Fred Ridley: ANGC suffered ‘a lot of damage’; club donating $5 million to local hurricane relief

Masters chairman Fred Ridley on Thursday gave an update on the recovery efforts in the southeast, including Augusta, Georgia, after the devastating hurricane that ravaged the area last week.

Ridley, speaking during the opening round of the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Japan, said that the destruction from Hurricane Helene is “something that I’ve really never seen in my life,” after multiple states were in the path of the category-4 storm that packed historic storm-surge levels and 140-mph winds.

Ridley said he was a late arrival to Japan because of the ongoing efforts to rebuild the area. On Thursday, he announced, in partnership with the Community Foundation for the Central Savannah River Area, that the club was donating $5 million to support the local relief efforts.

“We have been without power and water and other essentials for a number of days,” Ridley said. “So it really does impress upon you what can happen when there’s a natural disaster such as that.”

Ridley said that Augusta National suffered “a lot of damage,” much like the rest of the community.

“We have a lot of people working hard to get us back up and running,” he said. “We don’t really know exactly what that’s going to mean, but I can tell you if it’s humanly possible, we’ll be back in business sooner rather than later.”

Ridley added that he’s “confident” that next year’s Masters will be held as scheduled, April 10-13.

In tournament-related news, with the golf world still fractured, Ridley was asked about the possibility of adding players to the field who would otherwise not be eligible. Joaquin Niemann, for instance, was invited to this past year’s event, based on his playing record, commitment to earning world-ranking points outside of LIV events and status as a former Latin America Amateur champion.

Ridley said that the Masters will “look to find players” who would be additive to the field for the year’s first major.

“We would all like to see the game get back together,” Ridley said. “The fans want to see the best players play together. So it is a less-than-desirable situation that we have right now. I would say, yes, we are going to look to find ways to get some of these players in that might not otherwise be qualified, sort of based on their records.”