Ready And Waiting

The Masters is set to return bigger and better than ever after another year of huge investment at Augusta National

- Bill Elliott

Viewed from any angle, observed through cynical eyes or rosetinted glasses, Augusta National and The Masters it hosts each year is a quite extraordinary combination of money and sport on top of continuing narrow-eyed ambition. In this age of celebrity, a time when fame is thrown over too many for too little reason, The Masters and the playground upon which it is played offer an ongoing affirmation of the old thought that he who stands still tends to fall over first. Augusta, or rather its green-blazered denizens, have not stood still for a very, very long time.

Chairman Fred Scobie Ridley said recently that the club likes to try to “look 50 years ahead” to figure out what might be happening then. Good luck with that, but the underlying truth in this statement is that the men, overwhelmingly men, who run this bastion of privilege and money and personal success might often tend to walk slow and talk slow but, hell, they also act fast when their minds are made up on a project.

This year we have yet to discover what tweaks have been made to the course. Nothing, as I write, has been revealed, but I shall be surprised if the 13th tee has not been taken back and moved a subtle shift sideways into the land the club has bought from the adjoining, quite brilliant, Augusta Country Club. We’re just talking a few yards of earth here, but over the last decade the club has bought more stuff than the average Saudi sheik – at least $200million worth of land before spending lord knows what amount on developing these parcels of ground. They have levelled shops, restaurants and private homes, making their owners richer than they were before by paying way above market rate.