Augusta National is a golfing paradise.

However, this particular Eden requires continual tweaking and trimming to maintain its beauty.

To keep up with the times, holes undergo regular cosmetic changes - a nip here, a tuck there.

However, in the last 12 months the 68-year-old course has undergone major surgery. Half the holes have been altered.

The overall length of the course has increased by almost 300 yards and a number of tees have been repositioned.

"Our objective is to keep the course current," the club chairman Hootie Johnson explained.

"Beginning in 1934 and throughout their tenure, Cliff Roberts and Bob Jones made improvements to complement the changing state of the game.

"We have continued this philosophy."

For Roberts and Jones, the original course architects, read Tom Fazio.

Johnson identified a number of par-fours as being a "little weak" and was growing worried that new technology, that gives golfers a longer game, may render Augusta's challenges obsolete.

"Equipment is making a huge difference and I hope that can be addressed," Johnson said.

"Another decade or two, I don't know where we might be and I don't know the answer to how that is going to be approached."

The short-term solution was more length, turning back the clock a decade and re-introducing the strategy that Augusta was formerly famed for.

The sight of a player being able to pitch onto the green of a par-four will, for the time-being, be a thing of the past.

Players will have their first experience of change at the opening hole which has been extended - as have all of the nine that came in for alterations.

Additionally, Fazio reshaped the lone fairway bunker at the apex of the dog-leg so that the first drive of the day needs to be hit more than 300 yards in order to clear the trap.

The seventh, which was a definite birdie opportunity in the past, has seen some of the most dramatic changes.

The hole is now 410 yards long.

To add further to the challenge, the fairway, which had already been narrowed in the past, has been further constricted.

The limited landing area, which slopes from right to left, demands a strategic drive and then a well-placed second for a birdie opportunity this year.

The first of the par fives that has been changed is the eighth.

It has been stretched by a mere 20 yards, but a new teeing position 10 yards to the right and a doubling of the fairway bunker will set new challenges for the field.

Extra length

The ninth, 10th and 11th, the last of the run of five holes that have been changed around the turn, have all come in for moderate redesigning.

But the extra length, and five yards difference to the right in the teeing grounds at the 10th and 11th, will add new dimensions to all.

One of Augusta's flagship holes, the dog-leg par-five 13th, has undergone the smallest change.

However, even with only an extra 25 yards of length, its character has been completely changed.

Those yards mean that it is now harder to shape a shot off the tee that curves round the corner of the dog-leg, setting up a shot for the green.

The extra length also brings Rae's Creek, which protects the green, back into play thus incorporating a high element of risk and reward to any approach shot.

The 14th has also been lengthened, as has the 18th by 60 yards.

Legendary greens

At 465 yards the final green is no longer reachable in two shots for a birdie opportunity.

The tee has been moved five yards to the right, and the fairway bunker complex, which has been enlarged by 10%, is now waiting to snare drives at 335 yards.

If this year's champion has to repeat Sandy Lyle's achievement in 1988 of firing an iron from the bunker to the green before holing out for victory, Fazio will have succeeded in his bid to turn back time.

It is estimated that the changes could add as many as three shots to the course depending on the weather.

With players aiming longer, it is hoped that approaches will be slightly more wayward, therefore promoting the short game around the greens.

And if Augusta's legendary greens are as fast as glass, this particular paradise may resemble hell for any miscreant golfers.