Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 2: A bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, bri Egg, Frida Egg, Bride egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Frida Egg podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and
Speaker 3: this is a Midweek Masters episode. Two different segments. Today,
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk to Bob Crosby, the great golf historian,
Speaker 3: about the history behind four particular holes at Augusta National.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about how they've evolved and what
Speaker 3: those evolutions mean. But first I want to give some
Speaker 3: reflections on the pre master's press conferences we've heard over
Speaker 3: the past past few days. People said a lot of
Speaker 3: interesting and potentially significant stuff, so I thought i'd zero
Speaker 3: in on a few specific topics. First of all, the
Speaker 3: chairman of Augusta National, Fred Ridley, gave his very anticipated
Speaker 3: press conference on Wednesday, and there were a couple of
Speaker 3: highlights that I wanted to focus on. His first big
Speaker 3: announcement had to do with Augusta Municipal Golf course, known
Speaker 3: locally as the Patch. Augusta National is, according to Chairman Ridley,
Speaker 3: supporting a joint partnership with the Patch, Augusta Technical College
Speaker 3: and the First Tea of Augusta to quote usher in
Speaker 3: a new era for public golf in our city. There
Speaker 3: are three basic objectives here. First, Augusta Tech will start
Speaker 3: educational programs for future workers in the golf industry, and
Speaker 3: those programs will be linked with the Patch and the
Speaker 3: First Tea of Augusta. Second, the partnership will create what
Speaker 3: Ridley called an affordable pathway for anyone who wants to
Speaker 3: learn the game. And third, Augusta National will assist in
Speaker 3: renovating the Patch and the First te facility. This is
Speaker 3: really exciting news, not only for Augusta, but I think
Speaker 3: potentially for the golf world more broadly. Everything that Augusta
Speaker 3: National does ends up serving as a model for other clubs, courses,
Speaker 3: and organizations in the golf world, and that dynamic has
Speaker 3: not always been healthy. Just look at the influence Augusta
Speaker 3: Nationals has had on golfer's expectations for maintenance and agronomy.
Speaker 3: That hasn't been a positive influence, I would say on
Speaker 3: the sustainability or the environmental reputation of the game. But
Speaker 3: this partnership with Augusta Municipal, the first he and Augusta Tech,
Speaker 3: could be an enormously beneficial model for other wealthy, powerful
Speaker 3: organizations to follow, and I really hope they do. Either way.
Speaker 3: What happens with the patch should be a great story
Speaker 3: to track in the coming years, and we'll definitely keep
Speaker 3: up with it at the Frida Egg, all right. The
Speaker 3: second part of Ridley's press conference that I wanted to
Speaker 3: pick out is his comments on the Model Local rule
Speaker 3: for the golf ball that the USGA and RNA recently proposed. Basically,
Speaker 3: this rule would allow individual tournaments like the Masters to
Speaker 3: implement a reduced flight golf ball. As you are no
Speaker 3: doubt aware, Augusta National has had to make a tremendous
Speaker 3: number of changes over the past twenty five years to
Speaker 3: keep up with distance gains at the elite male competitive level.
Speaker 3: The most recent of those changes was moving back the
Speaker 3: thirteenth t thirty five yards to restore some decision making
Speaker 3: to that famous par five. So I think almost everyone
Speaker 3: expects Ridley and Augusta National to support the Model Local
Speaker 3: rule and adopt the MLR ball when it comes out.
Speaker 3: But of course we were waiting to see what exactly
Speaker 3: Ridley would say about the matter, because what Augusta National
Speaker 3: does on this issue will be hugely, hugely consequential. And
Speaker 3: here's what he said. As the comment period remains open,
Speaker 3: we will be respectful of the process as the USGA
Speaker 3: and the RNA consider this important issue. We have been
Speaker 3: consistent in our support of the governing bodies and we
Speaker 3: restate our desire to see distance addressed. Very simple, kind
Speaker 3: of vague, but he did get more explicit in answering
Speaker 3: a question from the press. He said, our position has
Speaker 3: always been that we support the governing bodies. I think
Speaker 3: in a general sense we do support the proposal, but
Speaker 3: because it's in the middle of the comment period, it
Speaker 3: could change. The whole purpose of the comment period is
Speaker 3: to take the input from the industry, so we will
Speaker 3: look at the final product and make a decision. But
Speaker 3: generally we have always been supportive of the governing bodies.
Speaker 3: I've stated that we believe distance needs to be addressed.
Speaker 3: I think the natural conclusion is, yes, we will be supportive.
Speaker 3: Ridley also made a comment later on about how when
Speaker 3: he first played in the Masters himself. In the late
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, the course was about sixty nine hundred yards
Speaker 3: and it was still around that distance when Tiger Woods
Speaker 3: won in nineteen ninety seven. Now the course is over
Speaker 3: seventy five hundred yards long, and he is aware of
Speaker 3: that problem. Undoubtedly. My takeaway here is that Augusta National
Speaker 3: will do what the USGA and RNA want to do
Speaker 3: with regard to the rules of golf. Ridley's most important
Speaker 3: talking point was we are and have always been supportive
Speaker 3: of the governing bodies. That I think is the north
Speaker 3: star for them. So if the Model Local Rule comes
Speaker 3: through the comment period, intact, I would assume that the
Speaker 3: Masters will implement the new ball. To me, that means
Speaker 3: that the opponents of the rollback, most significantly the major
Speaker 3: equipment companies and the players on the PGA tour who
Speaker 3: get paid by those companies. Those opponents of the MLR
Speaker 3: will try to put their thumbs on the scale now
Speaker 3: and in the coming months. They don't want the MLR
Speaker 3: to go through because they know if it does, it
Speaker 3: will be put into effect by the Open, the US Open,
Speaker 3: and the Masters, and if those three tournaments go with
Speaker 3: the MLR, the PGA of America and the PGA Tour
Speaker 3: are going to fall in line. I don't think they
Speaker 3: have the clout to stand up to the USGA and
Speaker 3: r and A when those organizations have the backing of
Speaker 3: Augusta National Golf Club. I may be wrong about that,
Speaker 3: but I think that's just how things are in the
Speaker 3: golf world. That's where the real power is. Okay, moving
Speaker 3: on from Ridley's press conference. The other set of comments
Speaker 3: from the pre tournament interviews that I wanted to address
Speaker 3: are from players about the newly lengthened thirteenth hole. I
Speaker 3: thought a lot of these were really interesting, especially the
Speaker 3: ones from Dustin Johnson and John Rahm. DJ's comments, which
Speaker 3: he made on Monday, got a fair amount of traction.
