Takeaways from the 2022 Masters

Scheffler dominated the event from Friday through Sunday. Yes, Cameron Smith challenged him at various points in Roy McElroy a great run on Sunday, but Scheffler played so brilliantly that for most of the final round the outcome really wasn't in doubt. And Yet what this Masters may have lacked in competitive tension, I think it made up for in

rich interesting storylines. First, there's Scotty Scheffler, who has won four of his past six tournaments, and this weekend fully confirmed his status as the number one golfer in the world. Now we can legitimately ask the question, is Scheffler Golf's next superstar or is this just an incredible hot streak. Then there's Rory McElroy, who did seem to exercise some of his Master's demons on Sunday as he shot sixty

four and finished solo second. It was really thrilling to see him pull out from the bunker right of the eighteenth green and not quite know what to do with his body because he was so excited. But from another point of view, you could see Rory's performance yesterday as yet another example of him finding his game at Augustine exactly when he knows he doesn't have a chance to win. And of course we can't not talk about Tiger Wits.

Fourteen months ago, he drove his car at a dangerous rate of speed into a ravine in Palos Verdays, California. His lower extremities were mangled and he was confined to a bed for months. This past weekend, he made the cut at the Masters and walked seventy two holes at Augusta National, which, in case you haven't heard, is hillier than it looks on TV. It was obvious that Tiger was in pain, but equally obvious that he was determined to prove that he could do it. Finally, there was

a lot of discussion of the course itself. Augusta National made substantial renovations to its eleventh and fifteenth holes and smaller tweaks to a few others. The quality of these changes and the effect they had on competition was a topic of discussion all week, and will wrap it up as best we can in this podcast. As will typically do for major championship recas this year, we talked to three different guests for this episode, all with unique perspectives

on the game. First, we have Heimi Diaz, who talked to me from his hotel room after finishing up his work for Golf Channel's terrific show Live from the Masters. Heimi has written for The New York Times and Sports Illustrated, and he is one of my favorite golf writers of all time. In addition, we've got two voices that you'll recognize if you have listened to the Friday Podcast for a while, Bob Crosby, a golf historian, and Joseph Lamanna, an analytics expert. All right, let's get to it. Here

are some takeaways from the twenty twenty two Masters. All right,

so I have Jimi Diaz on the phone. Jimi has been out at Augusta National covering the tournament for Golf Channel. How you doing, himI, You've had a long day.

very high, hits the ball quite long. He's not the most accurate, but he's not He's not a wild driver by any means. Uh. He hits very authoritative, you know, high irons that can that can stop on major championship quality firmness, and he's shown that already. And uh, I think the six previous majors he finished top twenty, which

for a young guy is impressive. Uh. And of course we see the not just the creativity, but the you know, the the real quality strike of his short game and how he how he can really recover again on really fast from greens because he he does strike it so so purely with a lot of spin, and he's really good at those shots with sixty degree wedges that you know Phil Michelson for example. I think that was his

great advantage. Not that Scotty gets a lot of flop shots, but just has the uh, the craftiness and the hand eye and the awareness of the of the clubhead to really fashion shots and recover when he does make a mistake, which I think for a power hitter that's so important.

You're going to be winning tournaments because power hitters just they have less margin for error and they're going to make mistakes and they're not going to be Although Scotty is a good iron player, it's just he's not, you know, this kind of point to point guy like Colin Morikawer or someone, and so you got to have the short game.

I mean, that's what Sev did, That's what Greg Norman did, That's what Tiger did to a large extent, you know, it's a way of being I think traditionally a dominant type player Phil you know, earning to some extent, they had both the power in the hand. But I think Scotty is showing real promise to be a guy with a very strong foundation who will last a long time. And this really wasn't a fluke.

process that. But also, you know, unlike Rory, unlike even Colin Morrikawa, Scotty doesn't necessarily have one big skill that really stands out. You know, With Rory it's the driving of the golf ball. You know that that is so obvious that he's great at that, And then with Colin Morrikawa, it's the iron play. With Scheffler, it's it's a little

hard to tell what that standout skill is. And maybe it is just as you're saying, the combination of a few different things, the ability to hit the ball high and the wonderful hands around the green. Would you kind of say that that's where where his you know, outstanding excellence comes from.

