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over and essentially turned to pasture. After the war, the club engaged Robert Trent Jones to oversee another series of alterations, including the creation of the longer, modern 11th hole with an enlarged water feature next to the green and the new par-3 16th cocked 90-degrees from the old and playing across a broad pond.
1930-’40s UPHEAVAL OF A FOUNDATIONAL DESIGN 6 700-6 800 yards Average winning score: 281 (-7) Lowest winning score: 279 (Ralph Guldahl, 1939; Claude Harmon, 1948) Many architecture purists would argue for Alister MacKenzie and Bob Jones’ original 1932 idea of an inland course that emulated the shots and strategic concepts of St Andrews, with wide fairways allowing for preferred but risk-laden lines of attack into steeply contoured greens. As engaging as the founding design might have been, making the case for early Augusta National would be difficult because of the turf conditions of the 1930s. As with most southern golf courses, Augusta National was planted with Bermuda grass, which goes dormant in the winter. When dormant Bermuda grown on clay soil dries out (Augusta is built on clay), it gets rock hard. When it’s wet – and southeastern winters and early springs are notoriously rainy – it becomes soppy and almost unplayable. Tom Watson recalls Byron Nelson telling him it was common for clover to be growing in the fairways. Even after overseeding greens and fairways with cold-tolerant perennial rye, a practice the club still endeavours each autumn to provide a grassy cushion and deep green colour, course conditions would have been irregular and at the mercy of Mother Nature in an era of limited underground drainage and primitive fertilisers and herbicides, as well as irrigation. Nor were Jones and club chairman Clifford Roberts satisfied with the design from a competition perspec- tive: The first major course revision happened almost immediately with the swapping of the nines after the 1934 tournament (the current 10th was originally the first). Before the 1938 and 1939 Masters, architect Perry- Maxwell made significant alterations to the seventh, ninth, 10th, 12th and 14th holes, among others. The carou- sel had begun to turn. The 1940s were a decade of upheaval. After victories by Jimmy Demaret, Craig Wood and Byron Nelson, the course sat fallow during World War Two when the Masters was suspended for three years, grown
One of the peculiarities of Augusta National is how little the club’s altera- tions impact the perception of the golf course. Improvements have taken place nearly every off-season since the inaugural Masters in March 1934, from greenside modifications to major reconfigurations of different holes. In- tended to keep the course relevant for the contemporary professional game, many of these changes have gradually mutated the course’s appearance and historical design concepts. Yet despite Augusta National’s evolving character, it continues to be perceived as a mono- lithic entity. In Golf Digest’s ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, Augusta National has slipped outside the top 10 just once since 1966 and has been a fixture in the top three each year since 1985. The Augusta National of 2024 is like the Augusta National of 2004 to the same degree that the course of 1974 is like the course of 1934, which is to say not very much. Slice into Augusta at any given point on its timeline and the presentation and playability will be unique. It begs the question, was there a moment when the club came the closest to an ideal presenta- tion? Is it possible to pinpoint a time when the symbiosis of shot demands, hole lengths, fealty to the intended strategies, playing conditions and club and ball technology were in perfect harmony? In other words, if we were to enshrine one version of Augusta National in the Golf Course Hall of Fame, which year would it be?
HOLE 12 / 1948 For decades holes like the par-3 12th were rugged, hard and vulnerable to nature.
64 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH/APRIL 2024
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