Speaker 3: I would say the key quote was this. He said, yeah,
Speaker 3: most likely I'll be laying up all four days. The
Speaker 3: tea was moved back thirty five yards, and DJ says
Speaker 3: that that's going to cause him to default to laying
Speaker 3: up on the hole. This prompted a lot of people
Speaker 3: to complain. It was like, oh man, they took all
Speaker 3: the excitement out of the hole. We want to see birdies,
Speaker 3: we want to see eagles, we want to see people
Speaker 3: going for the green, and if if DJ doesn't go
Speaker 3: for the green, then who will. But I think it's
Speaker 3: important to pay attention to the rest of what DJ
Speaker 3: actually said. He said, I don't like to turn the
Speaker 3: ball over. It's not really my forte with the driver
Speaker 3: hitting a draw. To explain what he's saying here, he
Speaker 3: prefers to hit a fade off the tee like a
Speaker 3: lot of players today. He hits that big knuckle fade
Speaker 3: with a driver. It's a stock shot. For the past
Speaker 3: number of years, the thirteenth hole did still demand a
Speaker 3: draw off the tee for the best results, but most
Speaker 3: of the top players were long enough to get around
Speaker 3: the corner on the hole with a threewood. It's a
Speaker 3: lot easier to hit a draw with a modern three
Speaker 3: wood than it is with a driver. They're reasons for
Speaker 3: that that I wouldn't be the best person to answer,
Speaker 3: but basically it has to do a lot, at least
Speaker 3: with spin. The modern driver doesn't spin very much, and
Speaker 3: so a fade, which has generally more spin than a draw,
Speaker 3: is a little bit easier to keep in the air,
Speaker 3: whereas a draw is always in danger of kind of
Speaker 3: diving out of the air and turning into a snap
Speaker 3: hook with the modern spin model that the driver and
Speaker 3: that the ball have for the top players. So the
Speaker 3: thirteenth hole was still sort of counter to that tendency.
Speaker 3: But because players could get around that corner with a
Speaker 3: three wood, that was a go to shot for a
Speaker 3: lot of them, and it was Dustin Johnson's go to shot.
Speaker 3: I believe he'd take a three wood and turn it
Speaker 3: over a bit. The threewood has more loft, it produces
Speaker 3: a little more spin. A draw with a three wood
Speaker 3: for these players is a little bit more reliable. Well,
Speaker 3: now the thirteenth hole is long enough so that guys
Speaker 3: can't take that show. To get around the corner and
Speaker 3: give yourself a good chance of hitting the green in two,
Speaker 3: you need to hit a driver and you need to
Speaker 3: draw it. So guess what, DJ can't hit that shot.
Speaker 3: You should be rewarded for being able to hit a
Speaker 3: variety of shots. You can't just expect to hit one
Speaker 3: shape off the tee and be able to go for
Speaker 3: every par five green in two. So the criticism of
Speaker 3: the lengthening of the hole based on DJ's comments today
Speaker 3: is blogoney. What he's really saying is I don't have
Speaker 3: that shot, and this is one of the rare occasions
Speaker 3: where not being able to work the ball both ways
Speaker 3: with the driver is going to cost him. And to
Speaker 3: be clear, I'm not criticizing DJ. I don't get the
Speaker 3: impression that he was complaining about this state of affairs.
Speaker 3: I'm more addressing the comments about what DJ said. He
Speaker 3: shouldn't be able to necessarily attack this hole if he
Speaker 3: can't hit that shot with the driver, and he's maybe
Speaker 3: fine with that right in general, that power fade works
Speaker 3: just fine for him, but in this case he can't
Speaker 3: get around that unless he draws it with a driver,
Speaker 3: and since he can't hit that shot, that's coming back
Speaker 3: to bite them in this case. The other comments on
Speaker 3: thirteen that I found really interesting were from John Rahm.
