If there was any doubt entering the Masters where Augusta National Golf Club stood on the game’s distance debate – and there really shouldn’t have been – there is none now.
Club chairman Fred Ridley said in his annual pre-tournament address to the media that Augusta National and the Masters would fall in line with the game’s governing bodies, which have proposed a model local rule that would require “elite” male professionals and amateurs – not recreational golfers – to play a shorter-flying ball.
“We have been consistent in our support of the governing bodies, and we restate our desire to see distance addressed,” Ridley said Wednesday on the eve of the 87th Masters. “The natural conclusion is, yes, we will be supportive.”
If the proposal announced three weeks earlier by the USGA and the R&A were to be enacted, it would take effect January 1, 2026. The PGA Tour, DP World Tour, other pro tours, associations and equipment manufacturers are soliciting feedback while the governing bodies invite comments by August 14, but earlier reaction from PGA Tour players revealed mostly opposition to the proposal.
Because the major pro tours do not administer any of golf’s four biggest events, the Masters, in its customary spot as the season’s first major championship, could be a key ally if it were to adopt the USGA and R&A proposal.
Ridley’s backing comes on the heels of Augusta National’s lengthening, by 35 yards, of its iconic par-5 13th hole, where many of the game’s longest drivers had been reaching the green with short-iron approach shots in recent years.
The reigning NCAA champion will receive an exemption into each Masters under revised tournament qualifications for 2024 after 2022 NCAA champion Gordon Sargent of Vanderbilt received a special invitation this year.
The winners of PGA Tour events that award a full-point allocation will earn Masters invitations, assuring that when the tour returns to a calendar-year schedule in 2024 that winners of fall events will gain spots at Augusta National.
In what has been dubbed the “Talor Gooch rule” after he was ruled ineligible for the Tour Championship upon defecting to LIV Golf, players who are “qualifying and eligible” for the Tour Championship will earn Masters invitations.
On the 10th anniversary of Berckmans Place, work is underway for the tournament’s first off-site hospitality venue, across Washington Road near the club’s North Gate entrance, and the Masters is reaching out to potential patrons for the “Official Masters Hospitality Experience.”
The reigning NCAA women’s champion will receive an invitation to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
The club will be involved in the renovation of Augusta Municipal Golf Course, known locally as “The Patch,” by relocating the course-management program at Augusta Technical College and the local First Tee program to the muni, with Ridley calling the partnership “a new era for public golf in our city.” READ MORE
Steve Harmon