The greens: more quirks
Both DeVries and Esler point to
restoring key hole
locations to provide interest and challenge
for both
member and tournament play.
“Like many Golden Age
designs, Augusta
National has lost much of its original
green
surface area,” says Esler,
who has consulted at classics like Glen View
and Chicago Golf Club.
“Not so much by neglect as is typical,
but via
conscious
reconstruction. Gone are MacKenzie’s
eccentric wings and tabs
and false
fronts.” Esler notes that
any meeting with club officials must
include
discussion of
restoring the front-left hole location on the par-3 12th
and a
wily front-right spot on the par-5 15th to “reclaim MacKenzie’s
delightful creation.”
DeVries agrees. “Today’s longer hitting pros have
altered the
strategy at Augusta to one where the players hit it as far as
possible
and then depend on their wedges instead of angles of
play to get close
to the pin. The greens are still dictating
play with their severity,
but the
best golfers are emphasizing
power over placement so they can
use their shorter
clubs for
approaches.
“By returning some of
the more irregularly shaped
greens of the original design, say the
original bunkerless,
L-shaped 7th or the
boomerang 9th to their
eccentric shapes,
it would require more accuracy with a
wedge by the
pros and
will be fun for the members by reintroducing angles of
play
for them on their longer approaches to tighter, more remote flagstick
locations.”
Past vs. future
Ironically, it seems that for our
architects, the future
of Augusta National lies in the past.
At the
same time, they do realize that
balancing the
challenges of today’s
game with the intentions of MacKenzie and
Jones may require extreme
measures.
“Preserving the
most celebrated aspects
of the
course’s design for Masters
competitors, namely no rough and multiple
angles of play,”
says Weed, “would require the back tees to be at least
8,250
yards and the fairways stripped, drained, SubAired and sand
capped to ensure the
ball runs out in all conditions.”
Be careful what you suggest. That’s just
what may happen.