Speaker 3: Now Ram is another guy, by the way, who plays
Speaker 3: a stock fade off the tee and has a hard
Speaker 3: time hitting a draw with the driver. I've seen him
Speaker 3: struggle a fair amount on thirteen in the past, but
Speaker 3: as usual, he had really interesting things to say on
Speaker 3: the subject that weren't necessarily just from his own selfish
Speaker 3: point of view. He said this, I'm not opposed to
Speaker 3: the change. I think you're going to see a lot
Speaker 3: more layups. Obviously, if you don't quite hug the left side,
Speaker 3: you're going to have such a long iron in that
Speaker 3: a lot of people will choose to lay up. But
Speaker 3: there's still going to be more so a risk reward
Speaker 3: aspect to it, because if you hit the green and
Speaker 3: give yourself an eagle chance, it's going to matter a
Speaker 3: lot more maybe than it did in the past. This
Speaker 3: is all music to my ears, but especially the part
Speaker 3: about maybe needing to hug the left side of the
Speaker 3: hole in order to have a less terrifying chance of
Speaker 3: going for the green. In two, the left side of
Speaker 3: the thirteenth hole is guarded by the tributary of Raysed Creek,
Speaker 3: and that hazard has basically become irrelevant in the twenty
Speaker 3: first century. In the original design, the whole idea was
Speaker 3: that if you challenge the water, you could cut off
Speaker 3: some distance on the hole and give yourself a flattered
Speaker 3: lie and a real chance of hitting the green with
Speaker 3: your second shot. If you bailed out to the right,
Speaker 3: you would have a long way in and you'd have
Speaker 3: a very scary side hill lie that would make your
Speaker 3: ball move right to left, which is not the shape
Speaker 3: you want going into this green. But starting with equipment
Speaker 3: advances about twenty five years ago, that strategy started to
Speaker 3: go away. Players could just blast it up the right
Speaker 3: and they could hit it so far that they would
Speaker 3: still have a short second shot into the green. The
Speaker 3: angle no longer mattered. Augusta tried to address that problem
Speaker 3: by planting a bunch of trees on the right side
Speaker 3: and making the hole narrower, but the strategic spirit of
Speaker 3: the hole was gone. Now what John Ram is saying
Speaker 3: is that the value of hugging that left side near
Speaker 3: the hazard might be back, And as a big time
Speaker 3: golf nerd, that is very exciting to me. Speaking of
Speaker 3: big time golf nerdery, I'm going to talk to Bob
Speaker 3: Crosby about how a few specific holes at Augusta National
Speaker 3: have evolved over the years and how those changes represent
Speaker 3: a tricky philosophical balance that the club has had to
Speaker 3: strike as the host of the Masters. That's right after
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Speaker 3: to the episode. All right, Bob Crosby, welcome back to
Speaker 3: the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks great to be here.
Speaker 3: So I'm excited to talk to you today because, first
Speaker 3: of all, it's been too long and I always enjoy
Speaker 3: our conversations, and second of all, because we're discussing one
Speaker 3: of my favorite topics, which is the architectural history of
Speaker 3: Augusta National. What this golf course was originally and how
Speaker 3: it has evolved are so fascinating to me, and I
Speaker 3: thought a good way to bring that across to listeners
Speaker 3: would be to select a few different holes and dig
Speaker 3: into the history of each of them. So you and
Speaker 3: I talked a little before this. We chose four holes
Speaker 3: to focus on, and those are three, seven, eight, and ten.
Speaker 3: And we chose those holes not because they're famous, but
Speaker 3: because each of them represents something about the evolution of
Speaker 3: the course, about the philosophy of architecture and renovation that
Speaker 3: has defined what the course has become overall. So why
Speaker 3: don't we start with the par four third, which is
Speaker 3: one of my favorite holes on the golf course. Could
Speaker 3: you just describe the hole for me, just to kick
Speaker 3: things off if people aren't super familiar with that. You know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't necessarily always star on the coverage of the Masters.
Speaker 3: So what is this hole? Basically?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the third hole is the least changed hole at
Speaker 2: Augusta National, and I think the reasons why it is
Speaker 2: the least changed are as interesting as the reason why
Speaker 2: other souls have been changed. It is a short par
Speaker 2: forwards everyone knows, even from the members teas. You're hitting
Speaker 2: lofted approach shots into it to a very small but
Speaker 2: crowned green, which offers terrifying chances at a birdie and
Speaker 2: the likelihood for those of us less talented of a bogie.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I think that strikes me
Speaker 2: about why that hole has survived in its current state
Speaker 2: for so long as something that Tom Dope mentioned recently
Speaker 2: about the changes he made to his memorial course in Houston,
Speaker 2: which is that he tried very hard hard to make
Speaker 2: sure that the middle of the greens, that is to say,
Speaker 2: the safe shot areas had some sort of undulation or
Speaker 2: contour in them that made them less safe. And I
Speaker 2: think that's why the third hole works so well. It's
Speaker 2: slightly crowned. You're putting downhill to most pen locations, which
Speaker 2: is scary and lightning fast. Trying to hit at the
Speaker 2: pins is probably not a good idea because of the
Speaker 2: the size of the green. Just a wonderful hole all around,
Speaker 2: and there are good reasons for why it is not
Speaker 2: undergone or at least very few changes. I think Fazio
Speaker 2: we did some of the fairway bunkers and O two,
Speaker 2: but other than that, essentially it's the hole that Mackenzie
Speaker 2: and Jones put on the put on the ground in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two. Three. The other hole I would like
Speaker 2: to talk about. I think it has a wonderful end
Speaker 2: story to it, and that is the a Toll, one
Speaker 2: of my favorite par fives in the world. Cliff Roberts,
Speaker 2: in the mid nineteen fifties, because of line of sight
Speaker 2: issues with galleries and also gallery flow around the green,
Speaker 2: decided to take out a lot of the Mackenzie features,
Speaker 2: which were essentially several mounds running upside of both sides
Speaker 2: of the green, including a large mound in the front
Speaker 2: of the green front left of the green, and replaced
Speaker 2: those mounds with this awful, awful circular green, sort of
Speaker 2: a saucer shaped green that shocks the offenses every time
Speaker 2: you see even a picture of it. One of the
Speaker 2: great stories of Augusta National and this was not a coincidence.
Speaker 2: Not long after Cliff Roberts passing in nineteen seventy seven six.
Speaker 3: Seven I think seventy seven, yes, seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Byron Nelson and Joe Finger were retained to restore the
Speaker 2: green to the original Mackenzie design. As far as I know,
Speaker 2: that is the first instance of someone restoring a green
Speaker 2: to its historical initial form, at least on any important
Speaker 2: course I know of in America, which was I think
Speaker 2: both bold and courageous on the part of Augusta National,
Speaker 2: and I think it has paid enormous dividends since it
Speaker 2: was restored in the late nineteen seventies. So great news
Speaker 2: there on the eighth.
