Donald the technician counters power game

Can Luke Donald still win the Masters? It is more a philosophical debate than a simple yes or no. Yes, some day the 28-year-old Englishman could be dressed in green but, no, perhaps not by tonight once this 70th edition of Bobby Jones's invitational is completed.

How Donald performs on the Augusta National course is only part of the equation. The other part is how the course keeps changing. Another 155 yards added this year, the 7,445-yard monster a paradise for the big hitters, Donald and his ilk, the technicians rather than the powerhouses, counted out before they even tee off.

But after two rounds played in traditional Masters conditions - dry, firm and fast - it appeared the only qualification for a place on the leaderboard was exceptionally fine golf. For all the effort that had gone into his first 36 holes, Donald could not quite claim that distinction. "It isn't really favouring the longer hitters as much as everybody thought," he said. In his second appearance here, after a third place last year, Donald deserved better than two over after 36 holes, especially the way he played in Friday afternoon's wind.

Returning towards the form that won him the Honda Classic last month, Donald was two under for the day with four to play. A holed bunker shot at the 10th helped but then his luck changed. Without enormous power, the margin for error is tighter for someone like Donald. At the 15th his five-iron approach was caught by a gust of wind and landed on the front of the green, where it could only roll back into the pond.

Then he three-putted at the 17th before his second at the 18th pitched 10 feet from the hole, an inch or two from staying put, only for gravity to take over again. After getting up and down, he said: "A matter of a few feet around here can make the difference between a birdie and a double bogey. You need the breaks to compete."

Was it a fair test? At the end of another long, exhausting day, he just about agreed it was. But then added: "I had a two-foot putt at the seventh which broke both ways. That didn't seem fair. But I missed it, so I would think that."

At Augusta National they believe maintaining the integrity of the course is more to do with the clubs the players hit than num-bers on a yardage chart. Yet the changes keep causing as much controversy as the debate in American schools about teaching Intelligent Design, the religious view of creation, alongside Darwinian evolution.

Natural selection at Augusta means more than choosing which gardening implement - pitching, gap, sand or lob wedge - to hit. With players doing sneaky things like Phil Mickelson carrying two drivers - one to hit a fade, the other for a draw - someone has to fight back, although the expense of rebuilding your course every year could be saved by a idea from Frank Thomas, a former technical director of the US Golf Association, that players only carry 10 clubs instead of 14. All Hootie Johnson, the Augusta chairman, would say is that he will not change the glorious 12th.

But something was missing. Noise. There were 23 eagles, compared to only four by the same stage a year ago, but with the exception of moments like Tiger's holed second shot at the 14th on Thursday, it seemed quiet. Perhaps Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus should return as honorary starters - playing a full round as Snead and Company once did - to warm up the gallery.

It was more US Open grind than Augusta bubble. Strain showed on every face. Each shot was studied, analysed and rethought. Rounds took forever. Alongside Donald in a three-ball that doubled as experimental control group, Jose Maria Olazabal battled to make the cut and David Toms lost the fight. But the 54-year-old Crenshaw showed that while the new Augusta tests the whole game, putting remains the key virtue.

"The course is vastly different from what it was,"said the double former champion. "There is a prescribed way of playing it now, so you don't have all the options we had. But the way people hit the ball these days, they have made it a heck of a test." Yesterday's rain altered the exam paper again, but not the syllabus. On Masters Sunday there should be roars aplenty.