my comments, about respect for others, including most particularly the people who watch the game, the fans.
“So I think maybe this might be a call to action that perhaps we haven’t seen in the past. I’ve spoken about it a number of times. We will be dealing with that issue this week. I’m not going to tell you that I’m going to be happy with the results, but I think I am encouraged that the PGA Tour is doing some things, experimenting with some timing procedures that might be a little bit more aggressive than we’ve seen in the past.
“As it relates to the Drive, Chip & Putt, I too noticed exactly what you noticed. It’s interesting, but every phase of the competition has the same length chip and the same length putt, so it’s really not necessary to pace that off. They know how many yards that is. But nevertheless that’s what they were doing.”
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A LIV Golf category for Masters qualification
The Open and the US Open announced a specific qualification category for LIV Golfers in 2025. Ridley was asked if the Masters had looked at doing the same:
“Some of the issues that have been raised in connection with world golf rankings, and that is pathways for players to come and go on the LIV Tour as well as the team aspect of the LIV Golf, certainly creates some concern in that regard.
“As it relates to the USGA and the R&A, they certainly act independently. We respect their decisions. We are an invitational tournament. We have historically considered special cases for invitations for international players, which is how Joaquin Niemann was invited, or why he was invited, the last couple of years.
“We feel we can deal with that issue, whether it’s a LIV player or a player on some other tour that might not otherwise be eligible for an invitation, that we can handle that with a special invitation.”
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Angel Cabrera
2009 Masters champion Angel Cabrera was released from jail in 2023 after the threats and harassment against two of his ex-girlfriends. He hasn’t played at the Masters since 2019, and he couldn’t in 2024 for visa issues.
Last year, Ridley said Cabrera was “a great champion” and would be welcomed back to Augusta National. Cabrera is in the field in 2025, and this is a controversial story that has gathered pace in the build-up to the Masters.
“We certainly abhor domestic violence of any type. As it relates to Angel, Angel has served the sentence that was prescribed by the Argentine courts, and he is the past champion, and so he was invited,” Ridley said when asked if he wanted to respond to women’s rights groups who criticised Cabrera’s participation this year.
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The divide between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf
In June 2023, it was publically announced that the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and the PGA Tour had brokered a framework agreement to end the sport’s ‘civil war’. The PIF bankroll the LIV Golf League, which was born in 2022, and has been a rival to the PGA Tour and has pinched stars with lucrative contracts like Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson Dechambeau and Dustin Johnson.
These players were subsequently suspended by the PGA Tour.
Now, in April 2025, a deal still hasn’t been formalised, and there is no clearer view of what a world of harmony could look like in terms of a joint schedule or each player being able to compete against each other again in the same fields on a more regular basis.
“We talk about reunification all the time. And when I think about reunification, I think about the issue that you’ve just raised, and that is having more players – having all of the great players of the game playing against each other more than just a few times a year.
“I’m not really in a position to say what form that should take as far as how the two organisations should come together, what legal structure that may be or what the financial aspects of that may be, but what I would do and what I am doing is just encouraging again – sometimes if you start kind of at eye level, and that is to encourage cooperation and trying to figure out a way to get something done, regardless of what the structure of it is, to where everyone can play together again.
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“So I’m going to continue to be saying that and encouraging the leaders of the organisations involved to try to work together to come up with a solution. But I think we all agree that four times a year is not enough to have the great players of the game together.”
Ridley also said the new LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil was in attendance at the 2025 Masters as a guest.
ALSO: Which LIV Golfers are allowed to play at the Masters?
Augusta recovering from Hurricane Helene
In September 2024, Hurricane Helene ripped through the southeastern states of America. There were extreme winds, tornadoes and flooding, which reportedly led to 249 fatalities. It was the deadliest US hurricane since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The winds killed 11 people from trees falling on homes in the greater Augusta area, so a spokesperson for the National Hurricane Center told BBC Sport. Over 360 homes were destroyed, and 3,000 other homes had major damage.
Trees came down at Augusta National, which is visibly telling to those who know the venue well. One tree fell on the famed 16th green. Ridley spoke of the effects on the local community and the recovery process for the golf club:
“We’ve celebrated the natural beauty of this property for many years, but it is a commitment of our horticulture and agronomy teams and our entire Augusta National staff that we will never take for granted. As we are here today, only six months after Hurricane Helene swept through our community, that sentiment has never meant more than it does at this moment.
“The spirit of our entire Augusta National family throughout the challenges of the months that followed Helene will be a signature of the 89th Masters Tournament. For weeks, water, power, food, fuel and other basic necessities were either difficult or impossible to access. Nevertheless, our employees were out in the community distributing food, cleaning up debris and donating food and money to help others in their time of need.
“I thank each and every one of them, and to everyone in Augusta who made sacrifices to assist others, even when you were impacted yourself, we are deeply appreciative, and we will continue to do our best to support you and our community.”
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