Augusta National’s scorecard is different from every scorecard I’ve ever seen (I think). Can you spot the unique feature?
It’s the yardages: they’re all in multiples of five. The reason is that Clifford Roberts—the club’s co-founder, and the chairman of the Masters from the beginning until his death, in 1977—thought it was ridiculous to suggest that a golf hole could be measured with more precision than that, especially since the tee markers and hole locations changed from day to day. (Hey, why not give feet and inches, too?) It’s not a big deal—but it’s a glimpse into the mind of the person most responsible for creating the world’s last surviving un-screwed-up major sporting event.
I though it was that the scores are in columns rather than rows. Might be easier to add em up!
What attracted my attention was the two yardages, male and female ? Despite the fact that Augusta did not have female members until very recently ?
Members and Masters competitors. Augusta has always had just one set of members’tees–no “tips” (other than the Masters tees) and no forward tees, for women or anyone else. It’s a surprisingly friendly course for short hitters, though, even when it’s in tournament condition, because hitting into hopeless trouble is hard to do on most of the holes. The course’s hardest feature for sub-stellar players, I think, is the fairways, which are very closely mown, especially as the tournament approaches.
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