It's doubtful I have to refresh your memories since most of you plaster the bathroom walls with these yearly pleas for the Lords of Augusta to stop butchering their course all because some guy shot 18-under par.

Geoff Shackelford

The club has begun the slow — and I mean slooow — process of undoing Hootie Johnson's and Tom Fazio's destructive dismantling of what was once sport's greatest arena for spine-tingling thrills. This year, a few tees added flexibility and some of the recently planted trees were gone. But the "second cut" (the rough), the inflexibility and old-guard United States Golf Association thinking still dominate the shallow philosophy that says a successful Masters is one with stifling conditions demonstrated by a high winning score.

Not just at Augusta but in the world of golf there appears to be no imminent solution to this widespread and weirdly neurotic vanity fueling the fear of low scores and the resultant tendency of otherwise sensible people taking wretchedly peculiar steps to prevent 65s at courses across the land. This backwards behavior — only found in golf — continues to happen even though refined course maintenance is a primary culprit in producing lower scores.

But it's all about to change. Because I give you — The Hootie Index.

Working with some of golf's top scientists who understand my desperation to milk the funny name of former Augusta Chairman Hootie Johnson for at least one more column, we have developed a highly refined warning system taking the best attributes of the Heat Index, the Richter Scale, Hurricane Categorization, the Dow Industrial Average, the Homeland Security Advisory System and the "Feels Like" temperature formula to give you the ultimate golf course scoring barometer.

The Hootie Index is designed for implementation each day during tournament play, including the mixed-couples four-ball gathering, the local collegiate event and, yes, The Masters. With a simple algebraic formula adding the par, temperature, Stimpmeter rating, course record, forecasted wind and superintendent's blood pressure reading and dividing it all by his cholesterol count, we produce a number that pre-conditions uptight committee types to the possibility of low scoring brought on by the superintendent doing a superlative job with course conditioning.

After all, no matter how much technology of which you arm today's best players, their performance ultimately hinges upon course conditions. The smoother the greens, the more consistent the fairway lies and the firmer the bunker sand, the lower they will score no matter how much rough is culled or how well the holes are tucked. Yet this simple notion is rarely factored into discussions about scoring.

Players have known this all along, but you can't blame them for not explaining this phenomena to the ignorant committees of the world. After all, why would they want to go back to spotty lies and bumpy greens? Because more than persimmon heads and balata balls, inconsistency in course conditioning is the fastest way to cause consternation, heartache and downright incompetence from today's elite player.

According to a soon-to-be-unveiled U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the basic failure to account for the widespread improvement in course manicuring has resulted in $2.9 billion in golf course renovation spending, with $2 billion of that attributed to Augusta National alone.

Now armed with the Hootie Index, courses around the country can post daily ratings to help those challenged with a lack of foresight. The index will prepare them for the simple fact that when you give the flat bellies nearly perfect conditions for scoring, they will do their thing and the sun will still rise in the East after some stud shoots 65. Yes, they will do so, and just like Jerry and George's faux outing on "Seinfeld" so many years ago, there's nothing wrong with that.

Geoff Shackelford can be reached at geoffshac@aol.com
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