It’s a Lovely Round in Spite of Weather

It’s sort of funny how this works, but everything seems to get a lot more important when it’s at Augusta National Golf Club.

For instance, Brandel Chamblee ties for the first-round lead at the Masters and everybody is moved to discover that he’s an actual player and not some kind of dessert wine.

All those trees around this place? They’re not simply old trees, they’re stately Georgia pines. And at the concession stands, the pimiento cheese sandwiches, which are probably used as mortar the other 51 weeks of the year, are transformed into a culinary treat, like some kind of cheesy sushi or something.

So when the big-time decision-makers at the most exclusive club in golf came up with the idea of growing some rough to make the course more difficult, the only way the news could have been any bigger was if Bobby Jones himself had come back to make the announcement from the clubhouse veranda.

Let’s face it, Augusta National is sort of tough already, with greens straight out of the cement mixer and enough humps in them to make a camel jealous. After spending a day rolling all over them, golf balls are so disturbed they need therapy. And now Augusta National has added rough. What were they thinking?

There is a theory that the club wanted to Tiger-proof the course after Tiger Woods torched the place in 1997 when he shot a record score of 270 and won by 12 shots.

Club officials said they didn’t need to do anything like that to trick up the course. Of course, club officials also dumped dye into Rae’s Creek so it would look prettier on television.

Anyway, the rough was here. It measures 1 3/8 inches, and that’s not exactly U.S. Open height. But this isn’t the U.S. Open, by gosh.

Speculation was rampant about what impact the rough would have.

What would it do to those poor, defenseless balls? Gobble them up? Hold them for ransom? Propel them sideways when struck again?

Some of the best players in the world got scared. One of them was Ernie Els, who probably shouldn’t have been since he is strong enough to turn the Eisenhower Pine into a stump with a couple of whacks.

As it turns out, the rough was pretty much a non-factor in Thursday’s first round. Like a lot of things here, its importance was overblown.

It is nice-looking, though. From the tee, the rough defines the fairways and displays the shape of the hole from a long way away. Plus, it really looks great on television, which is never a factor to be underestimated.

The rough isn’t long enough to cause a great deal of mischief or short enough to be totally ignored. It’s just there, as if it’s part of the permanent landscape. Like the Hogan Bridge or the Sarazen Bridge or the line at the merchandise pavilion.

About the only player who thought the rough was something to contend with was Colin Montgomerie. He said it makes distance control very difficult.

The players stood in the rough and it was only a little taller than the soles of their shoes. Not only could they find their golf balls in the rough, they could spin the balls enough to put them on the green, or at least somewhere in the same county.

The biggest problem Woods had wasn’t with rough. It was pine cones. Stately Georgia pine cones were the culprit for Woods on the eighth hole, where he made a triple-bogey eight.

Woods pulled his drive left and his ball plunked off a tree. I mean a stately Georgia pine. The ball was between two pine cones.

Woods tried to punch the ball out between a couple of stately Georgia pines, but it clunked off one of them, zoomed backward and got stuck in an azalea bush.

No one is quite sure if azaleas are stately or not.

Anyway, Woods was forced to take an unplayable lie. He returned to the original pine cone spot, knocked the ball over the green, chipped on, two-putted and signed for an eight.

He made three consecutive birdies on the back on his way to a rollicking round of 72 that featured six birdies, three bogeys, one triple bogey and a whole new appreciation of pine cones.

Afterward, Woods seemed relieved he had gotten away with an eight, which is rough enough for him.

There was a weather delay because of thunderstorms in the late afternoon and it rained hard for a while. That probably perked up the rough a little bit because it was beginning to look a little thin and worn.

Chances are, the rough will make a big comeback before this thing is over. The way business is conducted here, they don’t set up things to fail. If hard greens aren’t hard enough, they shut off the water until putting on them is like rolling marbles on a coffee table.

If the rough is considered a non-factor, you can count on them doing something to change that before you can say Amen Corner. You know they’re going to grow it.

The rough will be going way, way up. It’s probably going to be so tall that you can only see the top of Ian Woosnam’s head.

It’ll be the greatest rough in the world, right here at the Masters. Just wait and see.