Masters Tuesday - Eclipsing In That Amen Corner

I don't have an abundance of time, as I need o free up my afternoon to take advantage of today's balmy weather.... Perhaps "need" isn't quite the right term...

Once In A Lifetime - Forget that garden gnome, the Lords of Augusta are still pretty deft, as Geoff explains:

The big moon-blocks sun duel felt like a bit of an “eh” moment at Augusta National. Standards are high here. And with so many practice round patrons making their first visit, they were understandably far more enthralled by the course, landscape and overall experience.

Down at Amen Corner when 76% “obscuration” occurred, a solid five-minute window of zero wind did seem noteworthy. The expected darkness felt more like a light layer of smog given the beige tint and soft light. And for those wondering if squirrels started appearing and red birds stopped singing? No luck. But two Canada geese did sit on the Rae’s Creek bank until the weirdness ended.

Patrons could view through Masters-branded eclipse glasses featuring detailed instructions that would have made Clifford Roberts proud. And they will prove to be charming one-off keepsake given that this is the last April eclipse of our lifetimes.

I'd actually like to have seen those instructions, but can't find them even with Mr. Google's assistance.  But 76% is quite disappointing, so it's good they played on (unlike my Yankees, although that time change seems to have worked out).

Of course, with the gnome long out-of-stock, folks have to hoard something:

A Tiger Sighting - Not quite as rare as a Nessie sighting, but the dead-enders will be over-interpreting this for sure:

The patrons who set 4 a.m. wake up calls to be the first on site received a pleasant surprise with the early 10th tee twosome featuring Tiger Woods and Will Zalatoris. For a surprisingly long

time, they were the only players on the course. Woods gave the early faithful some entertainment with an approach on No. 11 to within five feet, a mere 10 feet on the 12th and reached the 13th with a long iron that created the first roar of 2024. The five-time champion hit several pitches and long putts on every green and looked fully engaged walking alongside new looper Lance Bennett.

“He played great today,” said Zalatoris. “He outdrove me a couple times so there was some chirping going on. He looks great. He's moving as well as he can be.”

Woods’ gait looked smooth and he even inquired about Zalatoris’ putter. Oh to have a thought bubble…

Only chirping?  To paraphrase Elain Benes, I guess Will is deemed to not be tampon worthy....

Everybody Talks About The Weather.... -  It's a really good forecast for the week, with just the one exception:

I didn't know Accuweather buried ledes, but those "couple of showers" seem less important than that which follows...  We may not see any golf on Thursday, and it sounds like the kind of day on which they will not allow spectators on the grounds.

Golf In The Time Of LIV - Some disparate bits loosely related to our bifurcated game, beginning with this curious item (or perhaps it's only the header):

What LIV Golf and the Masters share in common

Ummm....thirteen players?  That is, assuming they remember to bring their golf pants with them.

Perhaps you should read the whole thing so that you can tell me what the authro's point is, except for the blindingly obvious bit that those thirteen guys playing in Miami were focused on the bigger event the following week:

There were a bunch of flights from Miami to Augusta on Sunday, some you could actually get on.

Southwest had a 3:45 p.m. departure with various golf hands on it, people who didn’t need to witness the shotgun end to the LIV event at Trump Doral on Sunday evening. Delta had an 8:50 p.m. flight. And then there were those flying, as the jet-rich like to say, “private.” Phil on one plane, Dustin on another, Sergio on his own, to cite three former Masters winners. LIV Golf doesn’t do that all-aboard flight thing anymore. It did, early on — party at 30,000 feet! — but that was then. Guys want to do their own thing. Golfers always have been that way, unless you’re on a Ryder Cup team, or the RangeGoats.

We’ll save the CO2 emissions analysis of all this private-jet travel for another time. LIV Golf, the PGA Tour, Augusta National in all its greenery — studies in conservation these are not.

The point for now is that Augusta was in the air all through the LIV event here. Jon Rahm, your reigning Masters champion, tied for fourth at Doral. That paid $833,333. Wheels up when he says so.

Yes, the Range Goats are just like the Ryder Cup, as Talor Gooch famously said way back when.  Though I'm kind of surprised they're so invested in the Masters, despite the inevitable asterisk with which the champion will be burdened.

Amusingly, there is one similarity that the author completely whiffed on.  Both have absurdly small fields, something I've been ranting about since 2014.

This nest one seems like more of the same:

Tiger Woods? Fred Couples? LIV Golf? Will the 2024 Masters offer clarity?

How are they looking in the golf landscape? It’s divided-golf season three, and the Masters is serving as a barometer in a way. In 2022, LIV Golf, the upstart, was two months away from kicking off a feud with the PGA Tour, the established brand, but there was talk. Tension. Then, Phil Mickelson, a three-time green jacket winner, missed the event, after comments involving the league. Last year, there was curiosity. There was commingling of PGA Tour stars and LIV stars, and there were some double-takes Ooh, look, there’s Rory McIlroy talking to Brooks Koepka — or more accurately, there’s the PGA Tour’s Rory McIlroy talking to LIV Golf’s Brooks Koepka. Ooh, look there’s a logo from the Fireballs, one of the LIV Golf teams. Weird, right? Maybe, maybe not.

