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  • The Masters And The Tweaked Test At : “It’S Still Hard. It Was Hard Before. Now It’S Harder.”

The Masters 2022 and the tweaked test at 11: “It’s still hard. It was hard before. Now it’s harder.”

Masters 11th hole

We take a look at what the players have been saying about the changes to the start of Amen Corner.

White Dogwood - the name of Augusta National's 11th hole.

It sounds relatively inoffensive, vaguely reminiscent of a scented candle maybe.

In golfing reality, it smells like fear. A 520-yard par-4 that begins the three-hole stretch christened 'Amen Corner' by the writer Herbert Warren Wind.

It has always been a brutal examination, but since the 2021 tournament the ANGC committee have tweaked the design, and consideration of the consequences has been a significant pre-first round theme this week.

Justin Thomas maybe explained it best when he shrugged and said: "It's still hard. It was hard before. Now it's harder."

Corey Conners is no rookie on the course. He's played the tournament four times, but he sounded rather blasé about the alterations.
"I feel it plays fairly similarly," he said. "The tee shot a little wider maybe. A few changes around the green. I don't think my strategy changes after seeing the hole, obviously trying to hit it in the fairway and then looking to place it in the middle of the green."
In general, however, he was more or less alone. Let's move from tee to green, taking the players as our guide.

On the tee

"The tee shot is slightly less daunting, it's a more generous tee shot," explained Rory McIlroy. "You don't have that collection of trees on the right-hand side.

"I'd say from the widest point of the left part of the fairway to the widest point of the right is 50 yards, 60 yards. It's a very, very wide fairway."

The new World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler countered: "That tee box is a lot wider now, but (wide right) is not really a bailout zone. It's really tough around those trees."

A further distinction was added by Jon Rahm, the man Scheffler replaced at the top of the rankings.
"So it used to be a perfect fader tee and I was in love with that tee shot," said the Spaniard. "It was great for me.
"With the little change, if you're a drawer of the golf ball, you can take advantage of the slope of the fairway and maybe get it a little farther down. If you hit a fade, you're going to be way back."
Jordan Spieth backs that up: "If you hit a really good drive, it funnels down and kind of feeds now. 8-iron is a lot nicer than 4-iron into the wind into that green."
Patrick Cantlay agrees. "Downwind, you could see guys maybe hit it further down there," he said. "It's just because of how it seems to almost come in on both sides and then go down the hill a little more, and there's probably a wider landing area."
Perhaps the most detailed explanation of this factor was provided by Billy Horschel.
"The fairway has been contoured differently now," he said. "One side slopes right to left, and the other side slopes left to right. And if you hit it far enough, you actually get a kick forward right to left, where in the past that fairway sort of sloped back at you a little bit, and the ball really wouldn't run out for a medium-length hitter.
"If you were a longer guy you could carry it over that and get a little bit more downward slope of the fairway."
For short-hitter Kevin Kisner the equation is simple.
"11 is a pretty par-5," he said.

Approach shot

The green was always difficult to hit. It sits on an angle with a pond to the left, a bunker back right, and mounding short and right. Each of these features has been ramped up.
"I was a little sceptical," Spieth said of the changes. "Then I saw it and I really like them. It's a second shot hole now, with the miss to the right more severe now. That's great for the hole."
"The big playing difference, in my opinion, is missing the green right has gotten a lot worse now," agreed Adam Scott. "That's a very, very demanding second shot."
"The second shot is basically the same," said a droll McIlroy. "Except you're maybe going to have 15 or 20 more yards into the green and the penalty for missing the second shot is greater than it was before."
How will this impact on the field?
"There will be quite a lot more guys being more aggressive into that green," said Cameron Smith.
That will introduce more threat from the water, both with the approach shot and also from the pitch when played from that difficult zone on the right across a glassy putting surface.

Missing the green

"That drop-off is significantly deeper than it used to be," said McIlroy. "It's a very, very difficult up and down from there.
"Then what people probably don't realize is that pond on the left has been extended another ten yards back towards the tee. So that pond used to start at the front of the green. Now it starts ten yards before the green. It brings in those mounds and the water."
"That Larry Mize chip," said Horschel, referring to the famous chip-in for victory in 1987. "It isn't there any more."

On the green

Cantlay added a little nugget rarely discussed.
"With this place and the changes they do every year," he said. "You can't really putt from memory. You have to keep updating your memory because the greens change.
"You have to maybe be a little more cognizant and not just go to default of what you remember."
The pithy Californian also had a simple recipe for dealing with all of the changes at 11.
"It won't play too different if you hit a good drive and hit it in the middle of the green," he said.

READ MORE: The Masters 2022: How does Tiger Woods fare when returning from a lengthy injury break?

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