From the hearth - Scene I: Tom Weiskopf is having lunch at the Augusta National. He's just reviewed changes made to the 13th green, changes that he dislikes and believes will be quite controversial. He tells as much to the architect, none other than his longtime foil, Jack Nicklaus, who has just entered the room. Weiskopf picks up the action.

Jack got quite a puzzled look on his face, and then he said, "Take me down there." So we got into a golf cart and drove down there onto the other side of Rae's Creek, the fairway side, just mid-green. He stood up in the cart, threw his arms up, and he had a very, very surprised and kind of dumbfounded look on his face. I said, "What do you think?"

"Well, that isn't what I told them to do."

I said, "You didn't even see the change? You company did it and you weren't even here?"

"Oh, I drew it out for them and I told them what to do, but this isn't even close to what I told them to do."

"You weren't here?! Jack, you know what, I guess now we ought to change the sixteenth hole at Cypress or the Eighteenth at Pebble."

As I predicted, the players played it and they disliked it. And it was changed back somewhat. But why change it (in the first place)? The reason, I was told, was for drainage purposes coming off the hillside down to the creek. Well, I know enough about design to know that you could have a cut a swale in behind those azalea bushes to stop most of the drainage problems. But I think they got worried about too many eagles and giving away too much crystal. The green contour didn't even resemble the old Mackenzie green. It was just out of character. . . . The risk -reward factor isn't what it used to be, and it's now just another par-five hole instead of being a strategic and psychological hole.

(Reprinted without permission from I Remember Augusta by Mike Towle, Cumberland House, 2000)

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