Flashback: "They are right in expecting to practice under tournament conditions."**

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It's Masters Wednesday, which means this afternoon and evening while the Day Care Open is contested on the Par-3 course, the Augusta National maintenance staff will be doing whatever it is the committee deems necessary to make the course play much faster and firmer than it has during the practice rounds.

This rather childish backdoor trickery is beneath the folks at Augusta National, and believe it or not there was a time the chairman acknowledged it was unseemly.

I know most of you committed my story for Golf World's Masters preview issue to memory, but just in case...

I wrote about the conversion from Bermuda grass greens to bent thirty years ago this week. One of the complaints from players about Bermuda centered around the club lowering the cutting height starting Thursday. Here's what I wrote, with the quotes courtesy of the Augusta Chronicles' Robert Eubanks:

At the time, Watson said he liked how bent allowed the club to better control the speed of the greens, since pace varied widely with the over-seeded Bermuda from year to year and even day to day.

“Something I never liked about Augusta is they never have gotten the greens fast in the practice rounds so you don’t know what to expect on the first couple of rounds. That’s not fair.”

Hardin concurred. “We accept that as a proper criticism. They are right in expecting to practice under tournament conditions. Our plan is no cutting height changes beginning with Monday of practice rounds. That has not always been the case. There have been changes in cutting height as the week went on.”