Golfing News

The US Masters 2010 is the first major of 2010, and the Augusta National will host the return to golf of Tiger Woods. THE MASTERS has always been different, of course. The only one of golf’s four majors not a championship.

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it is also one quarter of the so-called “Impregnable Quadrilateral” played for at the same venue, Augusta National, every spring.
But this year, courtesy of Tiger Woods and his by now legendary off-course shenanigans, the 74th playing of what America loves to call the game’s “rite of spring” amidst the newly flowering azaleas and dogwoods promises to be even more arresting than For one thing, while the bookies still have Woods as favourite to win a fifth green jacket, the reality is that a 15th major victory for the world No.1 would represent, for the first time since he turned professional back in August 1996, something of a surprise. Nearly five months off amidst the sort of revelations Tiger continues to endure must surely mean that he will arrive in Augusta some way short of his peerless best.

Also helping on the interest front is the fact that the recently much-maligned course is slowly but surely being restored to the fascinating strategic test it once was before former club chairman Hootie Johnson decided that the (brainless and sacrilegious) introduction of semi-rough (“first cut” in Masters-speak), more trees and back tees located somewhere near to downtown Augusta were somehow a good idea.

“The course over the last couple of years has been moving back to what it once was,” confirms two-time Masters winner, Ben Crenshaw. “The fairways are a little wider. And some of the tee boxes have the potential to be moved up to take account of the prevailing conditions. Those are good things, all of which will encourage the players to take more chances. That wasn’t happening four or five years ago, when the course was truly a brutal test. How hard it was reflected on how the course was being played. It wasn’t as much fun in that the players couldn’t take any liberties. So it was less fun to watch them and less fun for them to play. But we are moving away from that. If we get good weather this week, the players will be driving it into spots where they can attack a bit more. So it should be a bit more exciting.”

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