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      Hideki Matsuyama Looks to Defend His 2021 Victory

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      Hideki Matsuyama is back in Augusta, Ga., taking a shot at winning a second consecutive ceremonial green jacket.Matsuyama, 30, and a former teenage prodigy, set records last year when he won the Masters by one stroke, becoming the tournament’s first Asian-born champion and the first Japanese man to win a major golf championship.Notably missing from last year’s tournament was Tiger Woods, who did not compete because of a serious leg injury he sustained in a car crash that February. His absence opened the door for a new era of younger golfers to showcase their skills on the sport’s biggest stage.Still, Matsuyama was positioned as anything but the potential champion.Coming into the 2021 Masters, Matsuyama was ranked 25th in the world and had not won a tournament since 2017. Yet a sparkling 65 in the third round gave Matsuyama a head start for his victory lap: He entered the last round with a four-stroke advantage and shot a one-over-par 73 to finish the tournament at 10 under par, just one stroke ahead of Will Zalatoris, the 25-year-old Masters rookie from San Francisco. Zalatoris’s second-place finish helped raise his profile within the golfing community.Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth, also from the United States, tied for third at seven under par.Matsuyama, who learned golf from his father, had long been lionized in Japan and seen as the country’s best chance to break through at golf’s biggest tournament. Two Japanese women, Hisako Higuchi and Hinako Shibuno, have been major champions.Matsuyama is not a favorite heading into this year’s tournament — Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas have the shortest odds at roughly 12-1 — but the games are only just beginning. More

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      Tiger Woods Played a Practice Round Wednesday Ahead of Masters Return

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      Woods played nine holes with his favorite practice partners on Wednesday. But one noticed a change in the five-time champion’s demeanor.Follow our live coverage of Tiger Woods’s return to the MastersAUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods’s final day of preparation for the 2022 Masters was typical of the laid-back vibe on the eve of the tournament, when the goal is to play a little golf, but not too much — just enough to stay loose for Thursday’s first round.With that in mind, Woods played nine holes with his preferred practice partners, his Florida neighbor Justin Thomas, whom Woods considers a little brother, and Fred Couples, who has at times has served as something of a big brother to Woods.Befitting the atmosphere, the group smiled regularly thorough the round, although Couples, 62, the 1992 Masters champion, noticed a slight change in Woods’s demeanor since playing practice rounds with him earlier in the week.“He was a little more serious; he’s getting ready to roll,” Couples said. “The first practice round I played with him on Monday we had both flown in that day and we were laughing a lot. He was lighter. Today, he and Justin were pretty serious. They’re getting ready.”Couples, left, Woods and Thomas skipped their practice shots over the water on the 16th green.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFans lining the holes that the Woods group played Wednesday alternatively cheered Woods, the five-time Masters champion, on the tees and in the fairways and remained quiet as they almost reverentially watched him practice his putting from different spots on each green.Couples said Woods, who had a more pronounced limp on Wednesday than on any of the other days he practiced at Augusta National, appeared to be swinging the club better than any other day this week. Woods’s surgically rebuilt right leg, however, is clearly causing him some pain.“The pain is there, but he’s dealt with that before,” Couples said. “In terms of his swing, I think he’s a little sharper, a little better.”Couples added that he continues to be mesmerized that Woods is back at the Masters so quickly after his horrific car crash on Feb. 23, 2021.“It’s a miraculous thing, I mean, 14 months ago I’m bawling like a baby every day worried about him,” he said. “And now you’re paired with him and he looks strong. He’s hitting it plenty far enough to play this course, and he plays this course so well. He knows what to do here. I think it’s amazing for him to be out here.” More

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      Masters Invitations Endure as a Signature Detail for the Tournament

