AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- Tony Soprano should be half as feared as Masters Chairman Hootie Johnson is.
Normally, golfers will complain about anything and everything. They will give you chapter and verse about economy-sized courtesy cars, cold clubhouse food, overzealous photographers, too-long spikes, too many grains of sand in a bunker or blades of grass in the rough, even about a baby hiccuping three blocks from the course in the middle of their backswings.
But nary a peep about this place. So we'll do it for them.
The Masters isn't as much fun as it used to be. But don't just take my word on this.
"I didn't know that a tough golf course was supposed to be a lot of fun," Johnson said during a wide-ranging news conference Wednesday on the latest round of changes to Augusta National, the third major overhaul in the last half-dozen years.
To say the green jackets in charge are concerned about their image doesn't tell the half of it. They made CBS banish one announcer for describing the patrons as a "mob" and another for joking they applied bikini wax to groom the 17th green instead of a mower. They pay landscapers to pack ice around the azaleas so they don't bloom too early and pull dead leaves out of the bushes. There was a man wearing a jacket and tie hiding in the bushes behind the 12th green Friday whose job was making sure the bunker rake was aligned perpendicular to the creek after each use.
It was at No. 12, coincidentally, that Chad Campbell made a birdie on his way to the second-round lead and heard ... nothing.
"Obviously, I'd like to hear a few claps," he recalled. "It's kind of weird when you don't."
But the boys had better get used to it. The course not only looks different; it sounds different. The roars that once echoed across the pines and made it possible to track a golfer's progress three holes away are becoming a thing of the past.
There were a near-record number of eagles in Round 1 and a healthy total of 267 birdies in Round 2. But the course has become so treacherous in spots, and the galleries treated to so many disasters, that the patrons spend more time sitting on their hands than putting them together.
"You don't hear any roars, do you?" Fuzzy Zoeller, the blunt-speaking former champion said on his way out of town after missing the cut. "And I'm not sure there's going to be charges like we used to have out here when guys get on a roll. I'm not sure that's going to happen -- unless somebody gets lucky and starts chipping them in."
The linoleum-slick greens used to be the toughest thing about the course. Then came the rough, and the pine trees that sprouted alongside a few fairways year after year, then the relocated bunkers and finally the extra yards. The par-4 11th, for example, now stretches 505 yards and reaching the fairway with any chance of reaching the green requires a drive down a chute that would make Olympic bobsledders sweat.
According to the story Johnson tells, the inspiration for this latest round of changes came when he was walking the 11th hole in 2001 and Phil Mickelson pounded a draw around the corner there. After a hard hop and a long roll, the left-hander needed only a sand wedge to reach a hole that measured 455 yards.
Reminded of that drive recently, Mickelson said, "Darn it if Hootie wasn't standing right there."
And darned if Mickelson wasn't worried about Johnson standing within earshot when he sat in the interview room Friday. Asked which club he used on his second shot into the 570-yard, par-5 eighth to set up a birdie, he replied:
"You know what? I'm going to refrain from answering that question, because if I do, the tee box is going to be back even farther."
"I got you for an 8-iron," the questioner persisted, "is that right?"
"No," Mickelson said. "I'll tell you in confidence later, but I don't want that one getting out to Hootie, either."
Can you say "omerta" with a Southern drawl?
Well, any golfer who hopes to be invited back here already has.
A handful were asked about whether the new and arguably improved layout didn't resemble a punishing U.S. Open course more than the birdiepalooza Augusta used to be.
"In the past ... shotmaking was much more prominent," Mickelson said. "You could hit a wayward tee shot and be creative into the greens. I would not say it resembles the U.S. Open because the rough isn't rough; it's first cut. But the penalty for a missed tee shot on a number of holes now is U.S. Open-type penalties."
Remember that line about ducks? Well, if Augusta looks more and more like a U.S. Open, and plays more and more like a U.S. Open, then it's definitely in danger of becoming a U.S. Open.
"Lord, I hope not," Zoeller said. "I'd hate like hell to have two of those tournaments.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
