Lynch: Debates over distance and LIV might rage on, but for Fred Ridley both are settled law at the Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. —  There are sacrosanct mile markers as Masters week unfolds at Augusta National Golf Club.

Mondays and Tuesdays, for example, are about information gathering as competitors submit to press conferences, albeit with varying levels of enthusiasm (Rory McIlroy’s drive-by suggested he was double-parked on Magnolia Lane). Tuesday evenings are for celebrating the men who have authored the tournament’s most indelible moments at the Champions Dinner. So too Thursday mornings, when three legends well-stricken in years open proceedings with honorary tee shots that the television cameras graciously no longer track. Wednesday afternoons are for entertainment, as the normally decorous club loosens its girdle for a Par-3 contest in which geriatric greats compete for attention with kid caddies and bejeweled WAGs.

Wednesday mornings, however, are strictly for housekeeping and agenda-setting. Augusta National isn’t one of golf’s governing bodies. It’s more important than that, and the annual press conference by the club’s chairman is as close to a State of the Union as the sport has. And whatever is said from the dais has ramifications that are felt far beyond this property and this week.

The last row of seats in Augusta National’s interview room resembled a college of cardinals in green vesture as members gathered for the press conference. When Fred Ridley appeared, the hubbub quickly settled to a hush as though the Pope had arrived, though Ridley enjoys more untrammeled authority in this precinct than Papa Francesco does in his. There were two thorny issues that the chairman was expected to address — distance and duplicity — and he met both head-on.

A year ago, Ridley signaled support for the USGA and R&A reining in the distance of the golf ball. Then it was a proposal, now it is settled law. New rules for a competition ball will take effect on January 1, 2028, and two years later for all golfers. Now it’s all about compliance and he made clear where the Masters will stand.

“Adding distance to the Augusta National golf course has become standard operation over the past two decades,” he said. “For almost 70 years, the Masters was played at just over 6,900 yards. Today the course measures 7,550 yards … I’ve said in the past that I hope we will not play the Masters at 8,000 yards. But that is likely to happen in the not-too-distant future under current standards.”

After the reasoning came the verdict: “We support the decisions that have been made by the R&A and the USGA as they have addressed the impact of distance at all levels of the game.”

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Ridley has been around long enough to know two things: that governing bodies are soft (though sometimes deserving) targets for criticism, and that Augusta National is not. Even the most belligerent players and executives pause before taking on golf’s shadow government, and the shadow leader of the sport is inviting opponents to show just how far they want to take their opposition.

“I think were they not adopted it would cause a great deal of stress in the game, which it doesn’t need right now,” Ridley said.

CC: Messrs. Waugh and Monahan.

The PGA of America has prevaricated on the distance issue. Will the organization see its PGA Championship, already considered the runt of the litter among majors, be the only one not using a modified ball? Will they explicitly choose to be closer to run-of-the-mill PGA Tour events than to the legacy-defining championships? The Tour has said it won’t support a rollback, but that was last summer when its embattled commish was trying to curry favor with players still upset about another once strongly-held position on which he had backtracked.

Your move, chaps.

The duplicity Ridley had to address involved LIV, specifically gripes by its players that the Official World Golf Ranking is unfit for purpose and that the majors must urgently fashion new qualification rules to accommodate those who chose to remove themselves from established criteria — a bewildering stew of entitlement and victimhood by pampered millionaires presenting themselves as an oppressed subset. The chairman wasn’t having it, on either front.

“We believe that it is a legitimate determiner of who the best players in the game are,” he said of the OWGR. Ridley is right, no matter how much the LIV stooges gaslight. The ranking has never been less corrupted since individual tours can no longer artificially inflate the value of tournaments far beyond what their strength of fields merit. But having withdrawn its application for ranking points rather than comply with OWGR guidelines, thereby cutting off the most obvious avenue for its players to access majors, LIV is now insisting that Ridley mount a bulldozer and carve out a new pathway.

“In our case, we’re an invitational, and we can adjust as necessary,” Ridley said. Not that they will be. The message from the Masters was clear: demonstrate a good faith effort to qualify and show form and the committee will take note. Don’t, and the committee will still take note. That’s why Joaquin Niemann is in the field this week and why Talor Gooch is at home wondering which keyboard character is an asterisk.

“Our goal is to have, to the greatest extent possible, the best field in golf, the best players in the world,” Ridley added. “Having said that, we never have had all the best players in the world because of the structure of our tournament. It’s an invitational. It’s limited-field, it’s a small field.” There are 89 competitors this week, and no deserving player is absent.

The chairman is aware of the importance of this Masters — in bringing the world’s best golfers together for the first time in nine months, in stemming the erosion of viewership, in re-establishing the primacy of competition overcompensation as the game’s most prized value, in defending the tournament’s field and the course’s architectural integrity during a fractious period in both spheres. Ridley is, he noted with charming understatement, conscious of the “convening power” wielded by Augusta National.

“The best players in the world are together once again. The competition will be fierce. Families are reunited, and friendships will be renewed,” he said with commendable optimism. “The best golf has to offer is on center stage. That is good for everyone.”