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      Follow our live coverage of the first round of the Masters.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The invitations have come his way for half a century, and Ben Crenshaw, now 70 years old, has kept each and every one.“The Board of Governors of the Augusta National Golf Club,” the handsome cards invariably begin, “cordially invites you to participate” in the year’s Masters Tournament.“I’m elated every time,” Crenshaw, who won the Masters in 1984 and 1995, said in an interview. “Every player will tell you that. They get that formal invitation, and it’s there before you, and it’s, ‘Wow, I’m qualified to play in the event.’”Few competitions in sports openly cultivate and savor mystique like the Masters, whose opening round will be played on Thursday. There are the green jackets for winners and Augusta National members, the Tuesday night dinners for past champions and the cheap pimento cheese sandwiches for fans, the manicured rectitude of a course splendid with azaleas and dogwoods and largely, proudly devoid of modern life’s conveniences and intrusions.One of the tournament’s throwback rituals, though, begins months before the field faces Augusta National’s punishing greens, and it usually unfolds in private: the mailing and receipt of invitations to the men who have qualified for the Masters.Augusta, quintessentially Southern, asks the golfers to R.S.V.P. to the invitations, which it has sent since the tournament’s start in 1934.The 2019 R.S.V.P. sent by Tiger Woods, who won the Masters that year.“Good style is always right at the time, good taste is always in taste,” said Gary Player, who won nine major tournaments, including three at Augusta National. “When you get that invitation, if you see it, it’s so exquisitely done with such class. Everything in business is negotiable except quality, and that embraces it to the hilt.”Player, one of the honorary starters for this year’s tournament, added in an interview in January: “I still look at it and I come back to the same conclusion: I’m just overwhelmed at how they do things with class.”The Masters has always been an invitational event, even before it was called the Masters, though its appeal and prestige have swelled since the tournament’s early days. The opportunity to play today is hardly a surprise — Augusta National publishes a roster of clear-cut ways to qualify, from being a previous Masters champion to finishing in the top four at the previous year’s P.G.A. Championship, though it has the authority to ask others to compete. But players aren’t always aware that the storied tournament comes with a physical invitation.Patrick Reed, who earned one of Augusta National’s green jackets in 2018, recalled that he had been tipped off to keep an eye on the mail for his first invitation after he won the Wyndham Championship, but that it was still “unbelievable” when the envelope from the club near the Savannah River arrived ahead of the 2014 Masters. He kept that first invitation, as well as the one from the year after he won.“Both of them are ones I’m going to save and cherish forever,” he said at a news conference in 2019, even though he did not know where his other invitations had wound up over the years. He added, “Just the chills when you’re opening it up, it’s just an awesome experience — even though it’s just a piece of paper that has your invitation on it.”Neither Crenshaw nor Player could recall any other tournament with quite such a habit, or, at least, not one quite so polished. (“I don’t remember getting a letter from the R&A,” Player, who has long described the British Open as his favorite tournament, mused wryly of that event’s organizer.) Many in golf, including Crenshaw, ascribe the enduring formality to Bobby Jones, an Augusta National founder who died in 1971.“To me, it reflects what Bob Jones always retained on nearly everything that’s at Augusta: It’s proper, it has a certain amount of grace to it, there’s a touch of humility,” Crenshaw said. “It’s beautifully done, and the font has never changed, and the seal is on it. It’s the way they do things.”Gary Player sometimes sent warm holiday cards.If the invitations are almost entirely unchanged across the generations, the responses are still evolving. Many of today’s players reply by email. But for decades, pen and paper were the way of Augusta National, and the club recently allowed The New York Times to review a selection of the written responses it holds in its archives — pages of golf history, to be sure, but also glimpses of players’ personalities and changing fortunes.“It will be a pleasure to be there,” Herman Keiser wrote in cursive on “Herman Keiser Golf Pro” letterhead in February 1946, about two months before he won the Masters, his only major victory.“It is with pleasure that I accept your invitation to play in the Masters Tournament,” Claude Harmon said in a Western Union telegram the next year. “It is always a treat. Thanks.”Sam Snead used the letterhead of Miami’s Hotel Dallas Park — players over the years also corresponded from the Sands Hotel in Tucson, Ariz., and a Holiday Inn in San Ysidro, Calif. — to write in 1949 that he would “accept with pleasure,” while Lloyd Mangrum simply declared his intention to play in 1955 on the invitation itself and returned it to Augusta.Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo opted for brief, if warm, letters.Clockwise from top left: Nick Faldo in 1988; Arnold Palmer in 2003; Doug Ford in 1957; Tiger Woods in 1995. Arnold Palmer’s wife often appeared to prepare his replies, Player sent one on a Christmas card and Crenshaw, in 1995, accepted as he wondered what José María Olazábal would choose for the menu at the Champions Dinner. That same year, someone wrote an acceptance and noted that it was from “Eldrick ‘Tiger’ Woods,” who had just turned 19. Then there is Woods’s distinctive signature on a piece of paper that could have been bought in a department store stationery aisle.When Woods told Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, in 2019 that he would play the Masters, the letterhead, emblazoned with the logo and the name of one of his corporate ventures, reflected his new station in life. (Woods’s agent did not respond to inquiries about who wrote the 1995 letter.)Some replies, like Palmer’s, felt formulaic, though he reflected in a 2003 letter that he anticipated “seeing my many friends at Augusta National during the week.” Others said they sought variety in how they crafted their responses, even as they were aware of what Augusta really wanted — simply an acceptance or regrets.“I tried to change it up a little bit,” Crenshaw said, “but they are just needing a response.”This year, in one way or another, 91 golfers accepted the invitation. More

