Sandy Lyle will be recalled for the glorious seven-iron recovery of 172 yards from a fairway bunker on the left to set up a winning birdie in 1988. And Ian Woosnam smashed a huge drive over the two bunkers into a grassy area left of the fairway, enroute to victory in 1991. Last April, Tiger Woods cut his drive off the bunkers, leaving him only 78 yards from the green.

We're talking about the 18th hole at Augusta National which has been lengthened to 465 yards. "There are guys who are not going to reach the turning point of the dog-leg," said Greg Norman in the current issue of the American magazine Golf World, which deals with players' reaction to the radical course changes made for next year's Masters.

"Guys will have to slice their second shot around the trees. And the green is not being changed at all. It'll be a brute for most golfers." Woods's coach Butch Harmon said: "It's pretty dramatic to lengthen it 60 yards. It takes excitement out of having the ability to make a birdie to win."

Nick Price, whose course-record 63 was later matched by Norman, was horrified by the severity of the changes. "They're eliminating 80 per cent of the field," said the Zimbabwean. "What they're telling us is that if you don't hit the ball 300 yards, you're not going to win at Augusta."

Architect Tom Fazio, is predictably unrepentant about his handiwork. "I'm tired of people claiming that we're playing into Tiger Woods's hands by making the course longer," he said. "It has nothing to do with Tiger. Augusta National deals in the present and the future, not the past."

As for the 18th, Fazio said: "Narrow hole, uphill, dogleg right, through a chute of trees, sidehill lie on your approach: I like every one of those qualities in a golf hole. I'm not sure it's fairer, but it's golf."