Masters 2012: Pros and legends give their verdict on golf’s greatest tournament

It’s nearly Masters time again, golf’s so-called “rite of spring,” when the game emerges from eight months of major championship darkness to celebrate all that is good about the sport we Scots gave to the world. Nearly everyone, it seems, has something to say about Augusta. But there’s no consensus. Ask different people what the tournament actually means to them and you get many different answers. Here are just a few.

• Former Ryder Cup player and BBC commentator Peter Alliss: “My putting yips started in the 1967 Masters. I was playing with Gene Littler in the second round. From the edge of the 11th green I putted up to about a yard. Next thing I knew I was 15 feet past. I left the next one two feet short. Then I was eight feet by again. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Gene. To which I replied, ‘I don’t know.’ Eventually I got the ball in but had no idea how many I had taken. I told Gene to put down ten or 11 – I forget which.”

• World No.1 Rory McIlroy: “The back nine on Sunday last year was so weird. I can’t think of one really bad shot I hit – not even the tee shot at ten, which was just unlucky – but I just couldn’t get the ball into the hole. I was way too tight and putting way too much emphasis on trying to make putts. Instead, I should have been doing what I do every other day of the year: hitting good putts and rolling the ball over my line. It was ‘I need to hole this’ rather than ‘if it goes in, great, if it doesn’t, that’s OK’.”

• Alliss: “I was invited to the Masters many times. But I hardly ever went. In those days, Augusta was hard to get to. Plus, they didn’t really want the likes of me there. Not really. The caddies certainly didn’t want me because they figured I wasn’t going to do any good. And waiting for me were people like [Arnold] Palmer, [Ben] Hogan and [Sam] Snead. They were great players and they didn’t want me either. I was overwhelmed by the place.”

• Five-times Open champion Peter Thomson: “The Masters we see today is the product of some very smart marketing. There’s a lot of fanciful stuff going on. And every year it seems to be won by a tragedy. The fellow leading always seems to collapse. It’s uncanny. Jim Ferrier, an Australian living in America, once led by seven shots with nine to play. And lost. Jack Burke won.”

• Former World Match Play and Players champion Henrik Stenson: “Experience counts for so much at Augusta. You need to play that course over and over. You need to make your mistakes and learn from them. You build on those experiences. Then it’s all down to playing well. Sometimes I feel like I try to do too much the week of the tournament. You get so many shots and putts that you don’t see anywhere else, it can be hard to feel ready on Thursday morning.”

• Thomson: “The Masters is great entertainment but I’m not sure it brings out the best golfers.”

• European Tour chief referee John Paramor: “For two or three years there, Augusta National was supremely difficult. Everyone was walking round with long faces. The famous Masters roars were gone, because no one was making birdies. That was not what the tournament is about. It’s about excitement and birdies and eagles. Which is what we are moving back to now.”

• Thomson: “I don’t think Ben Hogan liked Augusta National at all. He loved Seminole though, which is a marvellous course. But he always sneered a bit whenever I mentioned Augusta. I played ahead of him there one year. He was going well on the back nine. I kept looking back to see his ball lying next to the flag. He had great skill.”

• 2006 US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy: “This year will be my seventh Masters. My debut came in 2006, which was really the first year after major changes were made to the course. A lot of the tees were moved back that year, at holes like the seventh and the 11th, and a lot of trees were added at the 11th and between the 15th and 17th. So, apart from my watching the event every year and thereby thinking I had half a clue about the course, I had no experience of the place. Even if, like everyone else, I felt like I had an intimate relationship with a course I’d never been to.”

• Swing coach Pete Cowen: “Augusta takes a bit of knowing, especially the speed of the greens. When you first go to the Masters you don’t know that you often have to ‘miss’ shots rather than hit them. Nick Price always used to say he was too aggressive for Augusta and he was probably right. You need to know where to miss. It was Gene Sarazen who said, ‘never hit a shot that doesn’t suit your eye’. And you need to play in a few Masters before you can really know what is going on.”

• Ogilvy: “The seventh hole is interesting. Jack Nicklaus told me that when he first went to the Masters, the trees on the left weren’t there. So the ideal tee-shot was one that finished over by the third tee and opened up a great angle into what is one of the most difficult greens on the course. I think that sounds great because, no matter where you are, you need to hit such a precise shot to that green. So giving everyone the chance to ‘find’ the angle they want has to be a good thing. And if someone is imaginative enough to do that well, why not let him?”

• Four-times Masters champion Tiger Woods: “In one of my early Masters I played the first nine holes of a practice round with Jose Maria Olazabal and Seve Ballesteros. I’ll never forget that day. They were hitting shots around the greens that I just couldn’t fathom. It was an education for me. When they went off to play the back nine, I went to the chipping green to work on the things they showed me.”

• Cowen: “Players like Olazabal and Langer and Faldo did well there because they are great strategists. And you never see anyone win the Masters who isn’t a great chipper. Sometimes we don’t concentrate on the thing that would win at Augusta – the little chip shots.”

• 2010 US Open champion Graeme McDowell: “The Masters is all about putting. Last year I was third in the ‘greens in regulation’ statistical category and missed the cut.”

• Cowen: “I thought Lee Westwood was going to win two years ago. Without Phil Mickelson doing what he did, he probably would have. He played stunning stuff and making four pars out of the woods on Sunday was the difference. On any other course, he’d have lost the balls. Of course, Mickelson is probably the best chipper out there. He gets himself out of trouble and the course gives him that chance.”

• Former Ryder Cup captain Mark James: “Augusta National was never my favourite because of the greens. I played in one Masters and they were too slopey and fast for me then. And they are a lot faster now!”

• Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal: “The changes to the course have made it much longer and more demanding off the tee. So you need to be a long hitter to have a chance. Last year was the first time for a while that they managed to ‘balance’ the course a little better. The balls were stopping on the greens a little more. That was good. Hitting long irons into some of those greens – the 7th for example – was all but impossible before. There must be at least a possibility that a good shot will be rewarded.”

• 1998 Masters and Open champion Mark O’Meara: “I’m shocked that it has been so long since a European won the Masters, especially when you look at the success they had there in the 1980s and 90s. They were winning at Augusta even when they weren’t winning the other majors.

“I don’t think there is any one reason. But there is always a lot of hype leading up to the first major of the year. So the expectations go up, as does the desire to win. And if that desire gets too much you can get in your own way. You either try too hard or over-prepare for one special week.”

• Olazabal: “I won’t be the last European winner at Augusta for much longer. But it does surprise me that I am.

“It is hard to win majors though.”