AUGUSTA, Ga. -- This is a year of profound and controversial change for the Augusta National Golf Club, and I am, of course, talking about the curious case of the pimento cheese recipe.

It's different.

An Augusta National pimento cheese sandwich -- in 2011. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

There's definitely more spice, and some think there's more mayo. The consistency has changed, sometimes leaving soggy bread gummed up around a big blob of the spread. From the outside, it seems like a combination of legal liability issues and stubborn pride has left the Masters concessions staff trying -- and failing, in a rare moment of fallibility -- to re-create the same recipe that generations of golf fans have enjoyed.

"I am fine with adding the female members, and I am tolerating the belly putters," fan Paul Jones said, "but changing the pimento cheese recipe is taking change too damn far. We actually spent a lot of time trying to re-create the recipe."

On Wednesday morning, I did some reporting -- my colleague Don Van Natta Jr. won a Pulitzer for investigating al-Qaida, which obviously pales in comparison to my digging into a sandwich -- and ended up on North Leg Road in Augusta, sitting in a branch of the fried chicken chain Wife Saver. (This is actually its name.)

These guys are fried chicken ninjas. Excuse the following bit of blasphemy, but it is better than your grandmother's. Takeout from Wife Saver has been a staple of University of Georgia tailgates for decades. Ted Godfrey, the franchise owner and previous maker of the pimento cheese, is trying to be careful, because he sure would like to get the tournament business back. The sign outside the restaurant advertised the "original Augusta recipe" for the pimento cheese, words vetted by his lawyers to make sure he didn't anger the club.

"I'll give you the whole story," he says.

Almost 30 years ago, tournament officials asked him to take over making the chicken sandwiches. Originally, the Masters served the unbelievably old-school Southern combination of a bone-in fried chicken breast on a piece of white bread, which was there just to soak up the grease. Rumor has it the members got tired of patrons throwing chicken bones around their perfectly manicured golf course and switched to a patty. So in 1985, Godfrey started serving a boneless chicken breast on half a hamburger bun, in keeping with tradition. Four years later, he thinks, it became a complete sandwich.