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      Appearing This Year at the Masters: Azaleas, Green Jackets and Inflation

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      Famously low concession prices increased a bit, injecting a small dose of the real world at Augusta National Golf Club.Follow our live coverage of the first round of the Masters.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The lush confines of Augusta National Golf Club, a sanctuary of sport, power and privilege, are showing a harsh economic truth: Inflation can be as invasive as kudzu weeds.There may be no athletic event in the United States that has been more defiantly immune to the outside forces of economics, politics and modernity than the Masters Tournament. But two aggravations of the present — inflation and supply-chain pressures — are encroaching at concession stands that have long sold sandwiches and sweets to the well-heeled for rock-bottom prices.Measured merely in dollars and cents, the changes are hardly seismic, especially for spectators who routinely pay thousands for tickets on the secondary market. Ham and cheese on rye, for example, has gone from $2.50 last year to $3 now, while the price of a chicken biscuit has increased by 50 cents, to $2. Augusta National is a place, though, where shifts on much of anything are so scarce that they attract attention.Now, in addition to being the first major showcase of the golf season, the Masters is an example of how inflation, running at nearly 8 percent nationwide through February, is trickling into corners of American life that traditionally tilt toward the economically obdurate.“The change in the price of concessions at Augusta is a little like the dollar store being the dollar-and-a-quarter store,” said Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary (and a self-described “very enthusiastic and very bad golfer”) and among the first prominent figures to warn about this surge of inflation, which he characterized in an interview as “strong enough to break even longstanding traditions.”Augusta National is not prone to raising prices. The pimento cheese sandwich, a white bread ritual whose price remained untouched heading into the tournament that will begin on Thursday, has been $1.50 since 2003.At $6, Chardonnay is the most expensive item.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut the menu, simple and typically static, and its prices are fixtures of the Masters and signature ways for Augusta National, which has faced decades of accusations of classism, racism and sexism, to convey hospitality, warmth and grace.“We want the experience to not only be the best but to be affordable,” Billy Payne, who was Augusta National’s chairman for 11 years, said during his tenure, which ended in 2017. “We take certain things very, very seriously — like the cost of a pimento cheese sandwich is just as important as how high the second cut is going to be.”Some economists and sports marketing executives, though, believe that the club’s motive for keeping prices low is not as benevolent as Southern gentility. Instead, they think that the club, whose members include titans of finance and industry, may deliberately use cheap concessions to construct a feeling of an earlier, less capitalistic era in sports — and the aura that has made the Masters brand among the most revered and valuable in sports.John A. List, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who has attended the Masters, has said that Augusta National’s strategy amounts to wanting to “shock and awe you on the low side.”Even after 2022’s assorted hikes, the prices are certainly still low. The most expensive item is a $6 chardonnay, and a lunch of an egg salad sandwich, a bag of potato chips (plain or barbecue) and a soft drink totals $5. Patrons, as the club refers to the fans who crowd along the fairways, have been more likely to notice a menu item that vanished — like the Georgia peach ice cream sandwich, formerly sold for $2 — because of the supply chain, than their expenditures of a few extra quarters.“We have had some modest price increases,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said on Wednesday, when he acknowledged that supply-chain troubles had also affected construction projects. “I think that most, if not everyone, would say there is great value in our concessions, so we are very comfortable with that.”The finances of Augusta National, a private club, are opaque, with the club not even saying how many general admission passes it sells for up to $115 on competition days, when some estimates have pegged crowds at about 40,000. But it has shown a willingness over the years to weather the more ordinary trends of inflation. Had Augusta been keeping pace, and assuming the pimento cheese sandwich was priced appropriately in 2003, the sandwich would have been about $2.14 at around this time last year, before steeper inflation began.Tied to inflation or not, Augusta was perhaps due for some price increases. Although the pimento cheese sandwich’s price, long memorialized in newspaper accounts of the tournament, held steady for this year, the club has not lately gone so long without nudging it higher. In 2003, when the price climbed to $1.50, the $1.25 standard had been in effect since just 1999. And when that price took hold, it was after only five years of $1 sandwiches.But the economic environment now, Summers suggested, gave Augusta “more need, more cover and more opportunity to raise prices than any year in the last 40.”Federal data shows that the price of ham increased about 7 percent between February 2021 and February 2022. The cost of white bread climbed 6.5 percent, coffee went up 10.5 percent and “limited service meals and snacks” increased 8 percent.“Because every other price is being raised in the economy, it probably feels easier to justify raising prices,” said Summers, who has played at Augusta but said that the course record had been left “safe by at least 40 shots.”Despite its pervasiveness across the country, inflation has not swamped the entirety of the Masters ecosystem, distinct as the only one of the four men’s golf majors to be played at the same course each year.TicketIQ, which tracks resale data, reported that most competition days were fetching lower prices than in 2019, the last time Augusta National was open as usual for the tournament. For the competition round on Thursday, the cheapest ticket at one point this week was $2,018, according to the company. It was $332 more in 2019.And STR, a travel research company, said that the average daily hotel room rate around the Augusta area had been about $390 for the week of the 2019 tournament. Although complete figures for this year are not yet available, many hotels in the region have offered rooms for around that level this week.It is also not clear whether Augusta National has increased the value of its premier tournament’s purse, which has been $11.5 million in recent years, for 2022. The club is expected to announce its intentions on Saturday.On Wednesday morning, though, another round of storms briefly forced players and spectators to depart the course. The grounds fully reopened right around lunch, just in time for a meal that was maybe a little more expensive than last time. More

