Augusta Changes Top Leadership

Billy Payne, who is succeeding Hootie Johnson as chairman at Augusta National Golf Club, is regarded as a solid traditionalist, and those familiar with him do not expect any significant changes at the Masters or with club policy.

Augusta National announced Friday that Payne, who ran the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, would follow Johnson, who is stepping down after eight years as chairman.

Payne, 58, is the sixth chairman at the exclusive club in Augusta, Ga., and one of the youngest. Clifford Roberts, the first chairman, who helped open the club with Bobby Jones in 1932, was 40 when he assumed the post. After his death in 1977, he was succeeded by Bill Lane, 54.

Johnson is 75 and has served since 1998. He will assume the title of chairman emeritus on May 21, when Payne takes over.

Johnson oversaw a historic overhaul of the course, starting in 1999 when the first cut of rough was introduced. Augusta also grew about 520 yards longer during Johnson’s regime.

The layout now stretches 7,445 yards, the second-longest venue in major championship golf. The biggest changes were in 2001, when nine holes were altered and 285 yards added, and in 2005, when six other holes were redone and the course was lengthened 155 yards. Tees were shifted, trees planted and fairways reshaped.

But Payne isn’t expected to come on board and start the bulldozers.

“Nothing significant, maybe only something minor,” said one source who knows Payne from Atlanta.

Another source, who also did not want to be identified, said it would probably be a stretch to assume Payne would oversee substantial changes, especially during the early portion of his tenure.

The Augusta National chairman is the public figure who heads the private club, but he serves at the pleasure of the membership, which leans more toward custom and traditions than to reforms that are not connected with the setup of the course.

Payne became a member of Augusta National in 1997, the year after he’d served as president and chief executive of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. He had ties with the club before, when he tried in vain to influence the International Olympic Committee to include golf as an Olympic sport and had suggested Augusta National as a possible site for the competition.

A partner with Gleacher Partners, a New York investment banking firm with offices in Atlanta and other cities, Payne is also chairman of Centennial Investment Properties, based in Atlanta, where he is a partner along with his son.

Payne earned a law degree at the University of Georgia, where as an undergraduate he had played football. Johnson was a college football player as well, at South Carolina.

With Payne’s election to chairman, and 53-year-old Fred Ridley’s succeeding 77-year-old Will Nicholson as chairman of the competition and rules committee, the top jobs at Augusta National have taken on a decidedly younger look.

Whether that indicates a trend that may lead to the inclusion of the club’s first female member, an issue that vexed Johnson when he famously clashed with Martha Burk of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, is not certain.

Payne, who was unavailable for comment, will have a Monday teleconference to discuss his new position.