USA TODAY International Edition
Augusta chairman swings and misses on opportunity
AUGUSTA, Ga. – For all the changes he has brought to Augusta National, for all the good that he has done, chairman Fred Ridley was given a golden opportunity Wednesday to take his game to an entirely new level. He could have condemned Georgia’s controversial new voting law, bringing the considerable force of the club and its high- powered corporate membership to bear against the actions of Gov. Brian Kemp and the state’s Republican- led legislature.
He could have called out the lie the law is based on, saying that there was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia when Donald Trump and two Republican senators lost the state, something that Delta Airlines made a point of saying in its statement denouncing the law.
He could have said the club will focus its efforts on supporting federal legislation to protect voting access and address voter suppression, as Coke did in its statement criticizing the law. Instead, Ridley passed.
Is it too much to ask of a golf club, albeit one filled with some of the nation’s most powerful men ( and women, at least a few), to step out of its golf shoes and consider helping the nation in this very big way? Many will think that it is, that Ridley was right to offer a few predictable sentences about the “fundamental” right to vote, then escape a pesky question about whether he was for
times he played the Masters.
He is a sentimental choice. So too is Rory McIlroy, who has never won a Masters and is observing an anniversary he would like to forget. It has been 10 years since his final- round collapse in 2011 that led to a disastrous 80. A decade later, will it finally be his turn?
There’s sentiment. Then there’s science. Which brings us back to DeChambeau. As he looked ahead to this week, the game’s mad scientist was also musing about the future.
“I think as time goes on, there’s not much more to gain from the technology side of golf club manufacturing,” he said. “There are little things we can do, but where the massive gains will be is in athletes. Once you get somebody out here that’s a 7- foot- tall human being and they are able to swing a golf club at 145 miles an hour effortlessly, that’s when things get a little interesting. That’s when I’m going to become obsolete potentially even.”
That day is not this week, or anytime soon. Right now, DeChambeau is on top of his game, and that should be good enough to win this tournament. If he’s going down rabbit holes, we should definitely follow him.