in pre-Masters press conference, Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley reaffirmed the club’s position to support the USGA and R&A’s proposed return of the golf ball, currently scheduled for 2028 at the professional level, and suggested that the plans should be finalised.
In January, the USGA issued a notice to manufacturers announcing that it was receiving feedback on delaying the implementation of the new General Distance Standard (ODS) tests until 2030, but that such a rollback would be adopted simultaneously at all levels, not in phases. The new test will require golf balls to fly no farther than the current limit of 317 yards, but at an increased speed of 125 mph from 120 mph.
Most estimates suggest that longer game players will lose 10-15 yards on their shots, while most recreational players will see negligible impacts.
“There has always been a lot of agreement. My feeling on this subject is that failure is not an option. I think we have to continue to work together to reach an agreement,” Ridley said Wednesday morning. “What we’re trying to do is protect the integrity of what makes golf so great. I think I tried to articulate that in my comments, and that’s that it’s about more than just hitting great drives.”
Ridley said the club’s interest and position is not just about protecting its course, which has been significantly lengthened over the past 25 years to 7,565 yards.
The most recent noticeable change was that the extension of the par-5 13th holeperhaps the most famous non-par-3 in the sport. In 2023, a new Masters set was built, adding 35 yards to the hole for a new scorecard space of 545 yards.
To build the new drive, the club famously bought land from neighboring Augusta Country Club in 2017 and had part of Chapman Court re-routed to accommodate the new model.
Ridley said the change didn’t significantly change the score on the hole, but that wasn’t the point. The purpose was to restore the purpose of Bobby Jones and Dr. Alister MacKenzie when they designed it over 100 years ago.
“What has changed is the way the hole is played today and, I think, the teasing of the hole. For example, before we added the yardage on 13, only about 60 percent of the fairway was hitting drivers. Now it’s 90 percent,” Ridley said. “The first year we added the distance, the same drives (that used to go through the fairway) stayed in the fairway again and allowed the player to make the decision — Bobby Jones called it an important decision — whether they wanted to hit the green.
“So I think the hole is now playing more like it was designed to be played. Sure, there’s going to be mid to par — maybe not short irons, but there’s going to be some mid irons played on that hole. But that’s not an easy shot per se. But there’s going to be more longer irons and even some irons being played. I think we want to play that way.”
But Ridley understands that not every golf course, including many iconic locations, has the resources to make the changes that Augusta National can, and even Augusta can’t keep extending every hole. Ridley heard that first hand this week.
“I talked to Jackson Herrington, one of our new amateurs, and he told me that yesterday he hit it over the bunker on the 1st and 5th, which is about a 325-yard drive, and one was in the wind,” Ridley said. “I said we can make changes, but there’s not much we can do to make changes, number one, unless we destroy the Eisenhower cabin, and we’re not going to do that.”
Two years ago, Ridley claimed that Masters should never to be played on an 8,000-yard Augusta National course. At some point, even Augusta National’s seemingly endless resources will be limited in how long they can make the golf course.
Ridley wants the rest of the game’s stakeholders to take action before it’s too late. Talk of a comeback has been discussed for years with no concrete action so far December 2023, when the USGA and R&A announced the proposed reinstatementwhich is currently slated to begin implementation in two years.
Even in the years that followed, as the proposed date approached, there were growing doubts about whether the proposal would actually be implemented.
“We’ll make changes when we can, but I think it’s time to really address this issue,” Ridley said. “It’s been talked about for a long time.”
;)
