OF ALL THE GOLF COURSES most known for their beauty, Augusta National is the most
ephemeral. Merely to evoke the name is to conjure images of flawless green bursting through hues of bright pinks, reds, yellows, greens and whites, each fairway escorted by courtly arrange- ments of towering southern bloom. It’s tempting to think this is the natural state of Augusta National, but the playing of the Masters – the only time 99.9 percent of us see the course – is timed to coincide with the seasonal outburst of its immense flora. The or- chestration is overwhelming, but it comes and goes quickly, an early April Brigadoon that soon disappears from everything but the mind’s eye. No other great course’s aesthetics are so fleetingly attached to reality as Augusta’s. If you play the course in November or February or late April as most members and guests do, its beauty is more monochromatic, the technicolour dreams dialled down to ordinary emerald hues. Or if you were to see it in the summer when the club is closed, brown. One aesthetic that doesn’t phase in and out is Augusta National’s bunkers. Though it possesses fewer than most nationally ranked courses, just 44, their presence is immense. They are the statues in the garden, their place- ment carefully considered and shapes exquisitely honed. The bright white, scalpel-edged bunkers are as much a part of our vision of the ideal Augusta National as the closely cropped turf, glassy blue ponds, skyscraper pines and kaleidoscope scenery. While the founders always intended to show off the property’s wide range of trees, shrubs and flowering plants – Augusta National was previously a nursery and chairman Clifford Rob- erts eagerly embraced the existing
botanicals as part of the club’s identity – the bunkers were not originally meant to be so perfect. Their jour- ney towards statu- esque status has been a long one.
ICONIC The pearl upsweep
of Augusta National’s bunkers was decades in the making.
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 65
MARCH/APRIL 2025
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