The Masters is golf’s most sacred institution — a place where cell phones are banned, commercials are politely whispered into your soul, and the sandwiches cost less than a Gatorade at your kid’s soccer game. And yet ... even perfection, apparently, can use a little tweaking. So we asked: If you could fix The Masters, what would you change?
Would fans take away a winner's lifetime exemption? Would they support the introduction of a "Stadium Hole" into one of golf's most sacred arenas (highly unlikely, but a fun hypothetical nonetheless). We surveyed 2,000 self-professed golf fans for their responses on a variety of practical ideas, bold takes, and some outright chaos.
From miking up the players to creating a women's edition of golf's most revered event, this is what the golf world really thinks would make The Masters even better — assuming Augusta doesn’t ban us forever for printing it.
How would golf fans fix The Masters?
| Fix 🔧 | Yes/Hard Yes 👍 | Maybe 🤷 | No/Hard No 👎 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provide full Thursday and Friday network television coverage | 76.0% | 16.2% | 7.8% |
| Add live audio from players | 61.8% | 20.8% | 17.4% |
| Hold a women's Masters at Augusta two weeks after the men's event | 51.7% | 24.4% | 24.0% |
| Give priority ticket lottery access to first-time Masters attendees | 46.0% | 26.1% | 27.9% |
| Enforce a time limit on shots to speed up play | 45.7% | 25.4% | 28.9% |
| Give the low amateur automatic entry into next year's Masters | 42.4% | 24.1% | 33.6% |
| Create a "Stadium Hole" similar to No. 16 at TPC Scottsdale | 38.5% | 26.5% | 35.0% |
| Allow fans to vote on select Friday or Saturday pin placements | 38.2% | 26.0% | 35.8% |
| Break the tradition of silence and allow crowd reactions like in other sports | 34.3% | 17.9% | 47.9% |
| Alternate between spring and fall dates every other year | 31.5% | 21.3% | 47.2% |
| Move to a three-hole aggregate playoff format | 29.9% | 28.4% | 41.8% |
| Shorten the field to 30 golfers on Sunday | 28.5% | 28.4% | 43.1% |
| Create a four-player sudden-death format instead of a traditional playoff | 28.3% | 22.9% | 48.8% |
| Eliminate the lifetime exemption for Masters champions | 25.8% | 20.9% | 53.4% |
| Lift the ban on cell phones | 25.5% | 17.1% | 57.3% |
| Allow the use of rangefinders | 25.2% | 22.9% | 51.9% |
| Have players play the back nine first and finish on the front nine | 22.0% | 25.5% | 52.4% |
| Give Wednesday's Par-3 Contest winner a one-stroke head start | 20.1% | 18.4% | 61.5% |
| Give the defending champion a one-stroke head start | 19.6% | 13.3% | 67.2% |
| Play without a 36-hole cut | 16.6% | 23.9% | 59.5% |
Note: Respondents were asked to rate each idea on a scale from 1-5, with 1 being "hard pass" and 5 being "absolute fire"; we've combined answers in the 1-to-2 range for the "No/Hard No" scores, and responses scoring 4-to-5 in the "Yes/Hard Yes" category.
Key Takeaways
📺 More than three-quarters of fans want to be able to see more of the tournament on television
🏌️♀️ More than half of respondents would like to see an annual women's Masters at Augusta as a companion to the men's event
🙅 Only three recommended fixes garnered more than 50% support from the survey participants
⛳ Four in five fans are against giving any sort of advantage to defending champions or Par-3 Contest winners
🏆 Rory McIlroy is the voters' choice for preferred Masters winner, easily outdistancing runner-up Scottie Scheffler
Top of the wish list: More sights (and sounds)
As popular as The Masters is, it's incredible that television stations aren't allowed to show more of it on the first two days of the tournament.
Early-round action takes place in relative broadcast darkness, with Augusta National in complete control of the broadcast deal and notoriously bent on limiting how much access is given to the home audience. It views the tournament as an exclusive experience, and treats it as such in terms of what it allows the golf world to see, prioritizing attendance over viewership.
It's no surprise, then, that the largest positive response to our recommended Masters fixes is centered around giving starved golf fans more access to the event.
A whopping 76% of survey participants want to see a greater TV presence for the first two rounds, with 45% of those responses falling in the "absolute fire" category. In short, golf fans want their Masters fix — and not just on the weekend.
