Augusta National Golf Club

BACKGROUND

Augusta National Golf Club was founded by Georgian native Bobby Jones, the famous amateur golf champion, along with investment banker Clifford Roberts from Iowa, with the two men teaming up shortly after Jones retired from competitive golf in 1930.

Thomas Barrett, a mutual friend, recommended the purchase of a 365-acre property called Fruitland Nurseries in Augusta, close to the border between Georgia and South Carolina, for the location of the new golf course.

Designed by Alister MacKenzie, the renowned English architect, the layout was constructed between 1931 and 1932, with a formal opening taking place in January 1933. The inaugural Masters Tournament was staged the following year and the rest as they say is golfing history.

Quite a number of architects have upgraded the course since it was first set out by MacKenzie, most notably Perry Maxwell (1937-1946) and Robert Trent Jones (1946-1953). The former altered eleven holes, whilst the latter made significant improvements to the par four 11th and par three 16th.

George Cobb (1954-1978), John LaFoy and Joe Finger (in the 1970s), Bob Cupp and Jay Morrish (in the early 1980s), and Tom Fazio (in the new millennium) have also helped to further shape the layout. Fazio, in particular, has rebuilt greens, repositioned bunkers and added new back tees.

THE COURSE

Augusta National is well-known throughout the golfing world for its immaculate conditioning, presenting impeccably manicured playing corridors, pine straw-lined fairways, flower beds dotted throughout, beautifully tended ponds – and wildly sloping putting surfaces!

The greens are maintained to play fast and hard, thanks in large part to a SubAir System that was developed and installed in the mid-1990s to regulate irrigation, ventilation and drainage. Since the early 1970s, bunkers have featured white granulated quartz (which is not exactly sand).

Appropriately, as the course was once a plant nursery, every hole on the scorecard is named after a flower, shrub or tree that can be found across the property, starting with “Tee Olive“ at the par four 1st and finishing with “Holly” at the right doglegging uphill par four 18th.

Golf fans the world over will recognize holes 11 to 13 by their nickname of “Amen Corner” but there are a few other names at Augusta National which are probably just as well know, including the Butler Cabin, Eisenhower Tree, Ike’s Pond and Rae’s Creek.

MASTERS TOURNAMENT

A master stoke that put the course firmly on the map was the inauguration of a prestigious annual golf event in 1934. Originally called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament, the name of the competition was changed to the Masters in 1940.

Staged every year in April, it’s the first of the four recognised Majors to be played in the annual golf calendar. The Masters has the smallest field of the four Majors, normally between 75 and 100, with the top 50 players in the world rankings invited to participate.

Horton Smith won the first event in 1934 and he repeated this feat two years later. Other multiple winners include Jack Nicklaus (6 times between 1963 and 1986), Tiger Woods (5 times between 1997 and 2019) and Arnold Palmer (four times between 1958 and 1964).

Three players have finished runner-up four times: Ben Hogan (between 1942 and 1955), Tom Weiskopf (between 1969 and 1975), and Jack Nicklaus (between 1964 and 1981). The Golden Bear also holds the record as the oldest winner, aged 46 when he claimed his last title.

The first non-American golfer to win the event was Gary Player in 1961 and the first European to don the winner’s Green Jacket was Seve Ballesteros in 1980. Up until 2023, there had been seventeen occasions when the Masters was won after a play off.