of still has. He you know, when we talk about Rory, I think that was one of the big real positives of what he did this week, was where he was putting his focus on, you know, kind of to plug up the holes in his game that I think he's ignored for a while because I think he was under the impression that if I just drive it great' you know, I have such an advantage, I'll beat people, which is

not necessarily true. So you know, I think Scheffler has got a player's mentality as opposed of a ball striker's mentality or you know, a great swinger's mentality. He's about playing golf, and he's won in many different ways already, and it's it's just because he can access different tools at different times if he's not on with something else. The short games are to clean up a lot, and I don't know how long that lasts. I mean, I

think Tom Watson played like that a lot. I remember, you know, he was a dominant player who was not the most stylished ball striker. I mean, beautiful, great athlete and a lot of rhythm and power, but he hit it a lot of different places and and he would recover. I meant, I didn't mention him before, but I and Sevie of course, you know, was just a clean up magician.

He was you know, he was a great manager and so he he usually you know, would and hit and hit a ton of greens of course, but he was not a real stylish scrambler, right and uh, you know, to be people with proficiency and.

He goes, You're right, you know, I probably got about I should have done it, and I just wasn't dedicated enough to do it. And and and I maybe, you know, was I was trying to save my energy because I knew if I obsessed about every shot and every every area of my game, I might go a little crazy. So it was just this kind of field thing that he chose to sacrifice. But to say, I think Tiger is the best example of having close to everything. But you know, Tiger was not the straightest driver, and so

he had to recover a lot. And I think he was and and he goes back to his junior days when he had to be a good little wedge player to stay up with all the longer kids that he was playing with who were older than him. And and he developed a wedge early and liked it, like the creativity of it and the variety of it, and what he could make the ball do and dance and all

those things. And it's you watch him in those warm ups, you know, if you watch a golf channel, in the show a shot that he is in practice that warming up. He loves hooking those little chips and hitting you know, all these little sort of almost like it's a playing table tennis or something. And that fascination makes him special along with all his other attributes. I think when he was off, he could always make a score. And I get that sense of Scotty he can always make a score.

But today, Kimi, I think you noticed a few things that he was doing that were a little bit tighter around the greens, I guess, and where he was able to preserve scores in ways that maybe we haven't seen him do recently.

to his momentum and his state of mind. I think, you know, Rory, in some ways, maybe the worst thing that ever happened was winning two majors by age shot, because I think it created the illusion that I can just overwhelm golf courses and overwhelm my opponents with my great advantages, which are great advantages. But two things happen. Number One, people see that marker out there, that this is what this guy's doing, and they catch up, you know, just like in every other sport, you know, the other

players adapt and get better. And I don't necessarily think Rory's the best driver of the ball anymore, not that he's not great at it, but there's a bunch of them, you know. I think DJ kind of took that mantle for a while, and maybe maybe John Rahm has it now. But so Rory doesn't have this five car length advantage over the field with the driver, and he's been exposed, in my opinion, for not having the other part of the game that we just talked about with Scotti Scheffler.

But what I noticed recently is he's been talking about it. He never used to talk about it very much. He just say, you know, I just got to you know, get a nice groove and and think about, you know, getting my golf swing a nice He didn't talk about short game very much, and now he is. He's at Texas. He did miss the cut there, but he said, I've got to get more consistent getting the ball up and down.

I've got to be better for May feeding in And I think that basically summarizes where he has in my opinion anyway, just watching and without quantifying it necessarily with stats, it just seems that's where he would undermine himself, especially in majors. And so that's where today was when he was asked what pleased him the most about his round? And it was such a beautiful round and it was so explosive and he hold out what four times from

off the green and it was incredible. So that's kind of fluchy, and don't you don't expect that, But he said it was saving par saving putts and getting up and down on He specifically said the eleventh hole, the twelfth hole, and the fourteenth hole, and they were all examples of where he had to make like a tough six footer for par or. He had to get it up and down from a fairly tight line, and he

did it and it kept him going it. You know, I was a Bogue list sixty four now, you know, I could have seen it easily be a sixty nine or a sixty eight if Rory had gotten into one of those bogey trains where he wasn't when he wasn't hitting it good making bogue because a couple of those verdies were places where he might have made bogey. He chipped in a couple of times too, so anyway, but the point is what the way he talked about, and I think Paul McGinley was talking about how he's working with.

Paul has worked with Rotella and knows Rotelo well, and he thinks he sees Rotella's fingerprints on high excuse me, on Rory's sensibilities right now.

