About five years after my first opportunity to play Augusta National, I was blessed to be able to arrange to play it again as an early Christmas present to my father.  Sharing this experience with your Dad is special enough, but sharing that experience with the man that instilled your life-long love for golf and taught you the game was an opportunity that few sons get to experience.  

 

It was on this trip that I first really noticed the uniqueness of the Augusta design.  It achieves what all golf course designers talk about, designing a course that is playable for all levels of golfers, in that it gives the best players in the game “fits and challenges”, yet the average golfer, like my dad, could play the course and score close to what they normally score on their home course.  This was even true of a golfer, my dad, whose home course was a short 9-hole, very open course in a small southern town.  The Augusta of the pre-bentgrass era played to a maximum of just over 7,000 yards, which was pretty long for the mid-1970’s.  Yet my dad was able to shoot a 44 on the front and 41 on the back for a total of 85, with only two double bogeys.  Very close to his normal low 80’s average score.

 

How is this done?  The secret is in the greens complexes coupled with relatively wide fairways and minimal fairway hazards.  Even in the pre-bentgrass era, the Augusta greens were extremely fast with severe undulations, creating pin positions that required very precise shots to have a birdie opportunity.  For less than accurate shots, the order of the day is, all too often, three putts.