MIAMI — Three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson will not be stunned if Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership is in spectacular situation at subsequent week’s Masters, which will probably be performed about six months after the course was closely broken by Hurricane Helene.
On Sept. 27, at that time a Class 1 hurricane with wind gusts of 80 to 100 mph, killed at the very least 11 individuals, downed hundreds of bushes, and broken hundreds of houses and companies within the Augusta space.
Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership was additionally affected, principally by the lack of bushes.
“So far as the influence, the long-term influence, we have now not fairly as many bushes as we did a 12 months in the past,” Augusta Nationwide chairman Fred Ridley instructed reporters at February’s Latin America Beginner Championship.
“So far as the golf course goes, it is in spectacular situation. I believe we had minor injury to the course, the taking part in surfaces themselves, however we had been capable of get that again in form … I do not assume you are going to see any distinction within the situation for the Masters this 12 months.”
Mickelson, certainly one of solely 5 golfers to win a inexperienced jacket 3 times (2004, 2006 and 2010), has but to play a apply spherical at Augusta Nationwide this 12 months however recollects taking part in each other 12 months about two weeks earlier than a match.
Mickelson was about to hit his tee shot on the par-4 eleventh gap, the beginning of the famed Amen Nook, when a tall pine tree fell in the midst of the green, about 100 yards from the group taking part in in entrance of him.
As Mickelson was strolling down the eleventh fairway, he heard employees’ radios going off, with a supervisor telling them, “Get to 11.”
“There have been plenty of employees piling in, racing to this tree, firing up the chain saws and slicing this factor down,” Mickelson stated. “By the point I stroll off of 11 inexperienced, all of the limbs of the tree have been minimize off and placed on the again of those carts.”
When Mickelson reached the fifteenth gap, employees had been slicing up the trunk of the tree. On the 18th gap, he noticed employees resodding the eleventh fairway.
“You could not inform two days later this had occurred,” Mickelson stated. “I simply thought, ‘If that was my residence course, that tree would nonetheless be there, like, three weeks later,’ they usually had this factor eliminated. It was one of the crucial spectacular issues I had seen — their skill to deal with stuff like that. I am positive the course goes to be in nice form.”
Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership will host the ultimate spherical of the Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Beginner this Saturday.
The 89th Masters will probably be performed April 10-13. First-round protection will air on ESPN from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET.
