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I spent quite a lot of time around the green at No. 3 Sunday. The hole was cut on the front left of the green, which was about as firm as Washington Road running in front of the golf course. As busy and sometimes treacherous as that road was during the Masters, I think the green and the hole position were tougher to negotiate.

The hole was cut maybe 15 feet behind the front left of the green, and the back of the putting surface fell away just a few feet behind the hole. Miss the green at the front and the ball could spin back 20 or 30 yards down the slope. Miss it over the flag or over the green and it could run down a bank, making a very difficult chip or pitch-and-run shot from there back to the hole.

As I write this, I'm looking at a leaderboard at the front of the press room at Augusta National. I'm examining how the leaders did at the third hole. Of the top-10 golfers, eight of them bogeyed the third hole. That seems to me a bit ridiculous. It suggests that the powers-that-be went beyond the limits of what can reasonably be expected of the game's elite players.

Now, I'm the same guy who wrote after the Players Championship that I love to see a course bordering on the unfair, and that par should matter at a major championship. By no means am I departing from this belief. But "bordering on the unfair," or even "unfair" does not mean going far beyond these ideas. It's worth considering whether Augusta National went too far Sunday.

First, nobody could go at the pin Sunday. There was no room for error. Players didn't have to land the ball on a dime -- rather on the head of a needle -- if they meant to keep the ball around the hole. But hardly anybody went anywhere near the hole. Does that make sense on a short par-4?

Here came Scott McCarron. He hit what I imagine was a wedge or even sand wedge into the middle of the green -- the wider part well right of where the hole was cut. It took a big bounce over the green. What fun.

McCarron was playing with Nick Price, who aimed for the wide part of the green and watched as his ball skipped, bounced and ran over the green -- excuse me, over the pavement. They might as well have been hitting 2-irons into the green, for all the effect spinning the ball with a short iron had on the extremely firm green.

Soon came Colin Montgomerie, who managed to keep his ball on the right side of the hole and the right side of the green. He rolled his 30-foot putt quite nicely -- I thought -- with the right speed. Yeah, sure. It picked up speed near the hole and ran on by and off the green into the second cut.

Never mind that Monty made his par putt from there. The point is that he had played to the side of the green that was the only correct place to aim for, and that he held the green. But from there Monty had very little chance of keeping his approach putt near the hole because of where it was cut. About the only place to leave the second shot was just below or just beyond the hole, but there was almost no room to do that. And it would have been stupid to try that shot.

No. 3 is the shortest par-4 at Augusta, but it caused players fits Sunday. (Allsport)

Just a minute, if you don't mind. I'm going to take a minute and go through the entire field to see how many players birdied the hole. Hmmm, three out of 54 golfers birdied a short par-4 with no water, no island greens and no deep pot bunkers. Does that make sense? Isn't that absurd?

So let's return to the hole. Here comes Lee Janzen, the two-time U.S. Open champion who knows how to handle adversity. But adversity doesn't mean absurdity. What do you know? Janzen air-mails the third green. He stands there, hardly believing what just happened.

Now comes Bob Estes, from so far up the fairway that he can't have more than 60 yards to the green. And he zips one through the concrete jungle.

Ah, there's nothing like a short par-4. The best courses in the world have them. But do they have a short par-4 where, during a major championship, the hole played as the fifth hardest the last day? I doubt it. Thank the tournament officials for that pleasant circumstance.

It makes sense for a par-4 of 455 yards to be ranked as the hardest hole the last day of a championship, as did No. 11 Sunday. The devilishly difficult par-3 12th with Rae's Creek in front of the green and winds swirling all round ranked second. That too makes sense. The 435-yard fifth ranked third and the par-4 205-yard fourth ranked, well, fourth. Fair enough.

But there's something bizarre about such a short par-4 as the third ranking fifth Sunday. Masters officials went too far on that green. The entire course was extremely difficult, of course, which is as it should be, or should have been. The greens were very firm for the most part, and with winds whipping the course was some kind of test. But the third green was over the top, and in fact some other pins were really severe. Questionable, I think.

The hole at 17 was cut just behind a bump at the front of the green, and there was hardly any way to get near it. Maybe it would have been preferable to give players a chance to make a birdie, especially down the stretch if they were contending. David Duval was 3-under-par playing the 17th hole and thought he needed two birdies to have any chance of winning. That was when Olazábal was just getting to the back nine, and was 6-under-par.

Duval drove perfectly down the middle, but then had to hit a shot so high and so precise that it would land right around the hole and stick there. He came up short and knew it as soon as he hit the ball. There just wasn't any room for error and he made an error. But it's also true that hardly any golfer in the world could have put the ball near the hole there. Maybe that's why there were only two birdies at the 17th Sunday, and 16 bogeys. Janzen said the pin on the 17th was impossible.

That was also true at the 14th, where the hole was cut on top of a gigantic knoll on the right of the green. The only way to get near the hole on the second shot was by accident. The hole yielded three birdies Sunday.

"It's that kind of course, very small margins," Lee Westwood, who got to 5 under and felt he had a chance to win Sunday, said. He finished at 3 under.

Ian Woosnam, who tied for 14th at even-par 288, said: "The greens are like concrete. They obviously didn't put any water on them last night. It's so fiery out there, it's unbelievable."

Greg Norman, who played well but came up short, put it this way. And make no mistake. He was probably being charitable.

"That golf course had some very difficult pin positions," Norman said after shooting 71 and finishing three shots behind Olazábal. "There were places where a 30-footer was close."

Is that right? I don't know, maybe it is. But guys who race cars aren't asked to take 90-degree turns at high speeds. I don't follow car racing, but I'm sure there's an area into which they aren't asked to venture. A golf course isn't life threatening, to be sure, so it's more likely that limits will be tested.

On Sunday, players' limits were tested on the course as a whole, but most clearly, I think, at the seemingly innocuous third hole. Surely most golf fans like conditions during majors where golfers have to hit great shots to make birdies. But when the demands go beyond great, well, maybe they've gone too far.

Still, all credit to Olazábal. There's magic in his game, and he needed plenty of magic to win the Masters on one scary course -- on one course that took it to the outer limits of what professional golfers might be expected to do.