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      Tiger Woods Says He Intends to Play the Masters

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      Woods, who sustained significant leg injuries in a single-car crash in February 2021, has played several practice rounds at Augusta National this week.Follow our live coverage of Tiger Woods’s return to the MastersAUGUSTA, Ga. — In a career defined by triumph, travail, resolve and resurrection, Tiger Woods on Tuesday vowed to attempt his most startling comeback yet: returning to golf’s greatest stage, the Masters Tournament, roughly 14 months after a car crash so devastating that doctors weighed amputating his right leg.Woods, who as recently as two months ago downplayed his physical capacity to contend on a championship course, is scheduled to tee off in Thursday’s first round of the Masters Tournament at 10:34 a.m.“As of right now, I feel like I am going to play,” Woods, 46, said at Augusta National Golf Club, which has hosted the event since 1934.He will be seeking a sixth green jacket, the ceremonial garment bestowed upon Masters winners and golf’s most-prized award. If successful, Woods will tie Jack Nicklaus for the most Masters victories and claim his 16th major championship, inching closer to Nicklaus’s record 18 major titles.Woods has not played in a PGA Tour event in 17 months and his world ranking has plummeted to 973. But when asked on Tuesday if he believed he could win this week, he answered: “I do.” He added that he would not “show up to an event unless I think I can win it.”Given his past record, it hardly seemed an idle boast. Part of the Woods legend is his ability to deliver implausible achievements while under duress, like his narrow playoff victory at the 2008 U.S. Open when Woods won despite having a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and two stress fractures in his left leg.Woods teed off on No. 1 during a practice round on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWoods on Tuesday recalled that experience at Torrey Pines Golf Course near San Diego and said it would serve as inspiration.“I’ve had stuff before and things I had to play through, even going back to the U.S. Open when my leg was a little bit busted,” he said. “Those are all times that I can draw upon where I was successful — how I’ve learned to block things out and focus on what I need to focus on.”Still, Woods conceded that walking Augusta National’s hilly terrain for four consecutive days will test the recuperative limits of his right leg, which was surgically rebuilt after his sport-utility vehicle tumbled off a Los Angeles-area boulevard at a high speed on Feb. 23, 2021.He sustained open fractures, in several places, of the tibia and the fibula in his right leg, injuries that had to be stabilized with a rod and with screws and pins inserted into his foot and ankle. Woods spent a month in a hospital and was confined to a bed at his Florida home for another two months.Asked Tuesday if he had pain while playing golf, Woods replied: “There is, each and every day.”Woods said he had no misgivings about his ability to play. The worry, he said, was the topographical perils of Augusta and the demands of the 72-hole tournament: “Walking is the hard part.”Woods is scheduled to play the first round with Louis Oosthuizen, who finished second at the Masters in 2012 but has never won at Augusta, and Joaquin Niemann, who tied for 40th at last year’s tournament.Woods, who practiced briefly Tuesday morning before heavy rain chased the golfers from the course before 11 a.m., said he planned to play a nine-hole practice round on Wednesday. Woods also played nine practice holes on Sunday and Monday, the second time with Fred Couples and Justin Thomas. Woods was limping more noticeably on Monday than on Sunday. He walked up the many hills slowly with his gait slightly more inhibited.Couples, a longtime friend and a frequent practice-round companion of Woods’s for more than a decade, agreed with Woods that the sloping, uneven contours of Augusta National would most likely present the biggest challenge to Woods.“It is about the walking,” Couples said. “It’s brutal to walk, and to go do that after what he’s gone through — whatever it was, 14 months ago — and to be playing today?“You can always be in pain, right? He’s kind of a tough guy. He’s never going to let you know he’s in pain.”Overall, Couples was impressed with how Woods played.Woods said he would play another nine holes on Wednesday.Doug Mills/The New York Times“He looked phenomenal,” Couples said. “He drove it really, really well, like a machine. His irons were good. He’s Tiger Woods, so of course, he knows how to putt. He’s just unreal. If he cannot overdo it. If he just doesn’t get too amped up, which is easier said than done.“But if he can walk around here in 72 holes, he’ll contend. He’s too good.”On Tuesday, Woods praised the surgeons, physical therapists and other specialists who have helped bring about his recovery, which he said would be tested daily during the tournament.“How am I going to get all the swelling out and recover for the next day?” he asked. “It’s just a matter of what my body’s able to do the next day and the recovery. We push it and try and to recover the best we possibly can that night and see how it is the next morning.”Woods added: “It gets agonizing and teasing because of simple things that I would normally just go do now take a couple hours here and a couple hours there to prep and then wind down.”At the same time, when asked to summarize his last 14 months in a few words, Woods said he was “thankful.”“To finally get out of that where I wasn’t in a wheelchair or crutches,” he continued, “and walking and still had more surgeries ahead of me, to then say that I was going to be here playing and talking to you guys again, it would have been very unlikely.”Woods, who won his first Masters title 25 years ago, in 1997, has carefully managed expectations — of the golf world and, perhaps, of his own — for a return to the PGA Tour at several points since the crash.Woods’s last appearance in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event was at the 2020 Masters, which was played in November rather than April because of the pandemic. At that event, Woods struggled and finished tied for 38th. But the 2019 Masters, his first major tournament victory in 11 years, makes any challenge — even competing in this year’s Masters — seem possible.After undergoing multiple back and knee surgeries, Woods was not considered a serious contender that year, yet through the final round he played his best golf, birdieing three of the final six holes to win his fifth Masters title.It is difficult to imagine there could be a sixth for Woods in the coming days at Augusta National, given the severity of his injuries and the challenges he will encounter on the course, but Woods has proved in the past, many times over, that he is hard to bet against. More

