Will anything fill void left by Ike's Tree?

If you got out early enough Monday before the storms came and reached the 17th hole crosswalk, a gallery guard could point out a small pine cone in the middle of an already pristine swath of fairway.

That small makeshift memorial is all that’s left of the famous Eisenhower Tree.

An ice storm in February that left lingering scars all over Augusta finished the job that President Eisenhower couldn’t 60 years ago. It shredded the most famous loblolly pine in the world and forced current club chairman Billy Payne to finally remove what founding chairman Clifford Roberts steadfastly refused to all those years ago.

Its absence is more conspicuous than its broad boughs once were.

“I never saw it,” said 2009 Masters winner Angel Cabrera. “Now when I get there and it’s not there, I will see it.”

Cabrera and so many of today’s modern bombers could clear the more than 100-year-old tree without much sweat. Even so, the reaction among Masters competitors ranged from sorrow to glee that it’s gone – for now.

These were the first responses of some former champions and notable stars.

Graeme MacDowell: “Not sorry to see that one go, but I’m sure they’ll replace it with something else. I’ve been in that tree more times than I care to mention.”

Trevor Immelman: “I was very sad to hear it but maybe I’m just a bit more sentimental.”

Charl Schwartzel: “With me being a fader of the ball, I’m pretty happy about it. It was tough. When it gets cold around Augusta that tree really got in play.”

Zach Johnson: “Seventeen is about Ike’s Tree, so it’s unfortunate.”

Try coming up with a memory of when the Eisenhower Tree played any significant role in the outcome of a Masters, you’ll find it doesn’t exist. There has surely been far more cursing from members at the club’s Jamborees and Closing parties than by pros in the annual April invitational.

But that’s not really the point.

“I think it’s all nostalgia to tell you the truth,” said Greg Norman, who can’t recall a single time when the pine played any role in his many Augusta heartbreaks. “From a player’s standpoint, they hit it so long and so high it’s not even a factor anymore. But stick Eisenhower’s name on a tree there’s a lot of nostalgia and that will be missed.”

Few wax nostalgic better than Immelman, the 2008 champion. He offered perhaps the most impassioned eulogy for the tree.

“I thought it was a big deal,” Immelman said of the tree’s demise. “To me one of the beauties of Augusta National and one of the reasons why there are only two or three courses on the planet that are held in such esteem is because from the minute you drive through the front gate everything is symbolic of something. The Eisenhower Tree was symbolic. When you got to 17th tee and if you’ve never been there before the story would get told. That’s important. It’s one of the reasons why everybody has such a love affair with Augusta National.”

Even Arnold Palmer believes his old friend, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would be sorry to see it gone.

“He loved Augusta, and I think deep down he probably loved that tree just because it irritated him so much,” Palmer said.

So how do you replace that symbol that was lost? There was not enough time for the club to make a suitable substitution before this Masters. Most people suspect that every shot this year will be carefully charted to determine what to do next. Put a new loblolly in the same spot? Put one further up the fairway to provide a greater strategic challenge to the modern players? Put an Eisenhower Bunker there instead?

“I’m surprised that there isn’t a bigger one in place there already to tell you the truth,” Steve Stricker said. “I’m sure over the next year or two, there will be something there. ... and what are they going to call it?”

“I’m sure they’ll do it right. I think a tree will be put there,” Immelman said. “One thing we know about Augusta National – they’re never go to do anything pressurized and never going to make an irrational decision. It will be calculated and it will be permanent.”

Said Schwartzel: “Even if they replace it, that specific tree had some issue to it. They can replace and it will make the hole difficult, but it won’t have the same meaning.”

Gil Hanse, the course architect in charge of the Olympic project in Brazil and the recent redo of Doral, doesn’t think there needs to be too much debate.

“I’ve always been a proponent on courses that we’ve worked on and revised from a restoration standpoint that if you’re trying to replicate something just replicate what it was,” Hanse said. “Would you start out to design a golf hole with a tree right there? Maybe not. But that’s an iconic part of the golf course. And my hope is that they will do whatever is necessary to replicate it and put it back in place. Because I think it fits with the history and tradition of the golf course and the tournament.”