Augusta’s change will favour risk-takers

5th hole ‘Magnolia’ Par 4, 495 yds

LAST YEAR, this was the fifth-hardest hole on the course. This year it’s 40 yards longer, with a new tee on what used to be Old Berckmans Road, before Augusta National bought the land and diverted the road. The extra length will probably encourage more of the bombers to try to carry the fairway bunkers, a distance of 315 yards, to avoid a dauntingly long second shot to a severely sloping green. As for the rest, debutant Eddie Pepperell summed up the forbidding challenge in typically witty fashion. ‘It is a real shame because I’d marked down that hole as a safe bogey,’ he tweeted.