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      The Masters: 10 Most Memorable Shots

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      The tournament tends to inspire magnificent moments, and there have been many.The Masters, which begins on Thursday, never fails to deliver shots to remember, which generate roars from the crowd at Augusta National Golf Club.Gene Sarazen at Augusta National in 1935, when the tournament was known as the Augusta National Invitation Tournament.Augusta National, via Getty ImagesThis year will no doubt provide more shots that fall into that category and more thunderous roars. Most likely they will come during the back nine on Sunday, when, as the saying goes, the tournament truly begins.Here are 10 examples, in chronological order, of sensational shots by players who walked away with the title — and, since 1949, the coveted green jacket.1935: Gene SarazenThere’s no film of the shot that ranks as the greatest of all. That’s unfortunate.The Masters wasn’t known as the Masters then; it was the Augusta National Invitation Tournament and in only its second year.In the final round, Sarazen was trailing Craig Wood by three strokes. On No. 15, a par 5, Sarazen hit a 4-wood from about 230 yards away. The ball dropped into the cup for an incredible double eagle. Just like that, he was tied with Wood.Sarazen beat Wood by five shots the next day in a 36-hole playoff.1960: Arnold PalmerAfter making a long birdie putt on No. 17 to tie Ken Venturi, who had completed play, Palmer needed another birdie on the last hole to capture his second Masters title in three years.Mission accomplished.He nailed a 6-iron from the fairway to within five feet of the pin and then converted the putt.Palmer prevailed again at Augusta National in 1962 and in 1964, winning the last of his seven majors.Jack Nicklaus at the Masters in 1975.Augusta National/Getty Images1975: Jack NicklausHis tee shot at No. 16, a par 3, in the final round wasn’t what he was looking for, with the ball coming to a rest about 40 feet from the cup. He would, in all likelihood, get his par, but still trail the leader, Tom Weiskopf, by a shot.Forget about the par.Nicklaus knocked in the uphill putt for a birdie, lifting his putter in the air to celebrate. After Weiskopf and Johnny Miller missed their birdie attempts at 18, Nicklaus won his fifth green jacket.1986: Jack NicklausNicklaus, 46, was making an unexpected run on Sunday when he faced a second shot at the risk/reward 15th hole.The risk was worth the reward.From 202 yards away, he hit a 4-iron over the pond to about 12 feet from the pin.He converted the eagle putt and followed with birdies at 16 and 17 to win by a stroke. For Nicklaus, who fired a final-round 65 (30 on the back nine), it was his sixth Masters title and 18th, and final, major championship.1987: Larry MizeWhen a sudden-death playoff got underway, Mize was not the favorite. His opponents were Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros, future Hall of Famers.Yet it was Mize, an Augusta native, who came through, chipping in from about 140 feet on No. 11, the second playoff hole, to outduel Norman. Ballesteros, in pursuit of his third green jacket, had dropped out after a bogey on the first playoff hole.Mize went on to win only two more PGA Tour events.1988: Sandy LyleAfter hitting his drive on No. 18 into the bunker, Lyle needed a par to move to a playoff with Mark Calcavecchia, who was already in the clubhouse.From 150 yards away, Lyle, who couldn’t see the flag, proceeded to hit a magnificent 7-iron, the ball trickling down the hill to stop about 10 feet from the pin.Lyle, of Scotland, made the birdie putt to become the first player from the United Kingdom to win the Masters.Mark O’Meara with his caddie on the 18th green at the 1998 Masters.Augusta National, via Getty Images1998: Mark O’MearaThe tournament seemed destined for the first sudden-death playoff since 1990.O’Meara, who was tied with David Duval and Fred Couples, was lining up a 20-foot birdie putt on the final hole.There would be no playoff.O’Meara, who had started the day two shots back, knocked it in for his first major title. He won his second major a few months later in the British Open.2004: Phil MickelsonWithout question, Mickelson’s 6-iron from the pine straw on No. 13 in 2010 deserves to be on the list, but his birdie on the final hole in 2004 also stands out.Tied with Ernie Els, Mickelson hit his approach to 18 feet from the hole. A playoff appeared to be a strong possibility, and similar to O’Meara in 1998, Mickelson, 33, was in search of his first major triumph. He had finished second three times.Jim Nantz, the CBS anchor, said it best as the ball edged toward the cup.“Is it his time? … Yes.”Tiger Woods faced his fans after winning the Masters in 2005.Icon Sport Media, via Getty Images2005: Tiger WoodsLeading in the final round by only one, Woods was in trouble after his 8-iron to No. 16 missed the green to the left. He had to aim about 25 feet from the cup to catch the slope at the perfect spot.He found the perfect spot, and the ball stayed on the edge of the cup for a second or two before tumbling in for a miraculous birdie.Woods secured his fourth green jacket on the first playoff hole against Chris DiMarco.2012: Bubba WatsonWatson, on the second playoff hole against Louis Oosthuizen, sent his tee shot into the pine straw on the right.Advantage: Oosthuizen. Not for long.Watson managed to hook his wedge shot to about 15 feet from the cup. He finished with a par, earning the first of his two Masters victories when Oosthuizen made a bogey.“As an athlete, as a golfer,” Watson told reporters at the time, “this is the Mecca. This is what we strive for — to put on the green jacket.” More

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      Ben Crenshaw Is Not Done With the Masters

