''I told him to stop complaining,'' Bruce Edwards says, ''and let's get going.'' Tom Watson finished with a two-under par 70 that day and added a 71 yesterday. ''Anytime I'm uncertain about which club to use, I know Bruce is a good sounding board for me,'' Tom Watson says. ''Most of the time I'll ask him which club just to be reassured, but sometimes I'm not that sure myself. I'd say 75 percent of the time I want that reassurance; the other 25 percent I want him to suggest which club he thinks I should use.''

In the months following last year's Masters, several leading touring pros suggested that the Masters, like every other important tournament, permit a caddie of the golfer's choice. Hord Hardin agreed.

''We have some excellent caddies here at the club,'' Hord Hardin says, ''but we're not naive enough to think that we have 80 caddies who can be classified at the same level of competence as the tour caddies. If I were a player under today's conditions, and I think Bobby Jones would agree, I would want to bring my own caddie.''

The mystique of Bobby Jones remains as much a part of the Masters as the azaleas and the dogwood. Bobby Jones founded the Masters in 1934 as the ''Augusta Invitational'' after having retired at age 28 following his 1930 grand slam of the United States Open, the British Open, the United States Amateur and the British Amateur.

''I like to think our tradition is change,'' Hord Hardin says. ''From the beginning Cliff Roberts and Bobby Jones,'' he adds, speaking of his predecessors, ''were innovators. They did not stick to things because they did 'em that way before.''

In addition to the caddie ruling, the Masters has provided the golfers for the first time with pin-placement diagrams of each green as well as booklets that show yardage-diagrams of each hole. The club also improved the two practice ranges that extend down the vast lawns on each side of Magnolia Drive leading to and from the clubhouse from the Washington Road guard house.

The influx of different caddies, of course, is the Masters' most visible change this year. Several touring pros had felt the overall quality of Augusta National caddies had slowly deteriorated in recent years. On the undulating Masters greens, a club caddie might read a break that his golfer wouldn't see. But the golfer still has to stroke the putts, as Arnold Palmer did in winning four Masters titles.