With less than 50 days to go until The Masters, it’s been confirmed that another hole has been lengthened and the course will play 10 yards longer for the 2024 tournament.
Hole number two – Pink Dogwood – is a par-5 that doglegs from right-to-left and is an early birdie or eagle opportunity where most of the pros who find the fairway off the tee will be taking on the green in two with the second shot playing severely downhill.
Despite bunkers to the right of the landing area, a heavy copse of trees to the left, and a severely sloping green that’s surrounded by more bunkers, it played as the easiest hole on the course in 2023, and yielded one of just four albatrosses to be recorded in The Masters when Louis Oosthuizen holed out for a ‘two’ on his way to a playoff defeat to Bubba Watson in 2012.
Prior to the 1977 Masters, the hole was lengthened some 15 yards as the tee box was positioned further right, reducing the angle of the dogleg, but making the hole play longer, and it was lengthened again in 1999 as the tee box was again moved back some 25 yards in what was dubbed as ‘Tiger proofing’ the course. But still, it remains one of the easiest holes on the course for the pros, playing as statistically the second-easiest of all 18 in the period from 1942 to 2023.
However, Augusta National hope that it may prove a little more challenging this year as the tee box has been moved again and the additional 10 yards mean it will now play to 585 yards as opposed to the 575 last year. While 10 yards may not seem that significant over all, players attempting to cut the corner will face greater peril, and only the longest hitters will be able to land their tee shots on the downslope just beyond the bunker, gaining a considerable advantage in the process.
The lengthening of the second hole follows the much more significant lengthening of the par-5 13th before the 2023 Masters, meaning that the third and final leg of the famed Amen Corner would bare considerably sharper teeth than it had for much of the previous two decades as some of the biggest hitters began aiming their drives up and over the corner as opposed to the draw-shape that had been necessary to get a good look at the green in two beforehand.
With the 11th and the 15th holes lengthened in 2022, this now means that four of the five longest holes on the course have all been lengthened in less than three years, and though the changes to the second hole aren’t quite as drastic as the others, hopes that the hole which played to an average of 4.673 in 2023 and to an an all-time low of 4.467 in 2020 will play closer to its par are high.
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