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      He played it as an amateur in the 1970s, won it twice and will once again be telling tales at the Champions Dinner.In the history of the Masters, Ben Crenshaw’s name is writ large.He was the low amateur, meaning the amateur who plays the best that week, in back-to-back years, 1972 and 1973. In 1984, he won the tournament, besting Tom Watson by two strokes. But it’s his 1995 victory at age 43 that’s one for the history books.Just days after his coach and mentor Harvey Penick died, he paired again with Carl Jackson, the Augusta National Golf Club caddie, to win by one shot. When the final putt dropped, Crenshaw draped himself around Jackson in an emotional embrace on the 18th green.Crenshaw, 70, hasn’t played in the tournament since 2015, but he has become a guiding presence at the annual Champions Dinner. He is also among the top golf course architects. He and his business partner, Bill Coore, have designed or renovated a half dozen courses rated in the top 100 in the world.Ahead of his 50th Masters, Crenshaw spoke about the course, the players and the history. The following has been edited and condensed.How has the experience of the tournament changed over the years?With modern golf, I’m amazed how Augusta National has striven to keep up with the times. They have stretched the length of the holes almost as much as they possibly could in a lot of instances. But the actual intent of playing the golf course is very much the same. You still want to drive the ball into a position so you have the best angle into those greens. In our day there was no second cut [of the higher grass just off the fairway that was instituted in 1998] — it was cut grass everywhere you looked. The ball would keep running. It was very strategic in that regard. There were a lot of instances where an errant tee ball could run into trouble.Augusta National will play 7,510 yards this year, 300 yards longer than the average PGA Tour course. Still, it’s the greens, not the length, that challenge the best players. What are they like?The greens are remarkable in the way they play. It’s the contours of those greens and what can happen to the ball. From a player’s standpoint, Augusta National is very much about the approach shot to the green. But you learn the course over time. You don’t go directly to the flagstick. You play over there to get where you’re going. When a player is trying to practice and learn the golf course, you’ll see the newcomers go to many spots around the greens and hit these chips and little short shots. You can’t practice them enough. I’d hit them from various spots; I’d hit it somewhere I hadn’t been.Ben Crenshaw had an emotional reaction to winning the Masters in 1995 by one shot. Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesSo distance matters less?Let’s face it, much of the emphasis is on how far people can hit the ball and what advantage they have. That’s true. But if you look over the champions list there are so many people with varying distances off the tee. It will always reward the long hitter who hits it where it should be.You were the low amateur in the ’70s, and a winner in the ’80s and ’90s. What challenged you over the decades?The course goads you into taking chances. You know if you don’t bring that shot off, you always suffer the consequences of missing by a very small margin. If you miss a spot on the green, the ball might go 60, 70 feet away from where you want it to go. No one can play safe and win at Augusta. You’ve got to take chances to score. Nothing gives you more confidence than when you hit a good shot. It puts the excitement in the game. There was nothing like being in contention at Augusta and hearing the crowd.What’s the conversation like at the Champions Dinner?When we’re at the dinner we all look around the table and we’re seeing different eras of golf. The conversation among the champions is always how they played, who you were chasing, who were your pursuers, what chances did you take. There’s a thread woven through all of us that we’re very fortunate to be in that room. You always want to ask Jack Nicklaus or Gary Player or Vijay Singh: “You faced this shot, and you knew you had to take a chance there. Did it come off as you planned?” We faced the same challenges, and we got through it. More

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      How Augusta National Is Adjusting to Players’ Focus on Distance

