One of the biggest questions going into the 2025 Masters is what is Augusta National going to look like?
Hurricane Helene devastated the Southeastern portion of the United States, including Augusta, Georgia, and Augusta National Golf Club. The club has reportedly lost numerous trees, and spots around the course are going to be noticeably more open than year's past.
As far as the course, it has been business as usual leading up to the Masters, and players who will make the trip down Magnolia Lane next week have all said as much based on recent scouting trips.
During LIV Golf's pre-tournament press conference Wednesday ahead of LIV Golf Miami at Trump Doral, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Jon Rahm were asked whether they had been to the course leading up to the year's first major championship. Mickelson said he hadn't, then Garcia chimed in that he heard there's a lot of different looks because of the trees.
That's when Mickelson chimed in with an incredible story about the ground's crew at Augusta National.
"I'll give you a little Augusta story if I may while we've got a minute, speaking of trees going down," Lefty started. "I was playing a practice round there one year. It was two weeks prior to the tournament. Probably nobody even knows that this happened. But two weeks prior to the tournament, I'm playing the 11th hole, I'm back lining up my tee shot, and I see this tree on the left fall over right in the middle of the fairway, crash down, like right by the group in front of us. They were probably 100 yards away. This massive Georgia pine comes down, rips up the fairway and so forth.
"By the time I had walked from my tee shot into the fairway, I could hear on the walkie-talkie get off of 2, get to 11, get off of 4, get to 11. 100 workers, I don't know how many, there were a number of workers piling in, racing to this tree, firing up the chain saws, started cutting this thing down. So now the limbs, by the time I walk off of 11 green, all the limbs of the tree have been cut off and put on a truck, on the back of these carts. By the time I got to 15, I looked down, they were cutting up the trunk, and the tree was being -- the entire tree was being brought away.
"By the time I got done and get back to 18 tee and I looked down, they're resodding the fairway. You couldn't tell two days later this had happened. I just thought, if that was my home course back -- that tree would still be there like three weeks later, and they had this thing removed. It was one of the most impressive things I had seen, their ability to handle stuff like that. I'm sure the course is going to be in great shape."
If there's any place that can handle what Helene did to the course, it's Augusta National. And by all reports, the grounds crew has done a spectacular job since last fall, and next week should be an incredible one at the Masters.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Phil Mickelson shares fun story about Augusta National grounds crew
