EarthGolf

The Wall Street Journal’s John Paul Newport writes an article discussing the second cut’s influence at the Masters after 10 years. John, obviously somebody who knows his stuff, goes to the guy with the most “street cred” to discuss the issue - Ben Crenshaw.

“My sense is that they’ve widened the fairways a little bit this year,” Mr. Crenshaw said. “But that sight” — he motioned toward the first and ninth fairways below us, both lined by the darker-green second cut — “is still a little unpalatable to my eyes.”

To Mr. Crenshaw, the second cut is unnecessary given the other many strategic challenges that Augusta poses, and given that the founding designers, Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie, chose not to grow deeper grass near the fairways. They took their design philosophy in part from the strategic but roughless St. Andrews links in Scotland.

“There’s no question that Augusta National and the other courses in the world need to do something because the equipment has got away from us,” he said, referring to the increased distance that the top players in the world are hitting the ball these days. But the second cut takes away some of the angles into the greens that strategically inclined players like to play. “There are many ways around this course. It was designed to make you think,” he said.

Ben’s being very kind and sticking to just the topic at hand with regards to what has taken away some of the angles into the greens. The club claims that the rough imposes a one-half stroke penalty. Apparently, they think that the rough is imposing that penalty and that were the rough not there, the penalty would be less.

Could they be more wrong? First, the penalty is not because of the rough - it’s because of an improper angle to the green. Second, the rough actually prevents a number of balls from finding a far more imposing penalty - having to hit from pine straw between trees.

Ah - but the club has realized this to a point and has added MORE trees because the rough isn’t, apparently, penalty enough. So the corridors are getting tighter and the rough is coming in further (from zero). And that means that founder Bobby Jones’ and architect Alister MacKenzie’s philosophy of having the course be in “the spirit of St. Andrews” gets more and more bastardized each year.

Each year we hear more and more about how dull and boring the Masters is - how the roars are gone. How the course has gone from anticipation of a charge to anticipation of a train wreck. That more trees were added or bunkers widened. That the rough is a little tighter or a little longer. With each tweak, Augusta loses a little more of itself and, by their symbiotic relationship, golf loses a little more of itself.

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