Masters has veered a little off-course

It may represent a rite of spring, the first major championship of the season, and an emerald television fantasy for golf fans everywhere, but by nearly universal acclaim, the Masters -- at least in terms of its legendary Sunday afternoon drama -- isn’t what it used to be. The reasons for this lie primarily in changes made to Augusta National since the late 1990s, alterations undertaken in attempts at restoring much of the challenge lost to two decades of unregulated advances in equipment.

In this light, the lengthening of the layout (from 6,925 yards in 1998 to 7,435 yards today) makes perfect sense; with longer hitters occasionally reaching the back-nine par fives with second-shot seven- and eight-irons, something had to be done to maintain a representative level of challenge. More controversial, however, has been the planting of trees to narrow several previously generous fairways and, most egregious, the growing of rough -- the latter being a particular affront to the memories of club founder Bobby Jones and course architect Alister MacKenzie, who both abhorred long grass, and made a well-recorded point of building Augusta without any.

Interestingly, while scores have generally risen in the new millennium, they have not done so precipitously, with the tournament winner still managing to better 280 (eight under par) five times since 2000. But if the rise in scoring hasn’t been a stark one, the decline in Sunday drama has been; no longer do thunderous roars regularly echo among the pines, announcing that Jack or Arnold or Tiger is once again mounting a furious back-nine charge.

And that, more than anything, cuts at the heart of what made the Masters so special.

So what can be done to bring back the thrills of Masters Sunday? Though club officials seem loath to undo the rough-and-tree-laden havoc they have wreaked upon their once-unique layout, a great deal of drama can be restored simply by making relatively minor changes to two holes, the par-five 13th and 15th.

The former, a sweeping dogleg left whose green is famously fronted by a tributary of Raes Creek, played as short as 465 yards for many years but was recently extended to 510 with the purchase of additional land from neighboring Augusta Country Club. Some of this added length was surely necessary, but at 510 yards, far too many players now elect to lay up on their second shots, denying fans one of the most thrilling approach shots in golf -- and resulting in only eight eagles being recorded during the 2008 tournament.

But in addition to shortening the 13th by, say, 15 yards, here’s a more creative suggestion: restore a narrow front-left section of green, which, back in 1955, was largely replaced by the first of today’s four greenside bunkers. This would add yet another dramatic pin position, while also providing a shorter, more “reachable” target likely to tempt virtually all competitors to have a go on their second shots.

And then there is the 530-yard, pond-fronted 15th, another reachable three-shotter whose fairway was originally so wide that Jones once happily opined: “The tee shot may be hit almost anywhere without encountering trouble.” Here, the removal of contemporary rough and trees from the fairway’s right side is crucial, for their effect (combined with the growth of some native trees on the left) has been to minimize enormously the number of players attempting to reach the green in two. The result? A paltry three eagles last year -- and a profound decline in late-Sunday drama.

Although higher scoring clearly remains a paramount (if ultimately pointless) goal, the need to regenerate final-round excitement has become too obvious for club officials to completely ignore. Thus while traditionalists will scoff that holes like the 450-yard seventh (which annually draws the most player complaints) and the 505-yard 11th (now just a crushingly hard par four) today stand antithetical to the design concepts of Jones and MacKenzie, these minor adjustments to the 13th and 15th can at least reestablish golf’s most dramatic five-hole stretch (Nos. 12-16) and again make Sunday afternoons sparkle.

And that, after all, is what everyone really remembers.

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