How Augusta National Almost hosted Olympic Golf in 1996!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Here is a fascinating story of how August National almost hosted Golf for the 1996 Olympic Games. But even the might of Payne Stewart and Billy Payne could not overcome one woman’s objection. Find out what that was. Thanks to Sam Weinman of Golf Digest for this breaking story!
Rio Olympics.
If you’ve been at all following golf’s inclusion in the Rio Olympics, you likely know that the sport has returned after a 112-year absence. What you might not know, however, is how golf almost returned two decades ago. Or that the potential course was not some hastily constructed new layout, but the most celebrated venue in golf.
A brief refresher: After succeeding in bringing the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, Billy Payne, then the head of the Atlanta Games organizing committee, turned his attention to making golf an Olympic sport. Better yet, he got then Augusta National chairman Jackson Stephens (at this point, Payne, now Augusta National’s chairman, was not even a club member) to agree that Augusta National should be the host venue. Payne’s promise of delivering both the best players in the world and the storied venue was enough to persuade International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch to get on board with the idea as well.
Arnold Palmer hitting the opening tee shot at the 2015 Masters.
In October 1992, Payne and Stephens held an outdoor announcement at Augusta National, where, according to a follow-up story in Golf Digest, “Augusta National gave trinkets adorned with the familiar Augusta National logo, but featuring the five Olympic rings inside the Augusta flag.”
It is here – The latest list of America’s Top 100 Golf Courses!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Following up on my recent post with Charlie Rose and Ron Whitten, Architectural Editor of Golf Digest magazine, here is the latest 2016 list of Golf Digest’s “America’s Top 100 golf courses!” I have had the good fortune to play 6 of the top 10, and my goal for 2016 is to add at least one more to that list. So anyone who is a member who would like to play with me, I will wait with anticipation for your call!
It is here – The latest list of America’s Top 100 Golf Courses!
1.(2) AUGUSTA NATIONAL G.C.(Parentheses indicate the previous ranking)
Augusta, Ga. / Alister Mackenzie & Bobby Jones (1933) 7,435 yards, Par 72 / Points: 72.1589
No club has tinkered with its golf course as often or as effectively over the decades as has Augusta National Golf Club, mainly to keep it competitive for the annual Master’s Tournament, an event it has conducted since 1934, with time off during WWII. All that tinkering has resulted in an amalgamation of design ideas, with a routing by Alister Mackenzie and Bobby Jones, some Perry Maxwell greens, some Trent Jones water hazards, some Jack Nicklaus mounds and swales and, most recently, extensive bunkering and tree planting by Tom Fazio.
Pine Valley, N.J. / George Crump & H.S. Colt (1918) 7,057 yards, Par 70 / Points: 71.9818
A genuine original, its unique character forged from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump had help from architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas Jr., and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson (of Merion fame) and his brother Alan finished the job. Pine Valley blends all three schools of golf design — penal, heroic, and strategic — throughout the course, oftentimes on a single hole.
Glamorous Cypress Point, Alister Mackenzie’s masterpiece woven through cypress, sand dunes, and jagged coastline, wasn’t always the darling of America’s 100 Greatest. Golf Digest demoted it to the Fifth Ten back in the early 1970s, saying, “It’s not surprising that good players might find Cypress Point wanting: it has several easy holes and a weak finisher.” Our panel has since changed its collective opinion. In the 2000s, member Sandy Tatum, the former USGA president who christened Cypress Point as the Sistine Chapel of golf, convinced the club not to combat technology by adding new back tees, but instead make a statement by celebrating its original architecture. So Cypress remains timeless, if short, its charm helped in part by superintendent Jeff Markow, who re-established Mackenzie’s unique bunkering with the help of old photographs.
Southampton, N.Y. / William Flynn (1931) 7,041 yards, Par 70 / Points: 69.2522
Generally considered to be the earliest links in America, heavily remodeled twice by C.B. Macdonald, then replaced (except for three holes) by William S. Flynn in the early 1930s. It’s so sublime that its architecture hasn’t really been fiddled within nearly 50 years, although the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have made several changes, including restoration of a massive waste area on the sixth hole, to prepare Shinnecock for the 2018 U.S. Open.
