The days when players could subdue Augusta National, home of the Masters, may soon be over
of Augusta National Golf Club in its pomp—azaleas blooming, water tranquil and the greens an almost impossibly vivid shade of green—is one of the finest in sport. Indeed given Augusta never looks anything other than beguiling when the television cameras descend for the Masters every April, its beauty implies a kind of stasis. Yet the course in Georgia is changing all the time. More specifically, it keeps getting longer.
Mr Woods looked like an athlete at a time when most golfers resembled regular Joes. But it did not take long for his muscular approach to catch on. Thanks to developments in club technology, as well as golfers’ biceps, the average driving distance on theTour, the professional men’s circuit in North America, rose steadily, from 267 yards in 1997, to 288 in 2009, to 300 last year.
The players, for their part, do not hold back. Smashing a ball down the fairway offers a trade-off. When increasing the distance of their shots, they may lose control. Yet research has regularly shown that the benefit of extra yards more than offsets any loss of line.
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