Masters week. You arrive here at Augusta asking the usual questions, like: who will win? And: will Tiger Woods hold up? Or: will this finally be Rory McIlroy’s year? But there is another pertinent question, this time, which is: will any more trees fall down?
No, that is not scaremongering. If you speak to people who understand these things, it is an entirely reasonable question. If you ask our hosts at the Augusta National, though, you won’t get an answer.
You’ll get a lot more, though. You’ll get outstanding hospitality. When you arrive here you get that feeling that you are somewhere special, and that’s not just the beauty of it or the history, it’s the famous southern welcome.
It’s the “welcome back” as doors are opened for you. It’s the metal plaque bearing your name above your desk and it’s the “Greetings” note awaiting you there. “It is our pleasure to have you as our guest,” it says. And, yes, it is a pleasure to be here.
But three trees fell down last year, in the middle of day two, and who knows if the rest of them will stay upright this time?
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The point is this: no one here at Augusta is obliged to tell you. We “guests” are at a private club obeying the rules of its hospitality and you’d be a fool not to go along with them.
So you don’t bring your mobile phone out on the course. Strictly forbidden. Neither do you run; you mustn’t run, for instance, if you’ve just witnessed an incredible drive by Jon Rahm and you want to be there at the ropes next to him when he hits his second. Running is just unbecoming of the place and if you do break out of a walk, then you can be sure that a steward will politely demand that you go back down a gear.
This is the deal. In the media centre we are obliged to sign up to the deal too. We understand that our hosts are unlikely to answer any tricky questions. Last year they were asked a question about the azaleas, for which the golf course is so well known, but would not surrender an answer.
We are not permitted, for instance, to know who are the members of the club. And that would be interesting because it was only in 2012 that the Augusta National admitted its first two women members, so it would be nice to know if gender diversity has been fully embraced or is simply a token gesture. We don’t know, though. Last year Golf Monthly reported that Heidi Ueberroth was the seventh female member of Augusta National “that we know of”.
If you want to be here at the Augusta National, though, and, in the case of the media, if you want to report on the Masters, then this is the deal. Accept it or go home.
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The falling of three trees last year, however, seems to stray on to different territory. To remind you: it was mid-Friday afternoon when the huge loblolly pines came down on the left side of the 17th fairway and punters literally ran for their lives. No one was hurt or even touched and that was fortunate.
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Also crucial to a rewind to that day is the fact that it was windy, but not exactly a gale. The golf hadn’t been stopped. The decision to suspend play because of wind is taken when balls that are stationary on the greens start to move. So it wasn’t windy enough to move a stationary golf ball — which made it strange that three mature trees, two of them of a height of some 100 feet, should suddenly be ripped out from the roots.
The response from the club was true to form. A press release soon went out in which it was stated that: “The safety and well-being of everyone attending the Masters will always be the top priority of the club.”
However, despite requests for information, no explanation was given. Similarly, when asked last week, no reassurance was given that this would not happen again.
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At almost any other event, when a calamity so endangers the public, it may well be suspended until safety can be confirmed. At Augusta, the three fallen trees were sliced, diced and removed overnight and, when we returned the next day, the eyesore had been removed, the course looked its pristine self once again and on we went with the golf.
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Down at the 17th on Monday, a steward showed me where the fallen trees had been. He also pointed to a tree in front of us that he said had not been there last year. It was 35ft high.
This merely adds to the intrigue. I spoke to Ged Collins, the director of Global Tree Vision, who gives regular education programmes on tree assessment to golf courses. He said that it was highly unpredictable when trees would fall, but that “if they’d been planted as mature trees, that could be a reason. You can never stabilise a mature tree”.
I also spoke to James Hutchinson, a tree specialist and ecology consultant for the British and International Golf Greenkeepers’ Association. He believes that “more trees will fall sooner rather than later” because the Augusta trees are “manicured to within an inch of their lives”.
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His explanation is that Augusta is a manufactured landscape rather than natural woodland where giant trees stand among mid-level canopy trees and lower canopy trees that all support each other against the wind. The interlocking of different tree roots beneath the surface is a further support network that is therefore missing here too.
Hutchinson also wondered if they prune the tree roots at the Augusta National. “The trees I saw had very little root system,” he said.
He also explained that Augusta wouldn’t be the only golf course to do this. However, if you look carefully here, you can indeed see roots protruding above the surface among the pine needles beside the fairways, but not on the fairways themselves.
Hutchinson’s summary is this: “What you can do is minimise the risk of a tree falling; let’s just say Augusta haven’t minimised the risk.”
What we can’t do, here, is know if the roots have been pruned. Neither are we permitted to know when the fallen trees had been planted in the Augusta National turf. We don’t know the risk; we don’t know if any extra safety measures have been taken since last year; we don’t know about the chances of more trees coming down. We are not allowed to know. Because we are here at the Augusta National and that is the deal.
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