And this year at ANGC? After 10 months of bargaining on a proposed funding deal between the Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, the backer of LIV?

Is it acceptance? Frustration? Is it nothing at all? What will Augusta chairman Fred Ridley say on the matter in his annual state of the union comments? Will he push for a deal? Or won’t he? Will LIVers have a path to future Masters tournaments? Or won’t they? Will what he and Augusta National say influence others?

All good questions, and as we scene-set for the Masters that starts Thursday, we’ll begin there. It’ll be one of the items to watch this week. As of now, the pros on each side are coming together just at the majors, and there are but only four of those.

Actually, they're rather lame questions, the more so given that the author is supposed to be providing answers thereto.

I am interested in what Chairman Ridley might say, but more so on the proposed change to the golf ball.  Not sure what he can add on LIV at this juncture, excepting for the standard wishful thinking.

Lastly, the most amusing aspect of the LIV v. PGA cage match is listening to the LIVsters shoot their mouths off.  First it was Brooksie telling us he never would have jumped had he though he could stay healthy, now it's this guy shooting his tour in the foot:

It was to be a sticking point for Jon Rahm as he mulled whether to make the jump from the PGA Tour to the LIV Golf League late last year. In the end, the fact that LIV events were just 54 holes,

and included shotgun starts, didn’t keep the Masters champion from making the move and signing a reported $350 million deal with the upstart circuit, but it’s something he hopes might still change in the future.

“I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I definitely wouldn’t mind going back to 72 holes,” Rahm said in an interview with the BBC ahead of his title defense at Augusta National.

Previously, when Rahm had been asked about LIV Golf events, he had lamented the format as taking away from the competitiveness of tournaments. Rahm notes that the tradition of 72-hole events created a legitimacy that LIV events would be lacking.

But Jon, how is LXXII pronounced?   Awkward, no?

Not sure about this logic:

While that sentiment seems to remain, Rahm now contends that expanding to 72 holes might also increase the potential that the PGA Tour and LIV’s financial backers, Saudi’s Public Investment Fund, might reach an agreement and unite the two groups so that the game’s best players would compete again on a regular basis beyond the four men’s majors.

“If there ever was a way where LIV could go to 72 holes, I think it would help all of this argument a lot,” Rahm said. “The closer I think we can get LIV Golf to some other things the better. I think it would be for some kind of unification to feed into a world tour or something like that.”

My take is that Rahm jumped assuming the June 6th announcement was a done deal, and now he has to hang out with PReed and Poults.... 

OK, I lied..... that "Lastly" above was premature, as Eamon Lynch is in the building:

Lynch: Call for unity rings hollow from people who divided golf for their own greed

I'm guessing he'll name names:

Adlai Stevenson described Richard Nixon as the kind of man who would cut down a tree then

mount the stump to deliver a speech on conservation, so one wonders what he’d say of Bryson DeChambeau, one of the arsonists who set golf’s house on fire and who is now complaining that others aren’t moving quickly enough to extinguish the blaze.

At last week’s LIV tournament in Miami, DeChambeau demanded reconciliation in a sport that’s been bitterly divided by things like the now-withdrawn antitrust litigation filed by, um, Bryson DeChambeau. “We can’t keep going this direction,” he said. “It needs to happen fast. It’s not a two-year thing. Like, it needs to happen quicker rather than later just for the good of the sport. Too many people are losing interest.”

One assumes he means people are losing interest in the PGA Tour’s product, unless LIV’s turnstile numbers have plummeted from the hundreds to the tens.

That lede is pretty damn amusing in a golf context, given that no one is cutting down more trees these days than golf courses....

This is similar to the comments cited above, with which the LIVsters seem unhappy with their lot in life, at least now that the checks have cleared.  But Eamon makes another point, to wit, that many of these guys are on the clock:

DeChambeau’s win at the 2020 U.S. Open earned him a 10-year exemption to that major and five years’ worth of free passes to the other three. His eligibility for the Masters, PGA Championship and the Open expires in 2025, so unless he earns a place in the field by other means – or the qualification criteria is rewritten – DeChambeau will be boxed out of three-quarters of the events that matter most. No wonder he insists that reaching a deal is a matter of urgency, that it can’t be a drawn out process for a couple of years. All for the good of the game and the fans, you understand.

They believe that they will be spared any consequences, just because they're so damn special.  There's a further issue that some of those early LIV deals will be lapsing, which could get interesting...But the idea of Bryson missing majors is less than devastating, no? 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes - The most substantive change this year is to the 2nd hole, a seemingly minor tweak to the tee:

The hole, named Pink Dogwood, was already the longest on the course, and will now play 585 yards — a 10-yard increase of its former length. Augusta National’s total yardage for the Masters now stretches to 7,555 yards. In the history of the Masters tournament, the second hole has played as the second-easiest, surpassed only by the 13th, a 545-yard par-5.