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      Modern golf balls and clubs are challenging older courses. How much longer can Augusta National withstand the new technology?When it comes to major championships, the pedigree of the golf course matters. Courses hold the history of the players who have won there.Arnold Palmer at Cherry Hills. Ben Hogan at Merion. Tom Watson at Turnberry.Tiger Woods at, well, Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, Valhalla and Augusta National when he won all four majors consecutively for the so-called “Tiger Slam” in 2000-1.But Augusta National Golf Club, host of the Masters, is different from the rest. It was originally designed by two greats: Dr. Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones, the great amateur. It’s the only major played on the same course year after year. And its champions return like members for that week. Cue the song birds and blooming azaleas.There’s just one problem: modern professional golfers are hitting the ball so far that classic golf courses are being overpowered and some are struggling to find ways to remain relevant and challenging.Just two years ago, Bryson DeChambeau dominated Winged Foot, considered among the toughest championship venues, to win the United States Open. He hit it as far as he possibly could and then wedged it onto the green. The formidable, high rough of a U.S. Open had little effect on him (though he was the only player to finish under par).Now, the days of players like Gene Sarazen, who won the Masters in 1935, hitting a wood into the par-5 15th green are behind us. But the fear is that instead of someone like Woods hitting a 7-iron into that same green it will be a wedge, a much easier club to hit with.Augusta National is aware that the Masters transcends golf. Keeping the course from being a victim of clubs and balls that help players increase their distance is paramount. Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, another classic course, had its future as a major site called into question earlier this year when, at the Genesis Invitational, players hit drives down adjacent fairways to have an easier approach to the green.Players like Bryson DeChambeau, shown here hitting a drive at the 18th hole during the first round of the 2019 Masters, have dazzled with their distance. Two years ago his long shots at Winged Foot helped him win the United States Open. David J. Phillip/Associated PressSo how has Augusta National continued to challenge players and stand up to golf balls that fly farther and spin to a quick stop, and drivers that launch those balls 330 yards and beyond? It’s a combination of technology and psychology.“Augusta National continues to add length judiciously where they can,” said Ben Crenshaw, the 1984 and 1995 champion and an acclaimed golf architect. “Subtle changes have been well thought out.”For such a historic course, Augusta National makes changes pretty much every year. This year it lengthened the 11th and 15th holes, which have become less strategic with players hitting farther, and the 18th, with its gigantic bunker waiting to swallow any straight shots.The added distance is around a total of 50 yards for the three holes, if the tees are pushed back. The goal is to change how players approach those holes. It’s not a new issue.“The length debate has been going on at Augusta National since Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie designed the course,” said Joe Bowden, a local doctor, longtime volunteer and member of the adjoining Augusta Country Club. “The first year the Masters was played in 1934 the course length was 6,700 yards. This year the course will officially measure 7,510 yards for the 2022 tournament.”Yet there’s a limit to the length. As magnificent as Augusta National is to watch on television and experience in person, it’s not exactly situated on a prairie. Hedged in by Washington Road, a commercial thoroughfare as average as Magnolia Lane is spectacular; established neighborhoods; and the Augusta Country Club, the National, as its neighbors call it, only has so much space to grow in the state’s second-largest