Sunday, Rainy Sunday - Masters Edition

It's as ugly as can be in Park City as I write, raining heavily and very windy.  In fact, the howling wind woke me up and as I lay in bed I had the radical thought of taking a day off.  I've now skied nine straight days, Friday especially hard, and the body (especially the quads) is sending an SOS.  Of course, FNBF* Bob will call imminently and ask what time we're going up, so we'll see how this plays out.

So, why no blogging until mid-morning, I hear you ask accusingly... because I spent much of this morning listening to this State of the Game podcast, about which I blogged yesterday.   It's quite long, specifically 1 hour and 23 minutes, but I can't tell you how much I enjoyed.  They discussed everything and anything related to the Masters, not just the 1975 version, and I learned so much.

Just a reminder that their guest, Gil Capps has just published The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus,

Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta, which is now on my must read list.  Capps also works for NBC's golf telecasts, and is the guy feeding Johnny and Dan Hicks all those data points and stats you know they can't really have at their command.

 As for 1975, Capps has many interesting insights into the three main protagonists, Jack, Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf, the latter of whom might be the most interesting of the three.  But I also had no memory that the '75 Masters was the year in which Lee Elder became the first black golfer to play in the event.  In fact Elder was the only participant not to speak with Capps in the preparation of the book.

There were a few tangents that were immensely entertaining and informative.  For instance, I was vaguely aware that in the early years there was a Masters parade, but had no clue there was also a beauty pageant and that after Friday's round there was a long-drive competition.  Capps opines at one point that it was Arnie that ruined the Masters, though I'm pretty sure his tongue was deep into his cheek by then.

Capps also makes a convincing case that the '75 Masters was pivotal to the careers of the three leads, particularly that the two that came up short might well have had  different career arcs had they prevailed.  But it's quite the rarity that the three best players of the era all summoned their best golf at the same time and waged the first dramatic televised Masters finish.

And while we're on the subject of our favorite golf event, David Owen has posted another installment of his Masters countdown series, this one covering the 11th hole, the great flood and the Colonel.  I know, it's what he does but the three threads all involve the 11th hole.

First, the 11th might be the hole that is most changed from the hole played at the first Augusta Invitational in 1933.  But perhaps I should let David tell it:

The Masters tee on the eleventh hole was originally positioned above and to the right of the tenth green, not far from the seventeenth green. The hole ran downhill and played considerably shorter than its measured distance, which was a little over four hundred yards. In fact, until about a decade ago the green was at least theoretically drivable from the members’ tee, which was on the old line, although the shot was blind and called for a powerful fade.

The 11th green with the 12th tee and green in the early 1930's.

David's caption:  Alister MacKenzie’s original routing, showing the location of the eleventh tee, between the seventeenth green and the old tenth green. The modern tee is somewhere back near the red X in the upper right hand corner of the image.

Back to David:

The hole was first changed in 1950, when the club built a new tournament tee, below and to the left of the tenth green. The change was suggested by Clifford Roberts, the club’s chairman and co-founder, and endorsed by Bobby Jones. The change was made both to lengthen the hole and to eliminate a gallery bottleneck between the tenth green and the eleventh tee. “Under the new arrangement,” Jones wrote at the time, “the spectators will have ample room on the high ground to the right of the fairway to observe play, all the way from tee to green, without going on to the fairway at all. It will be substantially the same arrangement as is provided at number 13, where everyone can get a clear view of all shots played without following the contestants down the fairway.” The Masters tee is even farther back today, and the fairway has been reshaped. The hole measures a little more than five hundred yards for the tournament, and when you stand on the tee it looks like a thousand.

And as it looks today, below:

And the flood?

In mid-October 1990, Augusta got more than a foot of rain in just thirty-six hours. Rae’s Creek flooded, and took the eleventh green and much of the rest of Amen Corner with it:

Hord Hardin, the club’s chairman at the time, said they were lucky the flood hadn’t occurred right before the Masters. “We probably would have had to play four sixteen-hole rounds,” he said. The green was rebuilt using data from a 1982 survey, and the bunker and the pond were recreated from photographs. The hole was back in play not just for the Masters but for the Thanksgiving member party, six weeks later.

And The Colonel?  That would be Bobby Jones' father, seen here:

A strong personality, it affords David the opportunity to tell this famous story:

In the early years, there was a small pot bunker in the center of the fairway at roughly the distance of a reasonable drive, invisible from the tee. The bunker was Jones’s idea. He wanted the course to have a hazard that could be avoided only with good luck or local knowledge—the sort of seemingly arbitrary booby trap that is plentiful on the Old Course at St. Andrews. Jones’s father, Colonel Bob Jones (photo above), drove into it during his first round on the course, in 1932, and when he found his ball in the sand he shouted, “What goddamned fool put a goddamned bunker right in the goddamned center of the goddamned fairway?” or words to that effect. His son, who was playing with him (along with Roberts), had to answer, “I did.” The bunker was eventually filled in, though not till many years later.

Eleven days and counting... 

* Former New Best Friend