The new teeing area appears to be pushed as far back and left as possible. The hole plays as a downhill dogleg left and has long been regarded as a great birdie opportunity, even for shorter hitters. This is the first time the club has made changes to the second hole since 1999, when Tom Fazio added a new back tee moved the right fairway bunker even farther to the right.

At first glance, the tee shot looks like it could prove to be more challenging from the new starting point, but after playing the hole on a recent scouting trip, Rory McIlroy said the change is relatively minor.

“I thought it was going to be a different visual than it used to be, but it’s — I thought whenever someone said they moved it back and to the left, I thought the tee box was going to point you out towards that right bunker and you’re going to have to hit more of a draw around the corner,” McIlroy said ahead of last week’s Valero Texas Open. “I mean, if you didn’t know, you would think you were on the same tee box, it doesn’t look that much different. You can still see left of the bunker and I thought it was really going to force you to hit some sort of draw shot around the corner, but you can still hit a straight away shot and keep it left of the trap. It’s not as drastic of a change as I thought it was going to be.”

The funny bit?  In an article about this new tee box the accompanying photo is of......  wait for it....the green.

The Jones Boy - A couple f Bobby Jones item, including this bit on a curious aspect of Jones' participation in those early Augusta National Invitationals:

The prevailing narrative of Bobby Jones is that following his historic 1930 Grand Slam, winning

all four of golf’s then-major championships, he retired from competitive golf and preserved his status as a lifelong amateur.

However, that is a myth, says David Owen, Augusta National’s leading historian, who notes that not only did Bobby Jones compete in the Masters 12 times, he (arguably) competed as a professional.

Owen asserts that Jones’ decision to retire was more so about his desire to accept two very lucrative deals, one with Spalding to endorse golf clubs and the other with Warner Brothers to make instructional films. (Our Luke Kerr-Dineen recently unearthed these instructional videos and broke down what we can learn.) The problem is that after accepting these offers, the USGA ruled that Jones was now a professional, Owen says.

“Jones had a real visceral dislike for professionals,” Owen told Golf Digest+ members during our Happy Hour. “At the time at golf tournaments, they would speak of gentlemen and players. The gentlemen were the amateurs, and the players were the professionals. … Jones was snobbish about that. He would not compete as a professional.”

This is its own interesting story, as the USGA has a bit of a history of tormenting amateurs, which also ensnared Frances Ouimet.  That said, Jones was clearly pushing the limits here.

Here's another little know fact, that Jones really wanted a U.S. Open for his new club:

The issue in 1933, however, was that Augusta National Golf Club, co-founded by Jones and Clifford Roberts, was in serious financial trouble and having difficulty signing up any members. After failing in a bid to have Augusta National host the 1934 U.S. Open, Jones and Roberts decided to create their own tournament, the Augusta National Invitation Tournament (later called the Masters).

Ironic, to say the least, because of the extent to which the USGA covets the Masters' popularity, which was the driving force behind the deal with Fox.  There likely wouldn't have been this upstart competitor had they gone South with the Open.

Also not widely understood is how close the fledgling club was to failure given that it opened during the Great Depression:

How could the club market a top tournament if their co-founder and the game’s greatest star didn’t play? If the tournament was to be a success, it needed Jones. As Owen writes in his book, “The Making of the Maters,” “No Jones, no tournament, no club."

Yet if Jones were to play in the Masters, he would need to play as a professional, seeing as his income in 1933 was over $100,000, much of which related to his endorsement deals. For reference, Paul Runyan, who won nine events that year and led the money list, had earned less than $6,500 in tournament earnings, Owen notes in his book.

That wonderful photo of Jones putting at the '34 Masters includes the eventual champion, Horton Smith, watching him.

Even his loyal muse didn't quite buy his arguments:

Jones eventually agreed to play in the inaugural Augusta National Invitation Tournament in 1934. The loophole? The club would avoid making any distinction between amateurs or professionals in the tournament programs, pairing sheets, etc.

Jones finished T-13 in the 1934 tournament, which would have earned him low amateur honors, except for the hidden fact that he wasn’t an amateur.

“Even O.B. Keeler, who had built his sports writing career by celebrating Jones’ amateur achievements, took it for granted that Jones was now a pro,” Owen writes in his book. “He describes Charles Yates, who finished three strokes behind him [Jones] in the inaugural tournament, as the low amateur.”

This is a wonderful piece, but you should really read Owen's book if it's of interest.  I can promise you you'll learn much that you didn't know.  To the modern observer, the Masters seems like it must have been preordained, but is in fact one of life's happy accidents.

I'll leave you with this wonderful video of himself playing the 12th hole:

Bobby Jones playing the 12th hole in the 1937 Masters pic.twitter.com/MsOI6yhasX

— Simon Haines (@Hainesy76) March 28, 2024

What, you thought Freddy was the first to leave a ball on that bank?

Is this a great week, or what?  More to come as the week plays out.