The Masters 2007

This years Masters was a Amazing event with the good and bad points of Augusta National Golf Club summed up nicely. I think it was exciting Masters with a Talented player who played “out of his skin” winning(Zach Johnston), but you cant help but fell that that if Tiger’s shot on 15 had came off and he had won, the general golfing public would have appreciated this years Masters a lot more.

The main thing that must on struck a lot of viewer as it did to me was the unbelievable speed of the greens which were even faster than Normal. Augusta National refuses point-blank to revel the speeds of its greens but they estimated to have increased them from 12 to 14. There have actually been faster greens in the US Open but none have had the length, wind, green size and most of all Undulations that Augusta Had this week. Although I love fast green and my usual mentality is the faster the better, I think this takes I too far and puts Greenkeepers under too much pressure to achieve the unachievable all year round(as does Augusta’s Greenness) .

There has been a lot of criticism in the press about winning score been over par. The strange thing is that the majority of these people like me, would hold a traditional view of Golf Course Architecture and believe that par is irrelevant because in the end it does not effect the Winner of the competition. If you look in the History Books Robert Jones (He didn’t like being called Bobby) shared my view that the best and most exciting holes are those which are Half-Par holes. The best and most well known example of this is Augusta’s own “Amen Corner” pairing of 11th and 13th which are were originally and still are Par 4.5 even thought they are par 4 and 5 on the card respectively.

In my opinion Augusta still has the half pars but the problem is that is mainly defence and very little attack. The Tournament Committee are trying to “Strengthen” all the Par 4 up to the 4.5 mark which has left the only real par 3.5 the par 3 4th. Also only the longest hitters can hit the par 5s in 2 leaving the 13th as the only 4.5 in this category and even at that it is only scraping in. These Figures add up to give a par of 77 which was the stroke Average for the week. So Zach Johnson finished on -19 not +1.

The Standard Scratch for the course would have been about 83, which is really high even for a “Championship” Set-up. I believe the slope would have been totally off the scale. I would predict that any one who is not a single figure player would struggle to break 100 mainly because of the speed and difficulty of the Greens! But we must remember that it does not play like this all year and is actually closed for the 6 month before the Masters!

I don’t think this was the Augusta that Jones envisioned many years ago as a course that his friends who were “hackers” could enjoy a fun round and shoot a good score. But all Augusta’s critics must stand up and admit that he would be more than proud about that the second part of his design brief that it would test the best players in the world.

A lot of conversations are started about golf course architecture at this time of year they usually start with “I wish our course was as green as Augusta”. I usually try to ‘convert’ them to Fast and firm and tell them how the Augusta model is not sustainable all year round. I fell I should spread the ‘Holy Gospel’ of Fast and Firm.

This Masters will go down in history for all the wrong reason some may say but it was good TV and a good talking point for golf course architecture and I can't wait to next year.