Speaker 3: Holl, Well, why don't we talk about the third hole
Speaker 3: a little bit more and then get to some details
Speaker 3: on the eighth hole as well. I think there's probably
Speaker 3: more to explore on each hole. You've given us a
Speaker 3: basic shape of the history of each hole. Now, the
Speaker 3: third hole today is a short part four. To some
Speaker 3: of the modern professionals. It's almost drivable, but very few
Speaker 3: choose to attempt to drive it for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 3: But basically, this hole is a two valley hole. You
Speaker 3: hit your drive over a valley, and if you are
Speaker 3: at the top of the hill in the middle of
Speaker 3: the fairway, then you hit your approach over a valley.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that the bunkers have been changed. I actually
Speaker 3: looked this up, and the cluster of bunkers replaced a
Speaker 3: big bunker that used to be in the same location.
Speaker 3: And it was actually Jack Nicholas who suggested that in
Speaker 3: the early eighties, and then Bob Cupp, Nicholas's design partner
Speaker 3: at the time. I believe executed the work and was
Speaker 3: the architect of record for that work. Fasio did make
Speaker 3: some changes, as you mentioned later on in the early
Speaker 3: two thousands, but they were a little more subtle. But
Speaker 3: that's basically all that has changed about the hole. And
Speaker 3: it's fascinating to me to walk around the course today
Speaker 3: and look at the members tees and the championship tees
Speaker 3: and see how different they are on every other hole
Speaker 3: on the golf court except for three where they are
Speaker 3: not different. This hole was three hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty four and it's three hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: yards today. So what do you think allowed this hole
Speaker 3: to stand the test of time in this way?
Speaker 1: Bob?
Speaker 2: I think it's the green. I mean, I think, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned, the place where you want to play safe,
Speaker 2: i e. Hit a wed shot to the middle of
Speaker 2: the green doesn't leave you. It leaves you essentially downhill
Speaker 2: putts on a lightning fast green. Trying to play for
Speaker 2: pins is a fool's errand they are very hard to reach.
Speaker 2: And if you were off the green, recovery shots under
Speaker 2: some Philly it's fairly steep hills and one bunker are
Speaker 2: enormously difficult. It has withstood the new power Game beautifully
Speaker 2: and in many respects, I think Dope probably feels this
Speaker 2: way is something of a template for or how to
Speaker 2: attack the power game today with shorter holes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very interesting and you know, and part of it.
Speaker 3: In addition to the green, which is obviously defended the
Speaker 3: hole very well from the beginning, there's also the factor
Speaker 3: of that valley in front of the green where depending
Speaker 3: on pin position, you really don't want to be. So
Speaker 3: if you're trying to drive the green, you have to
Speaker 3: really think about it because you don't want to be
Speaker 3: long of this green, and you also in many cases
Speaker 3: do not want to be in that valley short of
Speaker 3: the green left where your ball will end up if
Speaker 3: it's not exactly precise rolling perfectly onto the green, and
Speaker 3: so it motivates I think some more cautious play where
Speaker 3: you do see players in the Masters laying up to
Speaker 3: the top of that hill in the fair way with
Speaker 3: long iron or something like that and taking that full
Speaker 3: wedge into the green because because they just don't like
Speaker 3: anything that will happen if they miss the green, sort
Speaker 3: of pin high or pass the pin.
Speaker 2: I agree the two choices off the tee for pro
Speaker 2: type players. There's one lay back at the top of
Speaker 2: that ridge, but the second and that people of trying
Speaker 2: this or vombit to the right and then come in
Speaker 2: and avoid the worst of the little valley in front
Speaker 2: of the green that way. Now. I think Tiger tried
Speaker 2: that a couple three years ago, and others have too,
Speaker 2: and he ended up in the woods on the right,
Speaker 2: which all undid his strategy. But still that is But
Speaker 2: it's that you're even thinking that way makes it a
Speaker 2: very interesting hole.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that the eighth hole is one of your
Speaker 3: favorite par fives in the world.
Speaker 2: Why is that it is almost well, it is classically strategic.
Speaker 2: It's almost elegantly strategic in the sense that there is
Speaker 2: a very very large bunker in the landing area. I
Speaker 2: know some of the players these days here over it,
Speaker 2: but there's a very large bunker right center of the
Speaker 2: fairway because of the massive mound left front of the green.
Speaker 2: The place you want to leave your drive ideally is
Speaker 2: as close to that right side bunker as you can
Speaker 2: if you aren't able to fly it, which narrows what
Speaker 2: might appear to be a fairly wide driving area to
Speaker 2: a fairly narrow one in the sense that if you
Speaker 2: want to go for the green in your next shot,
Speaker 2: you've got to play around to the right of that
Speaker 2: massive mound front of the green. It's just a beautifully elegant,
Speaker 2: little strategic hole, not little, a big, hard uphill hole
Speaker 2: at which I have come to respect the more I've
Speaker 2: seen it.
Speaker 3: And then the green design is so daring weird, even
Speaker 3: especially if you look at the original green and it
Speaker 3: surrounds which I think were probably a little bit more
Speaker 3: abrupt than they are today, or have been sent Byron
Speaker 3: Nelson and Joe Finger restored the green from memory and
Speaker 3: with a few photos. It's just strange, isn't it. I mean,
Speaker 3: those big mounds on either side of the green, they
Speaker 3: just sort of jut out of the land.
Speaker 2: They do, and they're very very hard to chip from.
