If you were to list perfectly conditioned golf courses, Augusta National would be right up there, with the Georgia course seen every year in glorious perfection for The Masters.
However, there's only so much a golf course can take and that was the case on Friday, when play had to be suspended due to the bad weather followed by the collapse of three massive trees, which narrowly avoided all the patrons below! The footage was certainly scary, with ground crew taking hours to clear the damage and debris that had littered the 17th tee box.
Another view of the trees falling on 17 pic.twitter.com/jR431IcdLvApril 8, 2023
Now, following the clean-up by the ground staff, we see the incredible work that has been done, with just a little noticeable scarring and fenced off areas where the three huge pine trees fell onto the ground below.
From the images, which you can check out below, we notice that the ground has been dug up in the area where they've landed, and the holes filled in to repair the damage.
According to The Augusta Chronicle, Masters patron Megan Hill said: "I was sitting, looking, waiting for the next group to come up to the tee and it fell maybe 8-10 chairs to our left. I stood up and screamed and thought, 'Is it going to fall on me? It fell to the left of us and it was so scary. If the wind had been blowing a slightly different direction, we might have got hit."
Along with Hill, Masters winner, Patrick Reed, stated: "I was on 15th tee and it was nuts. I hit the tee shot literally right after I was watching my ball in the air. It sounded like a grandstand fell over or something. We couldn't tell. You could hear it all the way on 15 tee."
Along with Reed, Seamus Power also spoke about the incident, with the PGA Tour winner explaining that: "We were walking up 13 fairway and we heard like the screams and it sounded like a grandstand to us, which was really strange. But yeah everyone saw those videos last night. I mean, it's so -- I'm just so happy that everyone was okay and unhurt. I mean, you saw the mark on ground even across 17 there, it was, yeah, amazing that everyone's okay."
Along with the moment, Power commented on the clean up job, stating that: "Honestly, it was pretty good. It was like the mark where the trees had come up were pretty well covered, but it was obviously a dent in the ground going right across. But like it was pretty impressive the lack of, whatever you call it, imprint that was there. But it was, yeah it's amazing. I'm glad everyone's okay."
