AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | Do not adjust your TV sets this week. It’s just not that colorful at Augusta National this year – again.
There was hope that a relatively normal winter might deliver a Masters tournament draped in the vibrant pastels of spring, but the late date and modern rhythm of the blooming season conspired to have the 2024 edition merely flecked with specks of color.
Even if the Masters had finished a week earlier when the Augusta National Women’s Amateur was staged, the color palette would have been a little muted. It’s as if Monet was running low on pastel watercolors for his canvas and could only dab in places instead of saturate it with broad brush strokes.
The preponderance of mild winters in Georgia – often imbued with weeks of unseasonably balmy temperatures in January and February – has shifted the rhythm of the azalea blooms earlier and earlier.
This is pretty much the new norm these days for Masters week. For years such as 2014 and 2018, when Rory McIlroy had to escape seas of pink, purple and fuchsia in the middle of the azaleas left and behind the hole named Azalea (No. 13), we get years like the last three when Augusta is largely as green and white as its jackets and caddie bibs.
Say whatever you want about climate change, but there is no arguing that the Masters no longer consistently falls in the sweet spot for spring blossoms. It’s been trending that way for a number of years.
Augusta’s hardiness zone – the standard by which gardeners can determine which perennial plants are most likely to thrive in certain regions – has taken a dramatic shift since 1990. The zone maps created for 2023 have Augusta in Zone 8b (15-20 degrees Fahrenheit) using mean extreme minimum winter climate data covering the period 1991-2020. The previous designation in 2012, using data from 1976 to 2005, was Zone 8a (10-15 degrees). Before that in 1990 – when Nick Faldo won his second green jacket – Augusta was on the southern edge of hardiness Zone 7b (5-10 degrees). For comparison’s sake, Augusta’s current zone used to reach only as high as north Florida and the southern edge of Georgia in 1990, while to hit its zone 30 years ago now you have to get up to the western North Carolina mountains.
The 10-degree warmer shift has prompted many of the azaleas to start blooming earlier in March, which means the Masters consistently arrives past the peak if not past the blooming season entirely. That peak window this year was two to three weeks ago when the PGA Tour was still finishing up its Florida Swing.
Since we can be pretty confident that the Masters isn’t moving back to March (the inaugural Augusta National Invitation Tournament was March 22-25, 1934), patrons will need to get used to having the color on the course be hit or miss depending on the tournament’s end date and the severity of the winter.
It’s still pristine and pretty and as close to perfect as a golf course gets. Nobody is turning down a tournament badge because the flowers are underwhelming. But if you show up expecting to see Monet’s Garden at Giverny and find Water Lilies at Hogan’s Bridge instead, you might be a little let down. But it’s nothing a Crow’s Nest lager and egg salad sandwich in Amen Corner can’t cure.
Scott Michaux
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Top: Azaleas during the 2018 Masters
ANDREW REDINGTON, GETTY IMAGES