What did The Masters look like 50 years ago?

The PGA's (North) Regional Communications Officers, Mark Townsend speaks to former PGA Captain Bernard Gallacher about his sole Masters appearance and what Augusta National looked like in 1970.

Bernard Gallacher played in 18 Opens, on eight Ryder Cup teams and won 23 times around the world but his Masters appearances number just one.

The Scot, who has just handed over the reins of the PGA captaincy to Sarah Bennett, teed it up at the 1970 Masters, having won our Order of Merit the previous year, and that was that. One and done.

“It was a pure invitational. It was small field and many of those were past winners, Bobby Jones was always an amateur so there were always plenty of them and it was very difficult for overseas players to be invited.

“There was no real criteria to it, someone like Peter Butler would be behind other players in the UK but Peter was a nice guy and he always splayed OK so he was invited a few times,” explains Gallacher.

Bizarrely, given how we now all view The Masters, Gallacher was invited back two years later but turned it down. If anything demonstrates how different the professional game was 50 years ago, Gallacher chose to play in the Portuguese Open rather than take up a second trip down Magnolia Lane.

“The tour at home closed down from October almost until March and I didn’t feel that my game was ready to play in The Masters come April and that I would do myself justice. So I played in Portugal where I lost a play-off to Jaime Benito at Penina so I thought I had done the right thing.

“The guys I was playing against were in the same position as me, they hadn’t played much competitive golf and I just wanted to get some points under my belt and that worked out OK. I was never invited back to Augusta probably because I turned it down.”

Gallacher went back in 1995 ahead of his Ryder Cup captaincy at Oak Hill and there was one more visit when an R&A member and friend invited Gallacher and his son for an unforgettable trip to play both Augusta and Pine Valley but that’s it. As for that one Masters appearance it was quite an eye-opening experience.

“It was like a garden party and a meeting of old friends, Bobby Jones was meeting people from a wheelchair. It wasn’t like an Open Championship and you could see why Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus dominated it as the field was so small and a lot of the players were past their best. They were up against maybe a dozen players and they were obviously so good that they would win so often.

“Saying that it was a great occasion, the course was wonderful, the greens were very quick and sloping and, given that it wasn’t on television very much, you could never appreciate how hilly it was.

“The 1st was straight uphill and you would try and get it over the bunker on the right and the 2nd was straight downhill. You turned up and you would go and see the caddie master and you would be allocated a local caddie. It was all very different to these days.”

Augusta National measured 6,980 yards in 1970. Billy Casper would win in a play-off at -9 while Gallacher would miss the cut. The par 5s were proper par 5s and a great short hole, whether it is 1970 or 2022, will always be a great short hole.

“I actually thought it was quite short, the fairways were very generous so you would use your driver a lot. Wentworth was always considered a very long course and that was 7,200 yards and most courses then were around 7,000 yards. The 13th and 15th were lay-up holes for most of the players, Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf might go for the green, but for most of us the emphasis was on the third shot and that’s how Jones wanted them to be played.”

As for Gallacher’s favourite hole that would be the short 12th, Golden Bell, which still rings true today for plenty of players.

He added: “I really liked the 12th, in those days they thought that to make a really challenging par 3 you had to put it up at 220 yards and hit a club out your boots to try. There is no depth to the green and Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have always said to hit to the middle of the green which is the widest part.

"The pin on the right has more slope around it so go at the middle and the worst that should happen is that you will finish in the sand. When Tiger won in 2019 so many of his challengers ended up wet while he didn’t even look at the flag. That’s the one hole that hasn’t been altered and it’s still the one that gives the pros plenty of difficulty.”