When he's on, he's he's an inspired player. And as we said, you know, he's won two majors by eight strokes and it's kind of his his legacy, but that's not going to happen anymore. I mean, he might win majors again, but it's not because there's too many people that play in a similar way to him for him to outstrip that unless he putched incredibly well and does the other things. But he's not going to do it just by a driving the ball perfectly and win by eight strokes.

little bit there. We're currently in the midst of one with Scotti Scheffler, we had a great run from from Brooks kept gun in majors at least, Yes, And what does it take to sustain greatness? And I think that's such a complicated question, not one that we're going to

get to answer here. But when you think of Tiger Woods and you think of how he sustained his greatness at various points in his career, people did seem to catch up to him, just as you said, you know, people have caught up to Rory in his driving of the ball. You know, people seem to kind of catch up to Tiger maybe by two thousand and two, two thousand and three, at least in terms of the equipment, right, he didn't have that advantage of the Eurethane Nike ball anymore.

And there were a few years when when he wasn't winning as many majors, But then he kind of reworks his swing, figures a few things out, and goes on another amazing run from about two thousand and five to two thousand and eight. And so Tiger has put together those different phases of his career, and now he's in yet another phase of his career where he's coming back from these injuries and doing things that just blow our minds in different ways. And it's all out of this

It seems like this love of the game. And I wonder if that's the thing that Tiger had that these other guys just don't quite have in his grade of quantities.

and to be in his own mind, an overachiever. So there's this, but this is tremendous desire and burning ambition and determination that he has and who knows where that fuel comes from. That makes him special as well. And so I think to your point about, gee, we looked like there was a template being set there and Rory was going to follow it and you know, make the

Rory era as good as a Tiger era. And you know, I guess that's recency buyings or whatever you want to call it, but he definitely was sort of looking like he was heading there because you know, again, those major victories would buy so many shots, and then having four at such a young age. But I think the separator is tigers just refusal to ever be satisfied and to rise to any challengers. He rose to David Duvall, I mean,

he played his best golf when he was challenged. He rose to dj he rose to Ernie Els, and Jack did that to a large extent. I mean, he had a bunch of guys who came after him. He conquered Arnold, but then you know, there was Trevino, and there was Johnny Miller, and there was Weisskof, and there was Ray Floyd and probably missing some I mean, nobody really caught him. He answered every challenge until finally Age and Watson and

watching sort of his own genius finally overcame Jack. So I think that's a quality of greatness, and if you're going to sustain, you have to be motivated every time somebody challenges you. And I don't know that everybody had that.

But the other thing I think is that, in an inverse way, sort of Tiger becomes this cautionary tale because Tiger gave everything to the game in terms of his energy and his obsession towards perfection and improvement constantly, and you know, Tiger has lived a complicated life, and it may have taken a toll on him and his ability to balance life and have a good life because he made some mistakes that who knows where they came from. But I think there's a sense I don't know why

I just used the phrase cautionary tale. I think, you know, there are people who are close to that position, whether it be whoever Jordan Speeds or Jason Day or anybody who's got or Rory himself feeling like is it worth it? Can you have balance? Can you have a good life? If you're that obsessed by golf, and with the greater rewards available in golf and the extra comfort that comes with success, you got to be extra motivated to even want it more than as much as Tiger to to

stay at the top. You know, part of me thinks Tiger's just a generational talent, and part of me thinks that Tiger has created hesitancy to have the same kind of dedications among the guys who have followed him, who idolized him and want to be like him at least, you know, in terms of golf, But do they really want to be like him in terms of in terms of what it takes eternal.

just too much of himself in one thing. And you know, who knows, But you know, I go back to what Nicholas said, He goes, I could have been better, but I would have driven myself crazy, and you know, whatever crazy means in his mind, it would have perhaps, you know, infringed on his life and his family and all the things that he hoped to keep in balance. That and others have praised him for us like as good as Jack was, he was pretty darn normal and that's kind

of the ideal. So I do think equipment is also maybe a category, is that it's brought players together in a way where it becomes ball striking is not as hard as it used to be, and so the putter, which is kind of probably the most capicious club in the bag, becomes a determiner of whether somebody stays at the top for however long they stay, and when that cool somebody else with a high putter comes up and

does it. That's awfully simplistic, but I think there's something to it that, you know, the artist thry that it is not as the demand on artistry with the irons and different shots and moving the ball around is not as great as it used to be. In the clubs don't let you do it. The ball don't let you do it as easily, and so it becomes kind of a straight ahead, more monotonous game that a lot of guys can kind of play, and the margins between players