Ardmore, Pa. / Hugh Wilson (1912) 6,886 yards, Par 70 / Points: 68.2949
What a treat it was to see Merion East, long considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, host the U.S. Open in 2013. Today’s generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer the little old course, couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough, and OB stakes, and couldn’t consistently hit its canted greens edged by bunkers that stare back. It’s a certainty that it won’t take another 32 years for the U.S. Open to return to Merion.
It is here – The latest list of America’s Top 100 Golf Courses!
6(5) OAKMONT C.C.
Oakmont, Pa. / Henry Fownes (1903) 7,255 yards, Par 71 / Points: 68.1868
Once thousands of trees (planted in the 1960s) were removed, Oakmont’s original penal design was re-established, with the game’s most nasty, notorious bunkers (founder-architect H.C. Fownes staked out bunkers whenever and wherever he saw a player hit an offline shot), deep drainage ditches and ankle-deep rough. Oakmont also has the game’s swiftest putting surfaces, which will likely be slowed down for the upcoming U.S. Open in 2016.
Pebble Beach / Jack Neville & Douglas Grant (1919) 6,828 yards, Par 72 / Points: 67.6226
Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf — the fourth through 10th, plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble’s sixth through eighth are golf’s real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys are thrown in over an ocean cove on eight from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble will host another U.S. Amateur in 2018, and its sixth U.S. Open in 2019.
This is where Seth Raynor got his start. A civil engineer by training, he surveyed holes for architect C.B. Macdonald, who scientifically designed National Golf Links as a fusion of his favorite features from grand old British golf holes. National Golf Links is a true links containing a marvelous collection of holes. As the 2013 Walker Cup reminded us, Macdonald’s versions are actually superior in strategy to the originals, which is why National’s design is still studied by golf architects today, its holes now replicated elsewhere.
100 Greatest History: Ranked 1967-68 and from 1985. Highest ranking: Present.
Gone are all the Norway Spruce that once squeezed every fairway of Winged Foot West. It’s now gloriously open and playable, at least until one reaches the putting surfaces, perhaps the finest set of green contours the versatile architect A.W. Tillinghast ever did, soon to be restored to original parameters by architect Gil Hanse. The greens look like giant mushrooms, curled and slumped around the edges, proving that as a course architect, Tillinghast was not a fun guy. Winged Foot West will host the 2020 U.S. Open.
Fishers Island, N.Y. / Seth Raynor & Charles Banks (1926) 6,566 yards, Par 72 / Points: 66.4241
Probably the consummate design of architect Seth Raynor, who died in early 1926, before the course had opened. His steeply-banked bunkers and geometric greens harmonize perfectly with the linear panoramas of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. The quality of the holes is also superb, with all Raynor’s usual suspects, including not one but two Redan greens, one on a par 4.
100 Greatest History: Ranked 1969-74 and since ’01. Highest ranking: No. 9, 2009-10
Would You Like To See LPGA Play the Same Courses as the PGA?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I think it would be interesting to watch the Professional women play the same course as men.
Imagine the greats of the LPGA playing Bay Hill, Augusta National, Doral, and Muirfield Village!
Wouldn’t you love to see Inbee Park and Stacy Lewis battle it out down the 18th at Doral’s Blue Monster?
In general, I would like to see the LPGA compete more often on the PGA courses, with the changes that make it fair for women players, of course. The women usually play separate courses, which are not as exciting as most of the men’s courses.
Last year, Juli Inkster said that the men play great golf courses week in and week out, where most of the LPGA courses are ‘good’ but not usually ‘great.’ That is why the LPGA players were all thrilled to play the 2014 U.S. Open at the famous Pinehurst No. 2 Course. The premium courses draw bigger crowds and are in pristine condition normally, which leads to better scoring opportunities and more excitement.
Instead of seeing Tiger Woods hole a clutch putt at the 18th at Bay Hill, wouldn’t you love to see Kristie Kerr do the same thing?
Michael Whan, Commissioner for the LPGA, tried to convince the USGA to put the Women’s Open on the same course as the men for 2015, but that didn’t happen.
Oh well, maybe this one time, it was not bad to play a different course. Sorry RTJ, Jr.!
Would you like to see the LPGA get the opportunity to play these great courses? Post your comments below.
Top 10 Most Stunning Courses in America – #2 is my Favorite!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I personally think all golf courses are picturesque!
