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On the Course
Augusta National is a-changin'
Posted: Thursday April 06, 2000 09:55 AM
By Gary Van Sickle, Sports
Illustrated
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The talk of the 2000 Masters is the changing of the rough.
Several fairways were narrowed and, by altering the contour of the rough's line,
moved. The funny thing is, there probably wasn't this much complaining last
year when Augusta National's grand pooh-bahs stunned everyone by growing rough
for the first time. So this week's complaints seem like a dollar short and a
year
late.
As soon as the rough was put in last year, the future should've been obvious.
The masters of the Masters weren't going to say, Gee, we made a big
mistake. Once rough got a foothold in this tournament, it was only going to
get bigger, shrinking the fairways, and deeper, which hasn't happened yet but
check back in a couple years if Tiger Woods and friends keep posting low
scores.
Among the most talked about changes were the fairways at the first, ninth and
10th holes. The ninth fairway was moved about eight yards to the right and
narrowed by 10 yards. The 10th also dropped 10 yards on its sudden Slim Fast
diet.
"Statistically, there's very little change," Masters chairman
Hootie Johnson said. "This year we average 36.57 yards in width in
the landing zones. That's reasonably generous by major-championship standards.
We get some criticism about changes every
year."
Asked why the changes, made by architect Tom Fazio, were necessary,
Johnson said, "These young men are hitting the ball a long way. They're in
better condition and the equipment is much better. You've heard those things
many, many times. We felt that we could no longer really let them swing from the
heels and we had to require more accuracy off the tee. That is the
reason."
Reaction from players has been mixed, mainly because once again, like a famous
painting that has been retouched, a change has been
made.
"I was in favor of it when they put the rough in last year," Jack
Nicklaus said. "Now they've changed the nature of the golf course. The
Masters has always been different than other tournaments. It's had open
fairways, hard and fast greens. Bobby Jones wanted a second-shot golf
course. I think the concept of the course has changed greatly now. It's looking
more like a U.S. Open than a Masters. You've got fairways that are straight
lines. The course has always flowed with the tree lines. Now a lot of that has
been taken away.
"At the champions' dinner last night, we all said, 'It's a different golf
course, a different tournament. It's not the same thing we remember.' I'm sure
there are reasons for that and they're probably good reasons, but I'm not the
one to answer for those
things."
Besides not being thrilled with the changes, Nicklaus predicted the course will
play much tougher. "I do not believe you'll see a lot of records broken
this week," he said. "You'll see more double bogeys than you've seen
for a long
time."
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