Augusta National Golf Club Top 100 Review

Augusta National Golf Club is an 18-hole, par-72 course located in Augusta, Georgia, measuring 7,545 yards from the championship tees. It was co-founded by Bobby Jones — the greatest amateur golfer of his era — and businessman Clifford Roberts, who together purchased the former Fruitland Nurseries site in 1931. The course was designed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie, at the time already regarded as one of the foremost golf architects in the world, with credits including Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne, and Crystal Downs. MacKenzie had the entire course designed from topographic maps before setting foot on the property. The club opened for play in January 1933, and since 1934 has hosted the Masters Tournament, one of the four major championships in professional golf and the only major played each year at the same venue.

Design philosophy and layout

MacKenzie and Jones shared a conviction that great golf courses should be strategic rather than penal — rewarding bold, well-executed shots while offering multiple lines of play to golfers of all abilities. They built Augusta with unusually wide fairways, devoid of appreciable rough for much of its history, while green complexes were intended to be especially challenging, the often severe contouring of the putting surfaces greatly favouring approach shots played from specific positions. MacKenzie drew heavily on the great holes of British links golf, particularly the Old Course at St Andrews, and no fewer than nine holes bear specific characteristics of famous British holes, with several being nearly direct replicas.

The course plays to a par of 72, comprising four par 3s, ten par 4s, and four par 5s. Each hole carries the name of a tree or flower native to the property — Tea Olive, Pink Dogwood, Flowering Peach, Flowering Crab Apple, Magnolia, Juniper, Pampas, Yellow Jasmine, Carolina Cherry, Camellia, White Dogwood, Golden Bell, Azalea, Chinese Fir, Firethorn, Redbud, Nandina, and Holly. The outward nine plays generally uphill and across more open terrain, while the inward nine descends into a lower, more wooded section of the property where water comes dramatically into play.

Signature holes and Amen Corner

The second shot at the 11th, all of the 12th, and the first two shots at the 13th hole are nicknamed "Amen Corner" — a term coined by golf writer Herbert Warren Wind in a 1958 Sports Illustrated article. This stretch of three consecutive holes, clustered around Rae's Creek in the lowest part of the property, has determined the outcome of more Masters tournaments than any other section of the course.

The par-3 12th, Golden Bell, is arguably the most famous short hole in golf. At 155 yards it is the shortest hole on the course, but the swirling, unpredictable winds that funnel through the trees make club selection treacherous. The creek runs directly in front of a narrow, angled green guarded by bunkers front and rear. The essence of the hole has remained virtually unchanged since its original design, and it is historically the fourth toughest hole on the course.

The par-5 13th, Azalea, is one of the great risk-reward holes in championship golf — a sweeping dogleg left of 510 yards where the long hitter who draws the ball can attack the green in two, but where Rae's Creek runs along the left side and curls in front of the putting surface to punish any misjudgement. The hole was lengthened with a new back tee in 2023 as part of the club's ongoing efforts to maintain its challenge in the face of equipment advances.

The par-5 15th and par-3 16th form a second concentration of water drama on the back nine, where ponds in front of both greens have swallowed countless Masters hopes. The 18th, Holly, climbs steeply uphill through a tree-lined chute to a two-tiered green, providing one of the most visually iconic closing holes in major championship golf.

Continuous evolution

Augusta National was described by the late golf writer Charles Price as never the most revolutionary golf-course design in America, but certainly the most evolutionary. The nines were reversed almost immediately after opening — what is now the 10th hole was originally the 1st — and the course has been subject to near-continuous modification ever since. Significant contributors to its reshaping over the decades have included Perry Maxwell, Robert Trent Jones, and Tom Fazio, with Jack Nicklaus also providing architectural counsel. The course has an unofficial USGA rating of 78.1, assessed in 2009, as Augusta National has never submitted to an official rating. Its greens are maintained to exceptional speed and firmness, assisted by the SubAir underground ventilation and irrigation system installed in 1994.

Tournament history

The Masters has been held at Augusta every peacetime April since 1934, making it the longest-running major championship at a single venue. The tournament has produced some of the most celebrated moments in golf history — Jack Nicklaus's sixth and final green jacket in 1986 at age 46, Tiger Woods's record-breaking 18-under-par victory in 1997, and Gene Sarazen's double eagle on the 15th in 1935, known as "the shot heard round the world." Augusta National was ranked the top course in the United States in Golf Digest's 2009 rankings of America's 100 greatest courses.