Even little dog tracks in Smalltown, USA, are picturesque to the people who play them. I ever played the first golf course in South Downs Country Club, just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world! Ben Alberstadt of bleacherreport.com gives us his ideas on what his top 10 most stunning courses are. I’m sure he won’t have all my top 10, and I’m sure I won’t have your top 10. So, create YOUR top 10 and send them to me below in the comments section.
There are few golf courses in the world as breathtaking as Pebble Beach!
What makes for a picturesque golf course? While the answer may be subjective, here’s the definition from Merriam-Webster:
a: resembling a picture; suggesting a painted scene b: charming or quaint in appearance
We’ll stick with idea that these courses present many views worthy of commemorating in a picture.
Admittedly heavy on courses played on the PGA Tour as well as top-ranked courses on national lists, this ranking lays out one version of the most picturesque courses in the United States.
Have any thoughts on what locations ought to make the list? Let us know in the comments.
A Beautiful Flyover of The Augusta National Golf Club!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
We sit at home on Sunday of Masters week, in our easy chairs, and drool at the beautiful venue that hosts the Master’s Tournament.
Augusta National was the vision of Bobby Jones, Clifford Roberts, and the design genius of Alistair MacKenzie.
To get tickets and be able to walk is a golfer’s dream. To actually play, there is a golfer’s orgasm! And I have played there, trust me!
So here, PGA Golf Art.com gives us a spectacular fly-over video that allows us all to see the real beauty that is Augusta National!
This is Augusta National Golf Club, home of The Masters PGA golf tournament. This is the most magnificent golf course in the world. If you have not physically visited the course then I urgently urge you to make a trip to this years Masters Tournament. I have joked to my friends that the rough looks so perfect that it must have been hand washed, blown dry and brushed like a professional hair stylist! The original videos of each hole are on www.masters.com.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
LPGA Players Paula Creamer and Brittany Lincicome are really pushing for a Women’s Masters at Augusta National.
Creamer proposes a back-to-back women’s tournament with the famous men’s tournament in April.
As Paula recently tweeted, “…. The fastest area of golf growth is women!” She mentions the Drive, Chip, and Putt tournament at Augusta that gives kids a chance to experience this famous place. That Junior Tournament has caught the attention of youngsters nation-wide and is helping to generate more golfers.
Is it time to expand the whole Master’s experience to include professional women players?
Brittany Lincicome and Paula Creamer are two of four players pushing for a Women’s Masters Tournament.
Paula Creamer is calling for a women’s Masters at Augusta National.
Creamer would love for organizers to at least listen to the idea of women playing a Masters in consecutive weeks with the men’s tournament. She reiterated her thoughts Tuesday at Lake Merced Golf Club, where the Bay Area native is preparing for this week’s Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic.
“I’ve been there, I’ve played there, stayed in Butler’s Cabin,” said Creamer, the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open champion. “I had an awesome time. I think the patrons and everybody would love to have two weeks there, two tournaments. Why wouldn’t you? Hopefully, we will see something change and happen.”
While she hasn’t heard from anyone official at Augusta, there has been plenty of positive feedback since she made the comments. She wants to be part of golf taking steps to recruit the next generation of young players.
Augusta National’s Driving Range is Unlike any Other.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Augusta National’s driving range has some unwritten rules on Masters Week.
Max Adler of “The Loop” tells us that players are only allowed one additional person on the range with them, unlike a regular tour week. Except if your name is Tiger Woods, then you can have more!
There are no agents, no equipment reps, no trainers, no writers, no TV people, nor any other species of pilot fish normally found clustered on ranges, usually texting or otherwise wasting their privilege with mindless pitter-patter.
OK, sometimes there’s an agent or a teacher, but mostly it’s just players and caddies at the Masters. With this unobstructed view a spectator can absorb more silky swings in five minutes than in a week on the course. There’s a roomy standing area set on an incline, and in front bleachers set in brick manned by a friendly usher.
“Everything’s a little different here, and that’s by design,” Robert Streb, one perceptive Masters rookie, says about the range. “It must be a really good experience for the fans.”
But the specifics of that design aren’t entirely clear, at least among the people who stand under the big oak by the clubhouse and generally know what they’re talking about. “The soft rule is that a player can bring one person out to the range other than his caddie,” one player says. Except if you’re Tiger Woods and you want to bring both of your kids. Or if you show up with your agent and then your teacher happens to slide down from another student he’s been visiting.
You may only bring one date, but your dance card can have multiple slots, or so it seems.