city.A few years ago, the club went so far as to buy an entire hole from Augusta Country Club so it would have space to lengthen its own 13th hole. In a letter to its members, the then-president of Augusta Country Club noted that Augusta National would rebuild part of its 8th and 9th holes as part of the deal.Augusta National purchased an entire hole from the Augusta Country Club a few years ago so it could lengthen its 13th hole, shown here. Doug Mills/The New York TimesYet the club can also change the speeds of the fairways and greens at will, through how they water them but also which direction they cut them. “People don’t realize how much this can speed up or slow down a course,” said a former assistant golf professional at Augusta who requested anonymity because employees aren’t allowed to speak about club matters. “But it’s much bigger than you think.”For a club that regularly adjusts its angles and lengths of holes, there are more striking things it could do and still be in keeping with the original intent of the course. Michael Hurdzan, who designed Erin Hills, site of the 2017 U.S. Open, pointed to several things the club could do to mute the impact of distance and still be consistent with MacKenzie’s design. One would be to continue to bring trees into play. They could be used to block shortcuts that players can take. “There are only two hazards that make a difference to the great player, ” he said, “trees and water.”Another is to think differently about the bunkers. There are twice as many bunkers, 44, today as when the course was built, but there are only 12 fairway bunkers. Of those, only three are on the back nine where the championship is often decided, and two of those are on 18.“The fairways are basically bunkerless,” said Hurdzan, who advocates bunkers jutting into the fairways, known as cross bunkers. “Mackenzie wasn’t afraid of cross bunkers. If someone wanted to stiffen it up, they could use cross bunkers or more bunkering in the fairway. You could try to hit the big drive and risk it or hit a shorter club and hit a longer iron in.”Of course, what all classic courses are battling is technology: a ball that flies farther than ever when hit with a driver that springs it like a trampoline. This is an issue golf’s two governing bodies are addressing, with an update issued in March. Observers think this is the time for changes to the equipment.“With all due respect to the players, it’s not them working out that’s making the ball go farther,” said Geoff Shackelford, a golf course architect and commentator. “You put technology in their hands that’s 10 years old, and they’re going to go backwards. Technology that’s 30 years old — they’ll really go backwards.”“There are so many things Augusta can do to make it tough,” Shackelford added. “It’s not going to become irrelevant, but it does lose some of the charm when you’re taking away some of the things we’ve come to know.”Shackleford noted that previous attempts to roll back distance were met with resistance, but not so the March announcements from the United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. The technology, he said, is making it harder to stand out as a player. “It probably mutes some of the super elite players’ extra special skills.”Length, though, can be misleading at Augusta. Greg Norman was among the longest players of his era. When he found himself in a playoff in 1987 with Seve Ballesteros, whose short game made up for wild tee shots, and Larry Mize, a comparatively short hitter, it looked like Norman had the advantage.But that’s not how it ended. On the second playoff hole, Mize chipped in for a birdie to win the playoff.“With his length, Greg had an advantage,” Mize said. “Thank God golf is more than length. The longest hitters aren’t always winning the Masters.”Still, Mize said he, too, would be in favor of the U.S.G.A. addressing what technology has done to distance.“I know it’s hard to bring it back,” Mize said. “But I’m hopeful that 20 years from now golfers won’t be hitting it any further. I’m optimistic that Augusta will still be relevant. It’s a special place and a special event.” More