Speaker 2: The green itself is remarkably narrow. It's deep and very narrow.
Speaker 2: And if I might just make a comment about Mackenzie's
Speaker 2: original greens, a lot of his greens originally had these
Speaker 2: long fingers. Any number of them had that. They had
Speaker 2: these odd bizarre shapes, but they all seem to involve
Speaker 2: these long tongues and fingers, and if you put pins
Speaker 2: in these fingers and eight is nothing but one long finger.
Speaker 2: There's very little leeway for bailing out left or right.
Speaker 2: You've got to go right at it. And there's a
Speaker 2: big debate these days about whether angles matter in strategic
Speaker 2: golf architecture. If the idea is that you should bail
Speaker 2: out to the middle of the green and take your
Speaker 2: two putts from there as a long term strategy for
Speaker 2: lower scoring, McKenzie's original greens, like Doak's idea at Memorial
Speaker 2: Golf Courps, sort of defeat that idea. In some greens,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure where the middle of the green is
Speaker 2: because of the odd shapes, for example, the ninth Green,
Speaker 2: the fourth Green, other greens that just with these sort
Speaker 2: of odd shaped where you could tuck pins in places
Speaker 2: where you shouldn't expect a two putt two if you're
Speaker 2: in the wrong part of the green. So the eighth
Speaker 2: is a nice representative of that long, narrow finger type
Speaker 2: green that I think featured either alone or in combination
Speaker 2: with other features and other greens.
Speaker 3: And this was something that mackenzie sort of moved toward
Speaker 3: at the very end of his career, because if you
Speaker 3: look at some of his earlier greens at say Metal
Speaker 3: Club or Cypress Port Point. They are simpler. There are
Speaker 3: some complexities to those greens, but they're very much simpler
Speaker 3: than the greens that he built later at Pasa Tiempo
Speaker 3: and Augusta National, where his greens started to take on
Speaker 3: these really weird amoeba shapes with these little fingers that
Speaker 3: went out between bunkers and just kind of wandered in
Speaker 3: unexpected directions. And in fact, on the third hole, the
Speaker 3: original third hole, one of the subtle changes that was
Speaker 3: made early on is that one of these fingers that
Speaker 3: used to be there on the front right portion of
Speaker 3: that green got pushed back by I believe, Perry Maxwell,
Speaker 3: and so a lot of the greens, including the seventh
Speaker 3: which we'll talk about later, just have these little jutting
Speaker 3: portions that went out in unexpected directions and they're just
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, that seems to be something
Speaker 3: that he was looking at at the end of his
Speaker 3: career as maybe a way to push his design experimentation,
Speaker 3: just trying these different green shapes. Do you think do
Speaker 3: you think that's valid?
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, I think of it in slightly
Speaker 2: different terms. I think of it in terms of him
Speaker 2: forcing players to choose angles into greens, to position themselves
Speaker 2: for the right angles into greens, because pens could be
Speaker 2: put in places that were so unbelievably unforgiving, and unless
Speaker 2: you hit the perfect shot, you could be, you know,
Speaker 2: put in a position where you just can't get up
Speaker 2: and down, which is, by the way, sort of true
Speaker 2: of eight. I mean, if you miss wide left or
Speaker 2: right on eight, getting up and down from those mounds
Speaker 2: that run up both sides of that green is very
Speaker 2: very difficult.
Speaker 3: Now, to be more specific about the change that Clifford
Speaker 3: Roberts made to the eighth Green, he took out the
Speaker 3: big mounds, and those mounds are massive, and so it
Speaker 3: was an incredibly dramatic change to just take out those
Speaker 3: mounds and essentially turn the green into a pancake. And
Speaker 3: the story goes that the change was so ungainly looking
Speaker 3: that at the nineteen fifty seven Masters Augusta National actually
Speaker 3: put up a sign saying, this change is temporary. You
Speaker 3: know what this looks like right now is temporary, And
Speaker 3: so it's kind of silly looking, but I believe he
Speaker 3: did it to enhance spectator views. Am I right about that?
Speaker 2: Sidelines? And also a fan flow around the green. The
Speaker 2: green is up fairly close to the ninth tee, and
Speaker 2: I think that there were some issues then and made
Speaker 2: still to some extent now in terms of getting people
Speaker 2: through that area down the ninth fair away.
Speaker 3: I think this represents something that Augusta National has battled
Speaker 3: with or tried to thread the needle of from the
Speaker 3: begin You have, on the one hand the responsibility to
Speaker 3: preserve this great architecture by Alistair Mackenzie and Bobby Jones,
Speaker 3: and you have on the other hand, the responsibility to
Speaker 3: put on the Master's tournament and allow it to be
Speaker 3: a great patron experience as they would put it, and
Speaker 3: to be a significant championship golf test. And so I
Speaker 3: think that this represents some of that tension. Right Clifford
Speaker 3: Roberts was looking to enhance the spectator experience here, but
Speaker 3: it came at the cost of the architecture. So it's
Speaker 3: an interesting change in that way. But what I find
Speaker 3: really fascinating about what you're saying about the eighth whole
Speaker 3: work that happened after Roberts's death is that it was
Speaker 3: one of the first instances of true restoration, and so
Speaker 3: you really haven't found any earlier instances of.
Speaker 2: I will confess I haven't looked hard, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: The whole idea of restoring historic golf courses is not
Speaker 2: that old. I mean, it dates maybe to the nineteen
Speaker 2: nineties or something. I don't you know. Doak was one
Speaker 2: of the first to do it, I think at Garden City,
Speaker 2: but maybe there's some of that are earlier. But it
Speaker 2: is not that old an idea. What the motives were
Speaker 2: for Augusta National to do it on eight, I really
Speaker 2: don't know, but I'm certainly happy they did what they did.