Since the players have cellphones but the teachers may not, choreographing these little moments is a fraught endeavor.
“I’m here to work, so please, just let me have my phone, that’s all I ask,” says the coach of a multiple major champion.
“It’s the one week each year when teachers truly have to teach because they can’t have video cameras or launch monitors or any of that stuff,” one inveterate Masters attendee tells me. “They can take pictures, but that’s it.”
“That’s not true,” says the same coach as earlier, though with a touch of uncertainty or guilt. “I was out there filming some swings yesterday.”
“A player definitely can’t bring a launch monitor, that I’m sure of,” says a sales rep for a major equipment company.
But wasn’t Graeme McDowell using a Trackman Tuesday afternoon? “That must’ve been Augusta National’s Trackman. I think they now have one on the range and their own technician to run it. You’re allowed to use theirs, but not bring your own.”
“There’s no comparison. It’s far and away the best I’ve ever seen,” says J.B. Holmes, winner of last week’s Shell Houston Open.
“The fairway on the right is a replica of the first hole so you can practice your opening tee shot. And the wedge green behaves exactly like the greens on the course so you can see how the ball is spinning and reacting, which is all we really want.”
And the patrons can see these shots, too, which is all they really want. When there are no rules, the only rule is don’t do anything that will detract from it being the greatest in the world.
The Daily Life of an Augusta National Greenkeeper!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
As golfers, we always admire the great condition that Augusta National is in each and every year for the Masters.
I have had the good fortune to play Augusta several times, and I can tell you that this conditioning is year-round. (while the course is open) But take a moment to think about the men and women who work these hallowed grounds. Mark Townsend from nationalclubgolfer.com gives us a story here that we don’t really think about much – the greenskeeper and his staff!
Headingly greenkeeper Andy Stanger told his careers advisor that he loved cutting grass. Twelve years later he earned himself a six-month internship at the most famous corner in golf in the run-up to the 2009 Masters.
“I got the internship after a three- hour phone interview with three different people. There were 14 of us interviewing for one job. I began in late October 2008 and was appointed to work on holes 8 and 9. Then Amen Corner came up so I spent 15 hours a day working on 11 and 12. It was a dream spot, where else would you want to be as a greenkeeper?
The Daily Life of an Augusta National Greenkeeper!
“They have 45 full-time staff on turf, 35 on horticulture, and eight to 10 interns on hole care.
There are also four full-time mechanics. The greenkeepers’ prefab is immaculate. They will sand down all the paint on all the walls and paint it all again brand new every year.
“The site is huge. To get from Amen Corner from the maintenance facility would take about eight minutes to drive to. The trees go on for quite a way before you get to the edge of the site, it’s like a fortress.
“I have always fancied caddying there. The caddies say the 11th is the hardest hole, if you go left from the tee you’re dead, and it’s the most difficult to putt on. In the morning, with the dew on it, you can see really subtle breaks and the nap goes down towards the pond. Pros will drop 50 balls to find a way to run one down to the pin.
“The 12th can be deceptive, there is a hole in the trees where the creek runs and that can act like a funnel for the wind. The green is tiny. If you go long there is no up and down from the bunkers.
“They have a bunker technician there every single day; depth checking, cleaning, topping up, edging. I can guarantee and the depth of sand will be exactly the same in every bunker. When the course shuts they get a black liner and peg it all in so any bunker can’t be contaminated or get blown away. Then they clean them out and freshen them up.
The Daily Life of an Augusta National Greenkeeper!
“The course opens again in October, and they have all new grass every year.
The Bermuda grass in the summer basically holds the soil together and looks terrible and that’s why it’s shut. In October they scalp all the Bermuda grass down to the soil and plant new Ryegrass everywhere. And then the clock starts ticking and the countdown goes up on the wall. There is no ‘we’ve got til April’, the intensity is then ramped up from that point.
“You will get weak spots, bits that are in the shade we will be working on. We were throwing seeds two weeks before the tournament – anything that can be picked up on a camera will be painted green.
To have this as your office every day must be such a thrill!
They get the green speeds to around 14. No club golfer will ever understand that. And that is on firm and undulating greens
“Members aren’t expected to be out there playing every day. A busy day might be four rounds; most days there would be nobody. Two to three weeks before the tournament the players start arriving. Two weeks before that is the members’ tournament – The Jamboree – and that is the big deal and where you can get your name on the boards.
