Local experts estimate that in normal Georgia weather, the grass grows 1.5 millimetres per day during the month of April. Which means that when scribes and other Monday marauders are let loose on the sacred sward of Augusta National, grass on the uncut greens is 50 per cent longer than in the final round of the US Masters.

That's quite a difference. So, Jose-Maria Olazabal could well have been serious when playfully dismissing the challenge as "a piece of cake" to myself and three British colleagues, as we shook furiously on the first tee, the morning after his 1994 triumph.

On being asked if there were occasions when he felt the greens were too fast, three-times Masters champion Nick Faldo replied: "Oh yes. They go to the limit all the time. You get there on Monday and Tuesday when they're unbelievably fast. They seem to get them the quickest they possibly can."

He went on: "After they watch us struggling with them, they try to slow them down and then build them up again. The trick with Augusta is the way they put down a mega-fine top dressing on the Wednesday night. This gets the moisture out and when the first round starts on Thursday, the greens have changed colour.

"They're difficult greens that you can't attack. If you have ideas about holing a 20-footer, you've got to be careful, otherwise you could go six to eight feet past."

David Feherty experienced it all as a competitor back in 1992, when he was tied 52nd behind Fred Couples. Now, as a member of the CBS commentary team, he will have his putter back in action next week. This is to comply with the wishes of the Masters tournament committee that announcers should putt their designated green each morning before play starts, so they will have an idea of which way the ball will break.

Feherty went through the ritual for the first time in 1997, when he was assigned the 15th green. Down he went to the back edge of the green, armed with three golf-balls and his trusty Bullseye putter. The flag was front left and even though it was early in the morning, crowds were already beginning to build up.

He recalls: "Not a soul, except the man with the mower, had touched the putting surface that day. As I dropped my three eggs and gazed towards the hole, the word `chrome' came to mind. Not wanting to make a fool of myself in front of a bunch of people who were obviously wondering who I was, I went softly on the first putt.

"The ball glided gently down the slope, past the hole, off the fringe and into the water. Hmmmm. . . that's quick, I thought. Hearing a couple of muffled titters from behind the ropes, I quickly shot an `I meant to do that' look in the general direction. Then I feathered the next ball away. Into the water again.

"Now I had one ball left, with which I was to supposedly putt the entire green. Worse than that, someone had recognised me and was shouting: "You moron Pate (former US Open champion and fellow announcer, Jerry Pate). No wonder you quit playin'. Now I've always been one to recognise a lucky break, so I smiled apologetically, waved and walked down to the hole where I putted a few up the hill - thanking God I was wearing a cap."

"It was probably the first time in a major championship that a player lost his temper at missing a putt, even before he'd tried to hit it." Harold Swash, the so-called Putting Doctor, recalling how the mercurial Tommy Bolt had hurled his putter to the ground and raised his arms in despair, after vainly attempting to read the line of a 30-foot putt at Augusta.

Competing in the Youths' Interprovincials at Waterford next week will seem rather mundane to Waterville's Mark Murphy after his experiences of recent weeks. Indeed, he has been the subject of a letter and a newspaper cutting from a US colleague of mine, Pat Sullivan of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reporting on the San Francisco City Golf Championships, Sullivan wrote: "There was no mistaking Murphy's golf credentials when he arrived here earlier this year to stay with San Francisco attorney Andrew Zacks, who first met Murphy when he was working as a caddie at Waterville.

"Zacks had mentioned that he knew Mike (Fluff) Cowan and Tiger Woods. Murphy thought it was just another empty boast by an American on holiday, until signed photos of the two arrived by mail a few weeks later. When Cowan and Woods visited Ireland prior to the British Open, Murphy caddied for both."

The report then quoted Zacks as saying that since arriving in San Francisco in January, young Mark "took some money off the boys" at McLaren Park and had other golf outings at Spyglass Hill, Pasatiempo and Ford Ord Bayonet. And his failure to extend a good run in the month-long "City" event, placed him in the celebrated company of Tom Watson and Johnny Miller.

He was beaten by 48-year-old Gary Vanier, a six-time winner who said of the Waterville youth: "He was a breath of fresh air. You would have thought he was 35 years old by his demeanour. No club banging or anything like that. It's nice to see kids like that come out." Indeed.

Masters anniversaries: 1939 - The tournament was officially named the Masters. 1949 - Sam Snead became the first recipient of the green jacket as Masters champion. 1959 - In a closing 66, Art Wall birdied five of the last six holes for a one-stroke win over Cary Middlecoff. 1969 - At 6ft 5ins, George Archer became the tallest Masters champion. 1979 - On Easter Sunday, the Masters had the first sudden-death play-off in its 43-year history, with Fuzzy Zoeller beating Ed Sneed and Tom Watson. 1989 - Besieged by wind, rain and lightning, Nick Faldo emerged victorious in a sudden-death play-off with Scott Hoch.

Back to Henry Longhurst and another delightful story about temper on the golf course. This incident occurred when he was playing in a fourball with the vicar of Northampton and "a gentleman whose complexion indicated either good living or shortness of temper or both."

It seems that the vicar and his partner were in contention until the 17th where, in attempting a short pitch over a greenside bunker, he with the complexion lifted his head and duffed the ball feebly into the sand. As Longhurst recalled: "The man raised his niblick to heaven. `*******!', he cried, and `*******!' and `*******!'

"Then, pulling himself up with a jerk, he began to make embarrassed apologies. The vicar's reply remains in my mind as though it were yesterday. `Brother,' he said, slowly and gently. `The provocation was ample.' "

A significant link with Masters past, was severed recently through the death of caddie, Willie Peterson. As it happened, Peterson was with Jack Nicklaus in five of his six triumphs at Augusta National, the exception being 1986 when the Bear's son, Jackie, was on the bag. That was after the tradition of local, black caddies working in the Masters, was abandoned.

Peterson's achievement equalled the record set by another Augusta caddie, Willie "Pappy" Stokes. He carried the winning Masters bags of Henry Picard (1938), Claude Harmon (1948), Ben Hogan (1952 and 1953) and Jack Burke Jnr (1956). Having started his Masters caddying career as a 16-year-old in 1949, Peterson first met up with Nicklaus in 1959 when, as an amateur, he failed to make the cut.

This day in golf history. . . On April 3rd 1977, Kathy Whitworth captured the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winners Circle tournament by one stroke over Sally Little and JoAnne Carner. She had two other tournament victories that year, neither of which seemed to affect her quite the way that particular one did.

As she recalled: "Winning the Colgate put me in number one position (in the money list) and the following week I promptly missed the cut. I will never forget waking up the next morning, disappointed and upset and finding I couldn't move out of bed because my arms and legs felt like lead. I felt the Lord was telling me I couldn't take any more, so I lay in bed all day."

Whitworth, who was then 37 and went on to capture the Irish Women's Open at Clandeboye in 1984, concluded: "I didn't finish number one that year (1977) because I didn't want it. I probably never wanted it again. My mind and body rejected it as the pressure all returned - the demands on my time, the press and the responsibility."

Teaser: May a player place an umbrella or a rake in a bunker before playing a stroke from the bunker?

Answer: Placing an umbrella or rake in a hazard is equivalent to placing clubs in the hazard - see Exception 1 to Rule 134. There is no penalty, provided nothing is done which may constitute testing the soil or improving the lie of the ball.