are smaller. It seems like that has a big role in you know why there's so hard to dominate for a long time unless you have some clear advantage over everybody, and I don't. It's hard to find something. I mean, I think that's what Bryson was after, you know, as much as much as Bryson has you know, probably mismanaged it,

especially recently, especially getting hurt. He was after he was he was after something that was going to separate it, which I admire and you know, but it's it just shows how hard it is to separate and and and Bryson didn't do the necessary work at least maybe he had, he was planning to, but he hadn't done the necessary work on the rest of the game that was going to take advantage of the advantage that he was building

with the length. He had to have good wedges to capitalize on the on the length, and he never really got there in any event. You know, at least he was trying to do something. And even Tiger pull praise him for that. And I bet if Tiger was twenty two years old now, he'd be doing something like that.

do it at this rate for uh forever. He's he's won four of his past six tournaments at this point, but he does seem a step ahead right now, and so the interesting question will be how long can he maintain that? And once he gets to a certain level of fame and greatness, is he going to really want it no matter the cost?

about playing golf. It's like, you know, no matter what you achieve, to stay in the process, that keeps you improving, and that takes care of so many things because you get the joy of whether the result, whatever the result is, you know, you got better and and that's you know, as long as he's got the joy for the game, that that's gonna that's going to provide the energy. I think until that leaves us. Hope it doesn't leave him, but inevitably, you know, number one is wearing on people.

I don't think anybody's worn it that well for a while. You know, it's it's it seems like it's taking its toll on most of the guys that get up there. Let's hope he doesn't, you know, he sometimes somehow becomes sort of an exception to that.

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I am here with Bob Crosby. Bob is a golf historian and an authority on golf course architecture, as well as an Atlanta resident. And Bob, I understand that you were out at the Masters this past week for at least one day. What was your what was your general approach during that day? What did you see? What did you do?

Ben excuse me, Ben Hogan warming up. And it was just before they had bleachers there, and I think we were standing maybe ten yards away from him watching him hit balls to his shag boy, who didn't have to move at all. By the way, while we while we were standing there watching him, this old tricycle golf cart pulls up and it's Bob Jones with his with his arthritic fingers, with a cigarette holder threaded through his fingers, and he too stood there, sat there with and watch

Ben Hogan hit golf balls for twenty thirty minutes. It was to this day a distinct memory, wonderful moment. We want. We followed him for several holes. I forget how the day ended. We had to get back home, but it was just a remarkable, remarkable visit.

of a sort of little bail shot. And then you can hear somebody saying, well, yeah, but if we're going to make that harder, then we've got to sort of expand the fairway, take some of those trees out. And I think that's sort of what they did. A marker for me of a dubious golf architecture is when you see catch basins for drainage, and there's a new catch basin built in that swale on the right side of the green now, and there's also a catch basin built.

Maybe there's more than one built for the new expanded fairway area over there by those sort of three orphan trees.

them farther back if you wanted to. But use McKenzie's drawing for the hole. Now you know, the original hole had a green on the other side of the tenth tenth green, so it was actually played as a slight dog leg right, But the same idea would work from the existing teas and just use them every time I

come to Augusta. My thought is that they have spent so much time and effort trying to are meant to be scare quotes improving the golf course over the years from George Cobb to Robert Trent Jones to Perry Maxwell, etc. I don't you have a great, great golf course there?

I do note it's an interesting paradox that one of at least to my knowledge, one of the earliest attempts to restore an original architect's work was conducted at Augustin National by Byron Nelson and Joe Finger when they restored the Eighth Green after that horrendous, horrendous mess that I guess it was cliff Roberts.

up being produced just looks absolutely absurd. But it stayed there for about twenty years until the club decided to restore in nineteen seventy nine. I think it was. And you're making the great point that this is an early instance of restoration. Right.

sort of excited. I was sort of excited about what was happening there because they were removing trees on the right. That hole had become very narrow, it had become just sort of like keep it out of the trees on the drive. That was the big challenge. Now it's one of the easiest fairways on the on the course to hit and and so it's a positive change in the

sense that some trees have been eliminated. But as I heard you suggesting, there was a kind of there's there's a sort of design by committee feeling about what happened at the eleventh hole. Right, It's like, okay, let's remove trees, but now let's keep like three of them just standing there in the right half of the away, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It seems like there are a lot of compromises and a lot of different voices contributing to the work there. I don't have any information about

how it actually happened. That's just the feeling I get from looking at it.

