Augusta got even longer

It now becomes the second-longest course for a major at 7,445 yards.
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- Phil Mickelson accepts the blame.
One of the purest shots he ever struck at Augusta National, besides that 18-foot birdie putt to win his first major, was a driver on the 11th hole in the 2001 Masters. He described it as a hot draw around the corner, which took a hard hop and rolled forever, leaving him a sand wedge into a hole that measured 455 yards.
"Darn it if Hootie wasn't standing right there," Mickelson said.
Indeed, Masters chairman Hootie Johnson was down at Amen Corner that day, and he often mentions Mickelson's tee shot as a reason for lengthening the golf course. So, he added 35 yards to the 11th hole during the most expansive makeover ever in 2002. Two years later, he had three dozen pine trees planted on the right side.
This year, the tees at No. 11 have been moved back 15 yards, and more pine trees were added down the right side of the fairway.
When the Masters begins Thursday, it will be played on a course that looks nothing like when Arnold Palmer thrilled his army with four green jackets in a seven-year span, or when Jack Nicklaus mounted his famous charge on the back nine in 1986, and certainly nothing like what Tiger Woods saw when he won by 12 shots in 1997.
Not long after Woods slipped on the green jacket for a fourth time last year, the bulldozers went to work at Augusta National by making significant changes to six holes -- Nos. 1, 4, 7, 11, 15 and 17.
The course now measures 7,445 yards, the second longest for a major championship next to the 7,514-yard beast at Whistling Straits for the PGA Championship.
This isn't about keeping scores around par.
Course kept current
"We have never been worried about scores," Johnson said. "Our greatest concern has always been that the course be kept current with the times. Change has been a constant at Augusta National, starting in the earliest years of the tournament. Bobby Jones made innumerable modifications to the layout, and that philosophy continues to this day."
But would Jones recognize the course he helped build?
"I wonder if he would approve," Arnold Palmer said quietly in his office at Bay Hill Club.
Palmer understands change, and has come to expect it. He keeps a photo from one of his four victories at the Masters that shows him blasting out of a bunker onto the eighth green to set up a birdie. It is a shot that cannot be duplicated, because the bunker has been replaced by large mounds.
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