"The course over the last couple of years has been moving back to what it once was."

John Huggan previews the Masters and Ben Crenshaw tells him the same thing he told me in talking about my story on the shared Old Course-Augusta National bloodlines.

"The course over the last couple of years has been moving back to what it once was," confirms two-time Masters winner, Ben Crenshaw. "The fairways are a little wider. And some of the tee boxes have the potential to be moved up to take account of the prevailing conditions. Those are good things, all of which will encourage the players to take more chances. That wasn't happening four or five years ago, when the course was truly a brutal test. How hard it was reflected on how the course was being played. It wasn't as much fun in that the players couldn't take any liberties. So it was less fun to watch them and less fun for them to play. But we are moving away from that. If we get good weather this week, the players will be driving it into spots where they can attack a bit more. So it should be a bit more exciting."

SI has posted some stellar aerials of the course like the one above of No. 15 and there is no question that the fairway lines look like they've crept back closer to the tree lines. Unfortunately, the artificial tree planting and horrific pinching of the fifth fairway remain as anti-democratic as ever, but I guess we'll take the repairs a botched-design ploy at a time.