Further to this, the second most popular fix in our survey — coming in at a robust 61.8% approval rate — would see players miked up over the course of their rounds. Area mics occasionally pick up a fun sound bite or two, but much of the golfer dialogue goes unheard by fans — and they would like to change that.
Let the ladies play
The home of The Masters is no longer a men's-only establishment, having finally inducted its first female members in 2012 and going on to create the Augusta National Women's Amateur tournament six years ago.
But if Augusta wants to take its commitment to growth and inclusion one giant step further, it will establish a women's Masters played annually at the course — and most golf fans who took part in our survey would love to see it happen.
More than one in four participants think the idea of a women's Masters is "absolute fire", while another one in four label it as "pretty solid". Fewer than one in four are against the proposal — and it feels like that number would have been much higher even just five years ago.
Imagine watching the greatest men's golfers on the planet ply their craft on one of the most grueling tests in their profession — and then, picture the world's top women's golfers doing the same a couple of weeks later. If fans had their way, it would be a reality.
Tradition reigns (as it should)
Nearly anyone who has picked up a 7-iron knows that few sports on this Earth are more steeped in tradition than golf — and The Masters is the most extreme example of this. You simply don't mess with Augusta, and the fans who took part in our survey largely agree.
The three proposals listed above are the only ones out of 20 total potential changes that gained more than 50% support. The next-closest: Giving first-time Masters attendees priority status in the annual ticket lottery draw, which sees a 46% Yes rate with another 26.1% on the fence.
On the flip side, the dissenters came out in droves.
While the three top ideas each see more than 26% of respondents give out a perfect score of 5, at least 29% of voters handed scores of 1 to 12 out of the 20 proposals on our list. And while it's easy to see why some of the ideas were summarily dismissed (Rangefinders at Augusta National? Blasphemy!), some of these suggestions might have been better received outside of U.S. golf's most hallowed piece of real estate.
No head starts — period
We left more than a few participants in pearl-clutching mode with some of our outside-the-box Masters fixes — but few resonated more loudly in a negative way than the suggestion that any player should be given a head start for the first major of the PGA Tour campaign.
Only one in five survey respondents are on board with the idea of giving the early-week Par-3 Contest a little extra hot sauce by providing the winner with a one-shot edge for The Masters tournament. And slightly fewer (19.6%) support rewarding the defending champion with a one-stroke advantage.
Only one event on the calendar — the season-ending TOUR Championship — has participants starting with different scores; otherwise, every golfer begins at even par. And fans would like to keep it that way — especially at The Masters.
The fans' choice to win: Rory McIlroy
It wasn't all about fixing a tournament that might already be as close to perfect as possible. We also asked participants who they want to win The Masters.
Rory McIlroy walked away with a comfortable victory in our survey, earning a hefty 29.6% of the vote (consisting of the top nine players in the most current Masters odds, along with an "Other" option). McIlroy has a whopping seven top-10 finishes on his Masters resume but has never won, topping out as a runner-up in 2022.
Defending champion Scottie Scheffler was a distant second at 20.9%; Scheffler, a two-time Masters winner, last year became the first player since Tiger Woods in 2005 to win the event as the pre-tournament betting favorite.
McIlroy and Scheffler were the only two players to garner double-digit support in our survey; Justin Thomas was the next-closest at 9.7%.
Other notable results
- It's more than a little surprising that nearly half of respondents are in favor of implementing a shot clock at The Masters to speed up play. This speaks to a larger issue of the sport moving too slowly in general for some sports fans, but with another 25.7% on the fence, it's clear that pace of play is a viewership issue.
- It will never happen, but it's still interesting to see that participants are nearly split down the middle on the idea of creating a "Stadium Hole" at Augusta National. (If we're going to get banned from the place, this bullet entry will almost certainly be the smoking gun.) We can laugh off the notion, but the fact that so many people are keen on seeing it suggests that the PGA Tour might want to consider more engagement-heavy holes at other tournaments. Just not this one. Never this one.
- As for the single worst recommendation of all, it's the proposal to eliminate the 36-hole cut altogether — a pitch that earned support from just one in six voters. And we get this: No Masters viewer wants to see "Danny Willett (+26)" show up on the screen at any point during the weekend. (Sorry, Danny.)
Methodology
We surveyed 2,000 golf fans from across the United States and Canada from March 24-26, 2025.
