Most players walking up the hill toward the 17th fairway at Augusta National couldn't help but notice the famous Eisenhower Tree: a loblolly pine, far enough from the tee to be a nuisance, sprawling at 65 feet and getting taller by the year.

What got Stewart Cink's attention was another tree behind it.

"Between 10 or 15 years ago, I noticed they planted a rather substantial new tree, about 20 yards further away from the Eisenhower Tree," Cink said. "I think they were planning on the Eisenhower tree being lost at some point, coming to the end of its life."

This was the year it did.

A miserable winter in the South produced an ice storm so severe that the aging Eisenhower Tree was damaged beyond repair. As the Masters prepares to kick off in Augusta, the biggest change might be what's no longer there.

In an announcement that read like an obituary, club chairman Billy Payne said the tree could not be saved and was removed.


Worse yet, turns out that other tree Cink noticed years ago also fell victim to the ice storm and was taken down. The club has no immediate plans to replace it. Such decisions are not made hastily at Augusta National. The brother of former Masters champion Trevor Immelman posted a photo of the 17th without the tree, and the hole was not easily identified without the tree that gave it such definition.

The tree got its name from a certain Augusta National member -- former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He hit the tree so often that during an Augusta National governors' meeting in 1956, Ike demanded that the tree be cut down immediately.


Clifford Roberts, the chairman and co-founder of the club, overruled the president and adjourned the meeting. Nearly 60 years later, Ike got his wish.

To understand the loss of the tree, consider St. Andrews without the Road Hole bunker or the TPC Sawgrass without the island green. Fenway Park without the Green Monster.

The Eisenhower Tree was a problem a generation ago, before equipment got better and golfers started to resemble actual athletes.

"It was like George Brett at third base for me," Curtis Strange said. "It caught more line drives from me than I'm allowed to admit."

The tree was tall enough to make a player think about his tee shot, and it jutted far enough out from the left side that the best shots were shaped from right-to-left. In recent years, the big hitters just smashed a tee shot over the tree.

Phil Mickelson never had a problem with it. He was contacted in February, after the sad news that the tree had come down, and was asked if he wanted to comment. He replied with a text message and a smiley-face emoticon, "Ask Jim Furyk."

Furyk, whose ball flight tends to be low and moves from left-to-right, handled the question with great diplomacy.

"It used to be not really a big deal to pop it over when I first started playing," Furyk said. "The tree was smaller, and the tee was a lot closer to it, so it was a lot harder to hit. Now I seem to hit that damn thing at least twice a year. It's a very difficult tee shot for me. So from the history of the game, I'll miss it. But my game sure won't miss it, put it that way."

The tree managed to play a role in Tiger Woods' injuries. It was a shot he had to play from under the Eisenhower in 2011 that aggravated injuries to his left Achilles tendon and caused him to miss two majors. Woods won't be back this year to see the change because of surgery for a pinched nerve in his back, but he spoke for plenty of players this spring.

"I can't say some of the guys are going to miss it," he said. "But we are going to see a difference."