Speaker 2: Augusta is unique. You're right, Augusta is trying to thread
Speaker 2: a very small needle between hosting a major golf tournament
Speaker 2: and preserving McKenzie's and jones intent for the design on
Speaker 2: the golf course. And it is a It is a
Speaker 2: It is a source for ongoing arguments every spring, and
Speaker 2: I have to admit I find that I enjoy them
Speaker 2: very much. But you're right, and I you know, we
Speaker 2: can quibble with decisions made, but those are tough calls.
Speaker 2: Those are tough calls.
Speaker 3: And it's easy to critique some of the changes that
Speaker 3: have been made to the original architecture for the sake
Speaker 3: of championship golf and patron desires. But one thing that
Speaker 3: struck me when I was walking around Augusta National this
Speaker 3: past week is that a great deal of the great
Speaker 3: architecture is still intact, has been preserved. It doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be that way. I think that they could have
Speaker 3: eliminated a lot more of it and not come in
Speaker 3: for a whole lot of mainstream criticism. But there's still
Speaker 3: quite a bit of pretty radical stuff out there, and
Speaker 3: so it's tantalizing in that way where the club has clearly,
Speaker 3: you know, put some resources into preserving certain features, but
Speaker 3: at the same time has also been willing to change
Speaker 3: other features for the sake of some of these modern imperatives.
Speaker 2: It's for that reason that Augusta nashvill can both be
Speaker 2: my favorite golf course and the course that infuriates me
Speaker 2: the most. Jones and we could talk about this in
Speaker 2: a minute. But Jones and Mackenzie saw them well. At
Speaker 2: least Jones I think saw himself as conducting an experiment
Speaker 2: at Augusta Nashville that they were going to push the envelope,
Speaker 2: and that envelope pushed up against and still is pushing
Speaker 2: up against many of the expectations that professional golfers have
Speaker 2: of a golf course. Fighting that fight since nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: four has been I think one of the central themes
Speaker 2: of Augusta National.
Speaker 3: That's well said, and let's get into sort of an
Speaker 3: instance of that, the seventh and tenth holes at Augusta.
Speaker 3: Maybe you could just tell me about those holes what
Speaker 3: they originally were, and assumed that people don't know or
Speaker 3: haven't seen the pictures of those original greens, because I
Speaker 3: think think that if everybody saw those pictures that they
Speaker 3: would sort of be shocked at how different those holes
Speaker 3: were in nineteen thirty four. So seven and ten, what
Speaker 3: were those holes in the early thirties?
Speaker 2: Seven rich was still as well. Now it's not a
Speaker 2: short part four now I think it's four hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty something yards. Seven was designed to be a short
Speaker 2: part four. It was supposed to imitate some of the
Speaker 2: playing features of the eighteenth hole at Saint Andrew's, the
Speaker 2: home hole, including a small sort of valley of sin.
Speaker 2: It had a large tongue on the right of the
Speaker 2: green that went up to a small plateau and carried
Speaker 2: across perpendicular to the line of play. Based on the
Speaker 2: photos I've seen, it looks like the green fell off
Speaker 2: fairly severely from right to left. But it was a
Speaker 2: hole that even in the thirties a lot of players
Speaker 2: could come close to driving, which was the motivation I
Speaker 2: think for changing it. Horton Smith, who won the first
Speaker 2: Masters Lodge, complaints with Cliff Roberts and Bob Jones that
Speaker 2: he and other players were driving the green in some
Speaker 2: cases and that something ought to be done about it.
Speaker 2: So it was complaints from the pros that I think
Speaker 2: motivated changes to seven. As to ten, I mean, some
Speaker 2: of the similar notions apply there too. Ten was also
Speaker 2: a fairly short part for straight downhill, a large, magnificent
Speaker 2: bunker to the left of the green, which is still
Speaker 2: mostly there, but there it was maybe forty yards ahead
Speaker 2: back towards the tee where it is now in a
Speaker 2: small valley. The strategy on the whole would have been
Speaker 2: to keep the ball up on the right to the
Speaker 2: extent you could to open the green up. That's very
Speaker 2: hard to do on that sloping downhill fairway which wants
Speaker 2: to feed balls down into the left. So it was
Speaker 2: again kind of a l against strategic golf hole. Also
Speaker 2: beautiful to boot that I think, although I don't have
Speaker 2: any specific documentation or that I'm guessing seen to be
Speaker 2: too short and too easy for professional players.
Speaker 3: I think that the green also had a hard time
Speaker 3: draining because it really was in a saddle next to
Speaker 3: that famous bunker that is still there on the tenth hole.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting about what you're saying is that this
Speaker 3: strategy of the hole was basically the opposite of what
Speaker 3: it is today. Today, players are trying to get their
Speaker 3: hole to get their ball, rather to run down to
Speaker 3: the left and give them a better angle into that
Speaker 3: green and cut off some of the distance of that approach.
Speaker 3: But back in the early thirties, that hole was about
Speaker 3: trying to stay to the right, and if you caught
Speaker 3: that little speed slot to the left, you would find
Speaker 3: yourself hitting this pitch over the famous bunker to a
Speaker 3: green in a saddle on the other side, which must
Speaker 3: have been a very very difficult shot. So kind of
Speaker 3: a funky hole and quite different from what it is today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a little plateau on the right side
Speaker 2: of the ferryway before it falls off down to the
Speaker 2: left where I've always thought would be the ideal place
Speaker 2: to leave a drive or a layup shot of some
Speaker 2: sort to approach the old green from there.