understanding of that history to redo holes as necessary? And you know, there are any number of people out there that no McKenzie like the back of their hand, Tom Doak, Whore, Crenshaw would be wonderful. They are all sorts of people that could do this work. Crimshaw hell is a member on the tournament twice.

an incredibly important American golf course historically. I was rereading the other day The Spirit of Saint The Spirit of Saint Andrews, written at about the same time that the Mackenzie was designing Augusta. And it's a remarkable book when you read it in that context because Mackenzie, by the way, and just parenthetically, he mentions my man John Lowe about

ten times. He's a big fan of John Lowe. But the interesting thing about the book as it relates to Augusta National is that, and this is my take on the book, and I'm happy to argue about it with somebody if they want to, is that he identifies an early stage of golf, strategic golf architecture, developed first by low and then taken on by Harry Colt, Tom Simpson, Fowler and others, and they woking and he talks all the sunny to all the famous newly designed or redesigned

courses that pop up in the teens and then many many more in the nineteen twenties. The interesting thing about the book, though, is I think Mackenzie thought that there was another stage, and that Augustine National evidenced that second stage of strategic golf architecture. And that stage was basically that we are going to emphasize less bunker placement and more on contours and undulations of the natural terrain. Bob Jones was the perfect boss for that because he got it.

I'm going to come back to that in a minute, but you know, if you've seen the story, Mackenzie's first plan for Augusta National was to He submitted it with thirty six bunkers. Jones said, no, too many, I want you to go back to twenty. They ended up on twenty two. I don't know how they got there, but twenty was ridiculously few bunkers. But the idea there was that by making the difficulties of the course linked to the contour and undulations of the land, I can do

two things. That makes it much harder for really good players because it's lesstable, but the dreaded bunker shot for the weaker players is is less frequent, and it makes the course, and in fact it is a course it's a delight to play by. I'm a high single digit handicapped player. It's a delight for me to play from the regular immensities, but it just beats the hell out of the pros. And I think it has to do with that emphasis on contour and undulation and less emphasis

on bunkers. And that was the second stage of golf architecture that I think Mackenzie envision. Now. He dies a couple of months before the first Masters, in the middle of the Great Depression. World War Two follows on. Nobody has any money, no golf courses are being built. But I think, but for those historical events, if the world had continued on as before, I think Augusta Nashville would have changed the face of golf architecture for the next

couple of decades. That is the that is the heritage that the people at Augusta National I don't think quite get. They see it. I think as just a venue for a major championship, geared all in all sorts of ways to the to to the play of to the best players in the world. But the role the place of Augustin National in the hit in the history of American

golf architecture is extraordinarily important. And as you start tweaking it and mucking around with it, you start deluding what is on the ground there and its significance for golf architecture going forward. One can I say one other thing. Absolutely, I was doing some research on this a couple of months ago, and to my pleasure and surprise, I discovered two things. First, in the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, Merefields, Sunningdale and all sorts of other courses

over there were going through the same process. They were debunkering their courses. Mierfield went from three hundred and twenty bunkers in nineteen thirty one to something like one hundred. But all the courses were going through this debunkering on more or less the same grounds that let's just let the contours take over, and they are harder for good players to deal with, but easier for bad players to

deal with, and it sort of squares the circle. The other interesting thing is that the unique features of Augusta National have a pedigree in America, and that pedigree is two courses. Maybe I'm missing some I'd love to hear about others. One is Max Bear's Lakeside in Los Angeles.

Parts of that course were washed out by big floods and others will know more about the details of the course that But Mackenzie thought it was one of the great in the spirit of s Andrews thought it was one of the great courses in America, and he noted it had very very very few rough areas and relatively few bunkers. All of the ones he had were big. I mean, what does that sound like The other course that was an immediate predecessor, well, really two Crystal Downs.

