OPINION

By TIM DAHLBERG

updated 3:31 p.m. ET April 8, 2009

AUGUSTA, Ga. - There’s a new building where a parking lot once stood near the front entrance to Augusta National, visible evidence that once again things are changing at a place where time once seemed to stand still. By next year it will be joined by a sparkling new driving range built big enough to withstand the booming drives the old one can no longer contain.

Ask any of the green jackets who run this place, and they’ll tell you Augusta National has been evolving ever since the day Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts teamed up to take a $70,000 option on a former nursery during the Great Depression with the idea of building a golf course for the elite of the day. Indeed, just two years after the place opened they switched the front and back nines, just in time for Gene Sarazen to make a double eagle on No. 15 on his way to a win in the fledgling Augusta National Invitation Tournament.

But the talk this year isn’t about what has changed. It’s about what has been missing the last few years as a pair of plodders won green jackets and the back nine on Sunday afternoon was as quiet as the churches off Washington Avenue.

And with it comes a question once considered unthinkable.

Has the Masters lost its mojo?

Hardly, if you judge by the thousands who braved frigid temperatures and gusty winds Tuesday just to have a chance to walk the manicured fairways they know so well by seeing them on TV. They, like the players who talk about the place in hushed tones, understand its hallowed place in the game of golf.

Listen more carefully, though, and its clear that something may be amiss.

“There’s definitely a slight edge off the golf course as far as great excitement is concerned,” Gary Player said.

That should concern the control freaks who micromanage everything at the Masters from the direction the grass is cut to the price of a pimento cheese sandwich (a bargain at $1.50), though so far they’ve deflected any notion that anything they’ve done to Augusta National has robbed it of some of the very essence that makes the Masters the most revered tournament in golf.

But the roars that used to echo through the tall Georgia pines on Sunday have largely been missing in action recently, a trend that hasn’t gone unnoticed by both serious fans and even more serious players.

“We all love it here, we all want to come here and play, but all the golfers are constantly saying it’s just not the same,” Greg Norman said Tuesday. “And that’s a shame.”

Blame Zach Johnson and Trevor Immelman for part of that, though it’s certainly not their fault they weren’t born with Phil Mickelson’s wild streak and can’t do a fist pump like Tiger Woods. The last two Masters champions won not with thrilling shots but by managing their games well and making putts when they needed to.

But where were the players making charges with the usual Sunday birdies and eagles? Where were the opportunities on a back nine that for decades offered a lot of reward if players were willing to take a few risks?

Nowhere to be seen on a course that may have finally become too tough for its own good.

“You don’t have the same amount of birdie opportunities that you used to have,” Woods said. “It’s just not the same. The scores reflect it.”

Woods is the main reason things aren’t the same. His dominating win in 1997 prompted Masters officials to embark on a decade-long campaign to Tigerproof the course, and almost every year something has been done to make things more difficult.

But adding yards to the two back-nine par-5s has had the unintended consequence of stopping many players from going at the greens in two, cutting not only into eagle opportunities but into the excitement factor. The final nine that Jack Nicklaus conquered with a 30 in 1986 in perhaps the most thrilling Masters ever is now a place to hang on instead of a place to make a charge.

Not since Mickelson and Ernie Els dueled over the final holes in 2004 has there been much to enjoy on the back nine at all.

That could change this year, assuming the green jackets have been listening. There’s a new front tee on 15 that might prompt players to take more chances at the tabletop green if put in use, and moving up the tee on 13 could allow players to bend the ball around the corner and take a chance at the green with an iron.

The weather has to cooperate, too. It’s been miserable in recent years, and any kind of wind on Sunday forces players to try to win this championship the way NFL teams win theirs — by playing defense.

That’s not always pretty, as we’ve seen in recent years. The back nine charge has been replaced by a back nine grind, an unintended change in a tournament where change is constant.

Thankfully, the one thing that hasn’t changed at the Masters is this: Low score always wins.

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