Speaker 3: So in both cases Perry Maxwell came in in the
Speaker 3: late thirties and moved the seventh and tenth greens back
Speaker 3: to a hillside on the other side of a little valley,
Speaker 3: I guess in the case of ten and a hillside
Speaker 3: just behind the original green on seven. But essentially in
Speaker 3: both cases he was creating a naturally elevated green on
Speaker 3: a little hillside and lengthening the holes, and the holes
Speaker 3: are what they are today today. Seven is this green
Speaker 3: that's kind of benched in to a hillside with bunkers
Speaker 3: all around the green, sort of a shallow green and
Speaker 3: one of the smaller ones on the course. And then
Speaker 3: on ten the green is perched sort of on this
Speaker 3: hill that falls off severely to the left. So elevated
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell greens for both of these holes that made
Speaker 3: them longer, made them sort of stout par fours, which
Speaker 3: they are today. So what do you think was the
Speaker 3: idea or the philosophy behind those changes.
Speaker 2: There is not a lot There has not been a
Speaker 2: lot written about what motivated Maxwell to make the changes.
Speaker 2: I've dug into some of the newspaper accounts and it
Speaker 2: there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. I think
Speaker 2: Maxwell felt, and I don't know he must have gotten
Speaker 2: this from people at Augusta National that the attempt to
Speaker 2: make Augusta National a Lynxy type golf course just simply
Speaker 2: didn't work, not only for the pros playing the Masters,
Speaker 2: but as you noted, for some drainage reasons and other reasons.
Speaker 2: Georgia red clay does not percolate its sheet drains, and
Speaker 2: mackenzie didn't have a lot of experience on that sort
Speaker 2: of turf and soil, so that might have been part
Speaker 2: of it. But I think there was also a very
Speaker 2: clear attempt by Maxwell to unlinksify a lot of those
Speaker 2: holes there are. And I've always been curious about Jones's
Speaker 2: reaction to that. And I found something the other day
Speaker 2: which both sort of confirmed and troubled me at the
Speaker 2: same time, where Jones and this is from nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: and this is a newspaper account of what was going
Speaker 2: on with Maxwell at Augustine nashvill and they count reads
Speaker 2: as follows. Although Bob Jones felt that the original job
Speaker 2: done by the late Alistair McKenzie was beyond reproach, he
Speaker 2: has yielded to the wishes of others, and the changes
Speaker 2: made in nineteen thirty seven and this summer nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: eight by Perry Maxwell have eliminated a number of original features.
Speaker 2: I think the importance of the Masters by the late
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties was importance in the sense that the club
Speaker 2: club's financial future depended on the revenues from the Masters,
Speaker 2: at least during the Great Depression. I think the importance
Speaker 2: of that event for the viability of the club was
Speaker 2: such that I think Jones, notwithstanding his conviction that Mackenzie's
Speaker 2: design was beyond I think he realized to continue to
Speaker 2: make the tournament appealing to professional players, the changes had
Speaker 2: to be made, and there's a bit of tragedy in that.
Speaker 2: I think Jones was fully aware that a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that he and Mackenzie had thought were important
Speaker 2: had to be subsumed to those higher goals for the
Speaker 2: golf course. I think, for example, his shock at the
Speaker 2: changes that were made to the a toll. He was
Speaker 2: appalled by them, but ended up living with them. I
Speaker 2: think Maxwell's changes in thirty seven and thirty eight set
Speaker 2: the tone for further changes made by Robert Trent Jones
Speaker 2: ten years later. I think the idea was to preserve
Speaker 2: the course as a challenging site for a major golf tournament,
Speaker 2: and part of that was because at least in the
Speaker 2: first ten years or so, club needed to have that
Speaker 2: tournament conducted there as a revenue source. Later on they didn't.
Speaker 2: The revenue source was, I guess irrelevant. They had other
Speaker 2: sources of revenue. One of the things that I hope
Speaker 2: historians do it better, and I maybe should try to
Speaker 2: do it, is that Maxwell, in several newspaper accounts, talks
Speaker 2: about in thirty seven and thirty eight reducing a lot
Speaker 2: of the mounding on the golf course, which had been
Speaker 2: an attempt to make it feel more lenksy. That was
Speaker 2: certainly the case on seven, it was certainly the case
Speaker 2: to some extent on ten. What is interesting is that
Speaker 2: you compare old photos from the thirties with photos from
Speaker 2: the fifties or sixties, and clearly mounting in any number
Speaker 2: of spots is lower and less dramatic. The record of
Speaker 2: what exactly Maxwell did with all that mounding is at
Speaker 2: best unclear, but I suspect that he made changes. His
Speaker 2: exchanges to Augusta National were in many cases small, subtle
Speaker 2: and unrecorded, unlesser things than the Augusta National Archives I'm
Speaker 2: unaware of, but it was a big change, and I
Speaker 2: think the changes since then, with the exception again of
Speaker 2: Byron Nelson and Joe Fingers restoration of the Eighth Green,
Speaker 2: that have continued more or less a pay since.
Speaker 3: Something that's so curious about the identity of Augusta National
Speaker 3: as a work of architecture overall is that it started
Speaker 3: out as this is what Jones and Mackenzie intended at
Speaker 3: least as an inland links as an experiment with trying
Speaker 3: to create a real links course on an inland site. Today,
Speaker 3: I think Augusta National is known and comes across as
Speaker 3: the ultimate parkland course. And so I wonder if these
Speaker 3: changes by Perry Maxwell in the late nineteen thirties. And
Speaker 3: by the way, one of the iron news here is
Speaker 3: that Perry Maxwell created one of the most authentic links
Speaker 3: golf courses inland in America in prairie dunes, and so
Speaker 3: it's not as if he was the sort of Parkland
Speaker 3: hack job ban coming in and taking out all the
Speaker 3: link stuff. He was asked to do this and he
Speaker 3: did it. But do you think that the late thirties
Speaker 3: is sort of the time when Augusta National started that
Speaker 3: slow transition away from its original vision as the ultimate
Speaker 3: inland links course and toward the Parkland Major Championship Test
Speaker 3: that it's known as today.
