Billy Casper’s 106 on the opening day of the Masters’ has rekindled the debate about the lifetime exemption at Augusta.

The debate first raised its head a couple of years ago when Augusta Chairman Hootie Johnson sent a letter to the past Champions, sent letters to the older past Champions asking them to consider not appearing.

It caused an uproar and after consulting with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, Hootie backed down. But the issue is sure to come up again.

I’m of two minds on this one.

On the one hand, I don’t think that when the lifetime exemption was put into place, the founders of the tournament envisioned guys in their eighties continuing to try to play. And they certainly didn’t envision someone stubbornly hanging on.

But, I for one enjoy having the chance to see golf’s past play with its present and future. If they cut the older players out, we won’t get that chance.

I think that the solution is for the Tournament to set up a “Past Masters” day, to be held on the Monday before the tournament. The Masters already is a sellout tournament; an extra day to see the legends of the past play would be a lot of fun.  The problem is, that there probably wouldn’t be enough to man a decent field. They could extend the invitation to the older winners of other Majors.

Alternately, they could have a few groups of “Past Masters” go off the back nine on the first morning of the tournament. Then they could experience the pleasure of coming up 18 to a crowd all over again.

And fans of golf wouldn’t be denied the opportunity to see the heroes of their youth play one more time.

The Golf Blogger has decided to try a new experment. Taking a cue from the nation’s top rted radio host, I’ve decided to declare it “Open Line Friday.”

Six days a week, your friendly editor controls the flow of information in this blog—but today is your chance to write about anything golf related—Just click on the comments link below to add your two cents.

Just keep it clean, and keep it on golf.

After her dominating victory at the Kraft Nabisco over the weekend, the golf pundits are falling over themselves to declare Annika Sorenstam the greatest female golfer—if not the greatest overall golfer—ever.

It’s a thread you find at The New York Times, at ESPN, and the LA Times, as well as dozens of other papers and websites.

In the Kraft-Nabisco coverage over the weekend, announcers and color commentators were comparing Sorenstam to the greats of the LPGA’s past—Mickey Wright, Patty Berg and Babe Zaharias.

I do not disagree that she is a dominating—even the dominating player of her time. But I always get nervous when people start comparing sports figures and statistics from different generations.

Baseball is a good example. Joe Dimaggio’s 56 consecutive game hitting streak is incredible, but he wasn’t facing middle relievers and two pitch closers; the strike zone has changed and the talent pool of the day was much smaller, since minorities weren’t allowed to play.

That doesn’t diminish his achievement. But the differences do prevent us from fairly comparing the record to today’s streaks.

I think that the same situation prevents us from comparing Annika Sorenstam (or even Tiger Woods) to the greats of the past. What was the level of competition back then?; do we have to factor in equipment, training and conditioning? What about course conditions?

I think that the best we can do is to say that they are the best of their time.

Tiger Woods’ comments last week that he’d like to see fewer PGA tournaments set off a firestorm of conversation on the internet’s golf chat boards. I posted my thoughts about the issue here.

Now Larry Bohannan of the Palm Springs Desert Sun has chimed in. Bohannan gives four reasons why there won’t be any fewer tournaments. I agree with all of them:

1) There is too much money out there.
2) Fewer tournaments won’t mean that the elite players play any more.
3) Not everyone is elite
4) Fewer tournaments conflicts with the PGA’s marketing strategy.

You can find the complete column here.

Frank Hannigan, former USGA Director has written an intriguing essay for The Golf Observer on whether the USGA is in the process of abandoning its standards for amateur status. The worst of the USGA backsliding, he says, is permitting NCAA scholarship athletes to compete as amateurs. He correctly argues that these golfers are essentially paid to compete and practice nine months a year. What’s the difference between someone who makes $30,000 a year playing golf, or someone who is given a $30,000 scholarship to play golf?

Hannigan also warns that the USGA will allow a club to pay for an amateur to compete as its chosen champion. I can see all kinds of abuse coming down that route.

I think that the thing for the USGA to do is set up another level of competition like the mid-amateur. It wouild be a US Semi Pro or somesuch that would be open to scholarship athletes, designated club amateurs, etc. Then the US Amateur would be able to revert to its true roots.