Sightings from The Masters: What's new at Augusta National?

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The following is an excerpt from Monday Morning Golf newsletter Presented by Callaway. You can subscribe here:

1. Hello, friends.

Apologies to Jim Nantz, but since I’m writing this newsletter from The Masters, it feels like a mandatory greeting.

It’s that time of year. A time of year when, one way or another, we all return to Augusta National. Whether in our dreams, on our TVs or somehow in person, everyone who cares about golf will be in the same place this week.

One of the things that makes the Masters so special is the familiarity. Aside from your favourite golf course at home, there likely isn’t another golf course that you can picture in your mind’s eye more clearly and colourfully than Augusta National.

Welcome back.

2. Old friends out on the course

As special as the golf course is, the Masters is more than Augusta National. It’s a cast of characters that we’ve watched plying their trade and showing off their gifts for decades of springs on this impossibly beautiful canvas.

Yesterday, on the final Sunday before Masters Week officially began, Gary Player and Bernhard Langer were out for a round. Both men walking with the limps that will come for us all if we are lucky enough to enjoy a lifetime of golf.

Both men as familiar today as ever. Player wearing his familiar black and Bernhard dressed in his familiar white. Player hunched over the ball before making his athletic swing, Langer with perfect posture before beginning his graceful swipe.

On a neighbouring green, Fred Couples waves to his friends as he wears out the heels of his shoes gliding with that Freddie upright gait that pairs naturally with his trademark swing. Mike Weir is on the course as well, playing with Tom Watson, a fitting pair of steely-eyed men that seem to have been walking chest-out-with-purpose since taking their first steps.

These champions are the natural inhabitants of Augusta National. They won’t factor into any of the drama of the week, but they create the calm before the storm that warmly welcomes us back every year.

3. Change is in the air

As familiar as this golf course is, that’s not to say it doesn’t change. In fact, there isn’t a golf course on earth that does more year-to-year work than Augusta National.

The magic of the Masters is that the updates look so natural that Hollywood actresses call to ask for the name of the surgeons. Half the fun usually is trying to figure out what exactly is different.

But not this year. Aside from minor work on a few greens, there were no design changes made to the golf course.

That doesn’t mean the magic tricks of Augusta National aren’t on display this week. In fact, you might see the green jackets’ greatest feat yet. Hurricane Helene did a real number on the area last September and Augusta quietly has been putting the pieces back together ever since.

In a press release earlier this year, chairman Fred Ridley simply said, “We have not quite as many trees as we did a year ago.”

That appears to be an understatement. Neighbouring courses report losing as many as 1,000 trees and the estimate for Augusta National is likely in the same ballpark. There already are reports of more sunlight on the golf course, of different sightlines for players, and of 100-foot trees making their way down the freeway to Augusta National to be miraculously transplanted.

A walk of the course shows thousands of pink azaleas, many of them a week or two past their prime. In years past, my recollection is azaleas that aren’t in perfect bloom don’t make the cut for Masters week and get snipped before the gates open to the world.

Perhaps this year, the colourful pops of pink are being used as a magician’s misdirection to keep our eyes on the ground rather than toward the sky where trees used to exist.

Expect anything different?

4. Take me out to the ball game

After a 3 a.m. Uber ride to Pearson airport on Sunday, I finished the day by watching the single-A  Augusta GreenJackets comeback from an 8-3 deficit to walk-off the Columbia Fireflies 13-12 in the 10th inning.

FREE TIP: Minor league baseball is a highly recommended and inexpensive bit of Americana to include in a golf trip with buddies.

5. Talkin’ Trump tariffs

I’ve only been here a day, but as a known Canadian — and with Toronto Sun on my press badge — there already has been no shortage of inquiring minds interested in how we are taking current events back home.

Even here in Georgia, albeit with a small sample size, the mood seems to be apologetic and embarrassment rather than glee or superiority at how Canada is being treated by U.S. President Donald Trump.

President Trump might not be capable of shame, but most average Americans are.

Hopefully the weight of collective shame will eventually convince the Golfer in Chief that he has picked the wrong fight.