Augusta National chair Fred Ridley: Caitlin Clark is awesome, but the club won’t host women’s pros

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Jon Rahm’s champion’s dinner featured fritters, rib eye, and puff pastry cake. Masters patrons bought $1.50 pimento cheese and egg salad sandwiches.

But even as the exclusive venue cracks its doors wider to kids and women’s amateurs, Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley made clear that, while it has considered the possibility, the club has no appetite to host a women’s professional event, even in a one-off fashion, such as the Solheim Cup or a women’s major.

“To have another tournament of any kind would be very difficult, based on our season,” Ridley said at his annual availability Wednesday.

Augusta National closes from late May until October, mainly to protect its delicate, bent-grass greens that suffer in extreme heat. When it reopens in the fall, the course plays extremely benignly, as evidenced by Dustin Johnson’s record 20-under performance in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the tournament from April to November.

“It doesn’t play the way we want it to play in the fall for a major tournament,” Ridley said.

There’s also the expense, the logistical challenges, and the staffing issues associated with hosting any event, much less the sort of marquee event Augusta National would merit. Masters tickets are among the hardest to acquire in all of sports, so fans would jump at the chance to walk the grounds even if they weren’t going to see Tiger, Phil, or Jack. Finally, any club with a limited season has to consider its membership first.

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The only professional tournament Augusta National has ever hosted is the Masters, and, Ridley said, allowing any other might tarnish its shine.

“We need to make sure that we really respect the mystique and the magic of the Masters,” he said. “So we would have to think long and hard to have another golf tournament.”

Nelly Korda has won her last four LPGA Tour events, but that hardly caused a ripple in the larger sporting world. Korda is an American and has been ranked No. 1 in the world for the last three weeks, taking that spot from Lilia Vu, who owned it for the 19 weeks before that. Ridley was asked why women’s golf has never moved the needle the way, say, Iowa star Caitlin Clark and the women’s NCAA basketball tournament did the last few weeks.

Clark, an avid and accomplished golfer, even drew Ridley’s eyes to the tournament.

“I think that every once in a while somebody comes along that just captures the imagination of the sporting world,” Ridley said. “The way Caitlin plays the game, her passion, her energy, it just — it really just captures the imagination of the fans. So, you know, we hope that more people will come along like that, and certainly we hope that people will come along in golf.”

Maybe if Korda had taunted Leona Maguire after Korda won the T-Mobile Match Play on Sunday …

Being among the top 50 golfers according to the Official World Golf Rankings either on Jan. 1 or the week before the Masters qualifies players for the tournament, but since LIV golfers cannot earn rankings points on their quirky tour, there are plenty of really good players watching instead of playing. There are 13 LIV golfers in the field this week, but eight of the 18 LIV golfers from last year’s tournament did not qualify. Other criteria can earn a golfer a spot, such as being a past champion or finishing well in the other three majors, which allow qualifying LIV golfers in their fields.

Ridley and his club, which sits on the OWGR board, aren’t fretting over it.

“We never have had all the best players in the world because of the structure of our tournament,” he admitted.

That said, if a player has exhibited outstanding results, the Masters can invite him to play, as it did with Joaquín Niemann, who won two of LIV’s five events this year, finished in the top five of four recent OWGR events worldwide, and won the Australian Open in December. The Masters believes OWGR points are important, Ridley said, “But I don’t think that that prevents us from giving subjective consideration based on talent, based on performance, to those players.”

Ridley didn’t dismiss the possibility that the rift between the PGA Tour, which has banned LIV golfers from its events, has caused a drop in golf’s TV ratings: “Certainly, the fact that the best players in the world are not convening very often is not helpful. Whether or not there’s a direct causal effect, I don’t know. But I think that it would be a lot better if they were together more often.” … The 155-yard, par-3 12th hole, called “Golden Bell,” has been the site of much Masters drama and lore over the years, but suggestions that it be lengthened by even 10 yards fall on deaf ears for Ridley: “I would say with a hundred percent certainty that it would not be lengthened during my tenure.” … Augusta National supports the recent decision by golf’s governing bodies to implement golf balls that won’t go as far by 2028 for pros and 2030 for recreational golfers. Ridley fears that even courses like Augusta National, which can be stretched to more than 7,600 yards, could become obsolete: “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.” …

The Masters’ official weather forecast Wednesday night called for between 1½ and 2½ inches of rain between midnight and 3 p.m. Thursday with thunderstorms and wind gusts up to 45 mph. Such weather likely will delay Thursday’s action, which was set to begin at 8 a.m. — patrons‘ usual 7 a.m. access to the course was preemptively and indefinitely delayed Wednesday evening — which means the cut will likely be pushed past Friday and into Saturday for the second straight year.