Arguab was one two. That's nineteen twenty nine. But the other course that no longer exists is Bayside.

as Augusta National. But that aspect of Augusta National needs to be retained. And I worry, in the name of more traditional concepts of how to make a course difficult, that those approaches to golf architecture are being overrun by those more traditional ideas that bunkers here, bunkers, They are bunkers everywhere, Augusta has a unique place in architectural histories and was not just the culmination of a golden age of golf architecture, it was also the beginning point for

a new kind of golf architecture. It built on that and that's what to me, that's the debt Augustine national O's to golf history is keep that new window it was trying to open on golf architecture open somehow, you know them. Course Mackenzie designed was strategic golf architecture on LSD. It was wild boomerang greens, wild bunkering here and there, crazy contours. Look at the fifth green, look at the fourteenth green, the ninth green. I you could go on

to the greens. I mean, you know, I'm going to make you play. If you're a good golfer, you're going to have to deal with unpredictable bumps, humps and rolls, not just in the fairways and they're plenty of the fairways, but especially on the greens. And you've got to put your ball in the right place or you're gonna three put. And I don't have any sympathy for it. I have no obligation to you to make sure you too, put

from any point in the green. There may be places where you hit your ball where you have no chance to putting. And that's fine. That's fine, And that's the edgy nature of Augusta National is what they I hope they can keep and in some cases roll back to I think it'll hold up beautifully against the best golfers in the world. Just get the teas back. There's no

choice about that. Just push the teas back. And that's what every time I get in the car after being an Augusta National, I turned to my wife and I say, you know this needs this is an important The building of this course was an important historical event and we

need to recapture that moment. Where they need to recapture that moment somehow, and hiring somebody to come along and fix this tweak that in the name of holding scores down or keeping scores up for various holes is just the wrong approach.

under threat of being lost forever. And the changes at eleven just it was like somebody hit me with a baseball bat said, oh god, this is worse than I thought.

the time. Somebody like Patrick Reid, some of the best short game on tour not an elite ball Striker hasn't been driving it particularly well, but when he does, I mean, he's won a significant number of times on tour. And so we might have somebody in Scotti Scheffler who has elite short game, his chipping's been incredible and also checks a lot of those other boxes, hits it far, hits

it relatively straight off the tee. It's exciting that we might have somebody who kind of is so well rounded in a way that very few other players on the planet are. So maybe I should have seen the Scotty Scheffler coming a little bit more than I did, And I think that's true of a lot of people in the golf world who, you know, obviously didn't see him ascending the world number one as quickly as he has.

particular well roundedness. But elite short game, as you're saying, does seem to be one thing that the rest of his game kind of revolves around or is built off of.

So like to be celebrating as much as he was when he hold out a bunker shot to finish and you know, runner up like that's Tiger Woods would never have been doing that in his prime, right, Like the expectation should be to win. So I don't want to hate on Rory. That's less of a Rory take and more of a the way we treat Rory take. But maybe I'm just a little tired of some of those the social media around Rory.

five percent. That was his peak, and that was after the fourteenth hole and he went on to go par par on fifteen and sixteen, which we're playing relatively easy that day, and so listen, like, it was great that he shot that score. It was an incredible round, but he really wasn't that close and people are acting like he was close, and so I'm with you on that.

rounded players. He's playing great right now, Like, just go do it, and then I'll be happy to celebrate when he does.

best test we see all year. And what I really appreciate about it is how there are certain holes where a particular shot shape is required, and there are certain holes where a particular shot shape is rewarded not necessarily required. So I think my favorite example is whole thirteen. We're

all familiar with that hole. You really do need to curve that ball right to left off of the tee, and especially in modern golf, almost all of the elite ball strikers hit a cut off the tee, and so to see them have to work the ball right to left is exciting. The best example I can give you is Justin Thomas really doesn't have that shot. It's been his worst hole at the Masters since he started. This year, he was the only player to finish in the top ten who didn't make a single birdie on that hole.

He put one way left I believe three in the pine straw right. If you don't have that shot, it's limiting, and there aren't very many other places on tour where you see that. So I really appreciate that about Augusta. Even a hole like ten, if you can curve it right to left and take it down that left side, you get a pretty significant advantage because it rolls out

a lot. More so, it's Augusta just demands so many shots of players that you don't see pretty much any other time through the whole year.

to the left, you roll out a little bit. You also have like the green cants pretty significantly as well, and it's a little bit better to be down there and not be hitting down the slope of a green. But as you've observed a number of times, these kinds of angles matter a bit less when players are hitting it as high as they do now. But thirteen, certainly the influence on that shot is those trees out to the right. You've just got to avoid them. And in order to avoid them, you need to bend the ball

around the trees to the left. And so you know, if you take out the trees, the holes are resemble quite a bit more their historical predecessors. But if you take out the trees, then this factor that you're talking about goes away.

of the time anyway. So a lot of shots with a lot of spin that are high that go to twenty feet are ideal shots on tour, and you don't necessarily have to have a perfect angle.