A good place to start, the ANWA, Drive, pitch, putt and all the foreplay now done bookending with the Par 3 contest -
A U.K. Magazine – Golf Monthly - is suggesting 3 ways to improve the Masters. U.K. Coverage (and world-wide), a Bigger Field and the Par 3 contest moved to Monday
Maybe, but those aren't the way.
It's important to understand what the Masters is, who it’s for and how the field is comprised. The Masters is the ANGC Invitational, it has nothing to do with anything else in golf, it is its own entity, a fiefdom, sadly without its own designated golf ball. Therefore you get small fields such that if your focus is on Men’s Professional Golf you won’t get it. It is also the reason you cannot legally get access if you don’t have it, save the Ticket Lottery. It is theirs alone and they do as they please, as they should. They are more controlling than Mother Superior and her faculty of Nuns.
• The Par 3 tournament is playful nonsense. It also is on Wednesday to deflect attention from the main course for numerous reasons. It’s the epitome of celebrity golf, it needs Charles Barkley to make it complete.
• TV coverage? It is far better than it used to be in the age of cable and streaming and again, it is completely under ANGC control. I used to watch highlights on CBS at 11:35 (23.35) for? 20 minutes on Thursday and Friday nights. That was it and coverage on weekend was only the second (Back/Inward/coming home) nine.
• Of course the Field will remain The Field!
I’m of the opinion that it is unlikely that Mr. Jones himself, were he here today would have a completely different view. He oft expressed as he did on his final journey to St. Andrews, a love for the Old Course and I believe that the aggressive exclusivity of ANGC and the Masters would not please him. He noted as he was made a citizen of St. Andrews that "I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St. Andrews and I would still have a rich, full life".
Individuals are a product of their times, they also evolve. It is impossible to do anything more than try to understand what motivates people, we cannot know what they would have done. But I do suspect Mr. Jones intended differently.
His golf nemesis as a youth could easily be argued to have been Alexa Stirling, and to have waited until 2019 for Ladies to play only one amateur round and one practice round on his course so inspired by The Old Course would have been anathema to him. He was great friends with Miss Marion Hollins, look at his history with her at Pasatiempo. He was a champion of women. Then for the Inaugural ANWA to conflict with perhaps the most revered Ladies Professional Major - The Dinah (ANA Inspiration, I know, but it’s the Dinah, trust me) was a huge and terrible mistake.
St. Andrews and the Old Course are separate from the Royal & Ancient, perhaps the real model for ANG-Club, while the Old Course belongs to the people of St Andrews as do all town Links. Although the St. Andrews Links Trust is the Grand-daddy, it is still the same model of the people.
His debilitating Syringomyelia led to his being a ceremonial figure while the tight-fisted and tortured man that was Clifford Roberts shaped the modern ANGC and Masters, in some unfortunate manners.
Rather than the St. Andrews Model for Golf, the ANGC and especially The Masters is the prototype and genesis of “Golf as a Reward”, I would like to know what He would have thought.
Enough of that, I'm picking Molinari, Fleetwood and Rose to be the top picks for a winner.
Let Spring, the Golf Season and the Prettiest Tournament in Golf begin.
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