The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Bryson-proof tactics won’t pay off – Rose
Justin Rose believes any attempts to “Bryson-proof ” Augusta National would prove futile as the US Open champion looks to claim back-to-back major titles in the 84 th Masters.
Bryson DeChambeau has dominated the headlines since golf returned from the coronavirus shutdown and proved the doubters wrong with his emphatic victory at Winged Foot, a course which was meant to expose the limitations of his one-dimensional ‘ bomb and gouge’ approach.
DeChambeau’s six-shot victory has seen him installed as the favourite for the Masters, where Tiger Woods’ 12- stroke triumph and 18 under par winning total in 1997 prompted talk of trying to “Tiger- proof ” venues in response.
Speaking after finishing a distant second to Woods, Tom Kite said: “Obviously, the Masters committee has to be a little concerned. They’ve got a golf course that’s pretty darn tough, and they’ve got somebody just ripping it up.”
Joint course record holder Nick Price added: “It’ll be interesting to see what they do to their golf course. They have to do something.”
The answer was, primarily, increasing the length of the course, initially by just 60 yards in 1999 but then by 285 yards in 2002 and another 155 in 2006.
Woods was not exactly perturbed by the changes, winning his second green jacket in 2001 and defending his title the following year.
And even though the parfive 13th could be lengthened in the future after the purchase of land from the adjacent Augusta Country Club made room for a new tee, Rose would not expect that to make much of a difference to DeChambeau.
“He putts well and he hits a 350-yard high draw, so as far as I can see that’s a decent recipe for Augusta,” Rose said.
“He’s not that much less accurate than the rest of us so (even) if you’re putting trees in for him, you’re putting trees in for the whole field. From an accuracy point of view I don’ t think that’ s an answer.
“He’s hitting sort of 60% of fairways and I don’t see many other top players doing much more than that. He’s doing a great job of lashing it fairly straight so I don’t know how you protect against that. Fair play to him.”
Former champion Sergio Garcia has been ruled out of this week’s Masters after testing positive for Covid-19.
Garcia, who defeated Rose in a play-off to win his only major title to date at Augusta in 2017, will miss his first major championship since 1999.
The 40-year-old Ryder Cup star has missed the cut on his last two Masters starts and famously tied an unwanted record for most strokes on a hole in the tournament’s history after running up a 13 on the 15th during the first round of his title defence in 2018.