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. I think that Maxwell set the
Speaker 2: direction for subsequent changes. By the way, speaking of Prairie Dunes,
Speaker 2: Maxwell is quoted in a couple of newspaper articles in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven is saying the land and the terrain
Speaker 2: at Augusta is not suitable as a setting for a
Speaker 2: links course. However, the course I designed Prairie Dunes is
Speaker 2: suitable as a Lynx venue. So he made a clear
Speaker 2: distinction there. And I think this has to do again
Speaker 2: with the turf in the terrain at Augusta, that it
Speaker 2: just didn't work very well there, and that Jones is
Speaker 2: in McKenzie's grand experiment maybe was conducted in the wrong locale.
Speaker 3: Do you think it's possible he was right about that?
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm playing Devil's advocate here, But do
Speaker 3: you think it's possible that the idea of building an
Speaker 3: inland links on this property was just somewhat wrong headed
Speaker 3: from the beginning.
Speaker 2: I want to defend Jones and Mackenzie. In this sense,
Speaker 2: replicating the old course of Saint Andrew's or Mirfield or
Speaker 2: other links courses, I think was probably unachievable in any event,
Speaker 2: given the nature of the terrain at Augusta National. However,
Speaker 2: I think that their ambitions extended beyond that. I think
Speaker 2: they were actually trying to push the concepts of strategic
Speaker 2: golf architecture to a place they had never been before.
Speaker 2: As I think I've said before, it's sort of strategic
Speaker 2: golf course architecture, as we used to say in the sixties,
Speaker 2: on acid and some of the green contours, the green shapes,
Speaker 2: some of the shots he's asking players to hit to
Speaker 2: very very narrow pinnable areas are nuts. I mean, we
Speaker 2: think of them as nuts today. But I think that
Speaker 2: it was part of a larger part of this experiment.
Speaker 2: Jones was very clear he thought this was an experiment
Speaker 2: that might have but for the intervention of the Great Depression,
Speaker 2: World War two. We can think of other counterfactuals might
Speaker 2: have set golf architecture in a very direction. And that's
Speaker 2: my regret about Augusta National, because following on in the
Speaker 2: forties is Robert Trent Jones, Dick Wilson, and some others.
Speaker 2: To some extent, we didn't start reverting back to some
Speaker 2: of the ideas that Mackenzie and Jones were trying to
Speaker 2: do at Augustin National until sometime in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: maybe even later with Dope Core Crenshaw and some others,
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure even they were prepared to be
Speaker 2: as radical as Mackenzie was at Augusta National. He had
Speaker 2: the ideal owner at that point, Jones, to try to
Speaker 2: carry out some of those experiments. A lot of them
Speaker 2: have been domesticated. Greens now are very oblong and consistent.
Speaker 2: The contours that sort of leveled out and undulations are muted.
Speaker 2: Now it is much more a parkland course. But God,
Speaker 2: it's sad to see the experiment go away, because at
Speaker 2: one point in time it was a remarkable, remarkable effort.
Speaker 2: The thing I wonder, and maybe there's just no good
Speaker 2: answer to this, is that a lot of the modern
Speaker 2: designs by living golf architects and trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to design shorter courses i e. Less than seventy
Speaker 2: four hundred yard courses that will also stand up to
Speaker 2: the pros. It strikes me that a lot of the
Speaker 2: ideas that are experimenting with are ones that Mackenzie tried
Speaker 2: at Augusta, Nashvial. These little fingerlets on the greens, odd shapes,
Speaker 2: bumps and humps, undulations. One thing pros hate to do
Speaker 2: is hit off uneven lies. All of that are all
Speaker 2: those things are being tried, and I think somewhat successfully
Speaker 2: in trying to combat the power game of the pros.
Speaker 2: So I wonder, I wonder maybe we've come full circle.
Speaker 2: Maybe some of the things, maybe some of the features
Speaker 2: that Mackenzie had built at Augusta really do work. Now
Speaker 2: the pros will hate him, and they said they hated
Speaker 2: him back in nineteen thirty seven. There is a persistent,
Speaker 2: enduring conflict in the evolution of golf, not just in architecture,
Speaker 2: but frankly also the rules between a group who want
Speaker 2: to see golf become a fair more rational game i e.
Speaker 2: That's usually professional players, and those who want to see
Speaker 2: golf as a more interesting, difficult game that involves luck
Speaker 2: and randomness that one has to learn to deal with.
Speaker 2: Mackenzie and Jones I think came down the side of
Speaker 2: more interesting, unpredictable golf courses, less predictable golf courses, I
Speaker 2: guess is a better way to put it. And they
Speaker 2: were I think, at some point along the way overrun
Speaker 2: by the professional perspective, which is they need to be
Speaker 2: more free, fair and rational. And that evolution begins at
Speaker 2: Augustine National with the arrival of Perry Maxwell on the scene.
Speaker 2: But but that clash continues today with modern architects clashing
Speaker 2: against people who want fair golf courses, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And it's it's, uh, it's a clash that I think
Speaker 2: will always be with golf, and God blessed both sides
Speaker 2: of that. It's you know there, it's it's uh, it's
Speaker 2: a wonderful, energetic thing to follow as things play out.
Speaker 3: Well, Bob, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
Speaker 3: Really appreciate talking to you as always, and enjoy Masters week.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much.
Speaker 3: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was produced and
Speaker 3: edited by Matt Rushius. Thank you, Matt. One quick note
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