“Jack Nicklaus said if you put a 10-handicapper in the middle of every green, he still wouldn’t break 90, and he is spot on.
It is the sheer firmness. How they stop their balls on 15 is beyond me.
“They have chalk points on the greens that are 10 feet apart and they roll between them. They get the speeds to around 14. No club golfer will ever understand that. And that is on firm and undulating greens.
“Three weeks before you start mowing morning and night. They will say to cut the 10th three times, the 14th four times and the 12th just once and that will keep changing. Every green will be exactly the same speed.
“It is different to the US Open where the greens are purple by the Sunday, it is 80 ̊ in April and they haven’t been trampled all year and are not stressing it as a plant plus everything is monitored.
“On tournament days we would meet in the shop at 3.30am for a briefing. The chairman would come down at 4.30 to gee everybody up and you would be given a number of a mower with instructions.
“I had 12 which I would only cut once. There was no grass coming off, just dust, so I would help on 13. There is as much food and drinks as you want and then you are free to watch golf or get some sleep.
“A lot of us sat in the shop and watched it on the big screens. It is the best networking time and where you would get your next job. By 2.30pm I was in a buggy by the 5th in case anything went wrong.
“Then after the golfers have come through, you start mowing the course again.”
The Daily Life of an Augusta National Greenkeeper!
Andy is now the head greenkeeper at another Alister MacKenzie-designed course – Headingley, near Leeds
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I was extremely fortunate to be invited to play Augusta National.
My host was the late Wayne Calloway, who was the Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. One of the finest human beings I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Wayne never thought he would be invited to be a member of Augusta because Georgia is Coke country, and he led the rival company Pepsi. However, his stature in the business world made it a no-brainer for Wayne to be a member there, and the selection committee obviously knew that.
We stayed in the cabins alongside the 10th fairway and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the clubhouse. I must say they have one of the finest wine cellars I have ever seen.
Each morning I would get up early just to walk around the ground close to the clubhouse, and there were already staff out picking up the leaves that had fallen during the night. The place is immaculate!
Augusta National is not a club where you apply for membership.
If you have to ask, you’re not welcome. That’s the basic membership policy at Augusta National Golf Club.
Members at Augusta National are usually wealthy, but a more distinction would be that holders of the green jacket are accomplished. Wealth alone doesn’t grant immediate access into one of golf’s most exclusive and secretive clubs. Details about the membership policies leak out from time to time, but for the most part, the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ rule is observed.
When USA Today published a comprehensive list of the members in 2002, it revealed the average age of an Augusta member to be in the early 70s. Notable members include Warren Buffett (CEO of Berkshire Hathaway), Bill Gates (chairman of Microsoft), Roger Goodell (Commissioner of the NFL), Lynn Swann (Hall-of-Fame wide receiver) and Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric).
Augusta announced in 2012 that Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore would become the first two female members in the history of the club. A third female member, Ginni Rometty, was admitted in 2014.
In the 2002 USA Today package, one Augusta member offered some inside information.
The club likes to keep its total number around 300 and fees range from $25,000-$50,000. That’s a bargain compared to rates at other private clubs, which can be well into the six figures. Augusta’s waiting list is about 300, populated by those nominated by current members. Members are allowed up to four guests, and as long as the member is on the property, his guests can play without him. The playing period is a lot less due to the club being closed from mid-May to mid-October for course renovations. A 2006 GOLF Magazine study revealed the average handicap of the club members was 13.2 according to then club president Hootie Johnson. A former Augusta caddie said the number is probably closer to 15.
The best piece of gossip from the Augusta caddie? One member took to walking his dog on the course in the morning, but was told he couldn’t do so because his dog was not a member. He resolved the issue by paying a guest fee for his dog.
So there you have it. A dog is more welcome at Augusta National than you are.
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson’s odds and expectations!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Going into the 2015 Masters Tournament we have some great storylines.
There is the entry of such superstars as Rory McIlroy, (World #1) Jordan Speith, Jason Day, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson (World #2) plus golfers in their twilight years like Tiger and Phil. And don’t count out players like Freddie Couples, (who has the best scoring average in history at the Masters) and Louis Oosthuizen, who is always a danger at Augusta. Can they pull off a miracle as Jack Nicklaus did in 1986 when everybody thought that Jack was through? Time will tell, but I can tell you this. I will be glued to my TV on Sunday afternoon. Please don’t call, I won’t pick up.
