What Augusta can give back

It’s the greatest tournament in history – potentially anyway. We’re so flush with storylines for this year’s Masters that we’re fit to burst. Never before, goes the hype, have so many great players been in such good form coming into Augusta.

And of course there’s TIGER!!! Golf, being a complex and intricate sort of sport, rarely lives up to this kind of hype. We may well be watching Xander Schauffele or Patton Kizzire being helped into the green jacket instead of Woods, McIlroy, Johnson, Spieth, Fowler, Watson or Rose.

But it sets Augusta once more as being golf’s premier shop window to the world. Literally so, as the new plush merchandising suite opening for the first time this year on the grounds illustrates.

It is in there, and in the TV deals which have made the tournament (it’s not a championship) such a global phenomenon, that a huge fortune for Augusta National Golf Club has been made.

As any history of the club and the Masters will makes clear, the event struggled for many years, leaning on businessmen in the city in which it is based for financial backing to survive.

Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormack’s decision to effectively crown the Masters as a major – largely because where it was on the calendar and that it paid the most prize money of any tour event at the time – was a key to enshrining Augusta’s position in the game.

The rest was skilful public relations – “a tradition like no other” even though it is comfortably the youngest of the four majors – all the curious attention to detail, plus the endorsement of the Big Three in the 1960s, driving the Masters to the importance it now holds.

It has also brought ANGC, one of the most exclusive organisations in golf and the world of sport, a place at the sport’s top table, largely by assumption.

There’s a tradition of this in golf, of course; the R&A assumed their position of authority within the world game with general acquiescence, and they retain it in much the same way.

But even if you question why a private club in St Andrews still wields ultimate authority within a world sport, the R&A’s actions over more than a century confirm them as worthy guardians.

Club members volunteer to serve on the committees that run and organise the sport (this is certainly less of a burden than it used to be, but still). And the profits from the R&A’s premier tournament, the Open Championship, are ploughed back into the game all over the world.

Similarly, the USGA use their financial engine, the US Open, to develop and promote the game within North America, their area of jurisdiction.

Where does ANGC “put back” into golf? It serves as the week-long annual advertisement for the game, of course, but the club profits mightily out of that.

No expense is spared on facilities within the club grounds like the new merchandising and media buildings.

But outside the gates or Augusta itself? Not a whole lot.

The club’s recently established “Drive Chip and Putt” for children is one of a few welcome moves – mostly down to outgoing chairman Billy Payne’s wider world view – to show Augusta as a force for good in the game.

But those gushing at the sight of bairns on the grounds of the exclusive club tend to forget that the R&A and USGA finance and actively run scores of junior events every year. They have done for decades.

Like everyone who loves golf, I love the Masters. My issue is that for a club in such a prominent position within the game of golf and profiting from the sport in such a huge fashion, Augusta National should be doing much more for the sport.

They’re not going to match the R&A and USGA’s services to golf in one swoop. But they can do a couple of extremely significant things without much effort or even – for them – that much expense.

The first is: a women’s Masters. It’s so simple and so needed. Just a reduced field invitational tournament, like the men’s version. It would immediately massively lift the profile of the LPGA and women’s game, by instantaneously becoming the biggest event on their schedule.

It would also serve to confirm the club’s break with its exclusively male past. And how better to promote golf to the half of the population the sport neglected for so long.

It would even be to their benefit. Augusta wants to promote itself in Asia, and the women’s game is more popular than the men’s in that region.

The second thing Augusta can do for golf is: pioneer a tournament ball.

There’s no better event to introduce this as the sole major played on the same site. Golf simply has to control distance hitting – Augusta proves it by the obscene expense they require to buy up parcels of land to extend their course to cope.

A reined-in ball is the solution – not the problem which is caused by multiple factors – and if Augusta National were to bite the bullet first, the sport would inevitably fall into line. No elite player wants to miss the Masters for a principle.

Anyway that’s all for the future. In the meantime, my money this week is going on Rory, solely on the belief he’s in one of his incredible streaks.

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It serves as a week-long annual advertisement for the game, of course, but the club profits mightily out of that

Rory McIlroy among the trees at Augusta National. The host club has a place at golf’s top table as a result of simply running the Masters.