1-5-7: Has ANGC's First Nine Become Too Risky?
A Quad pre-2024 Masters look at Augusta National's opening nine and whether efforts have worked to keep holes playing as the designers intended.
Has the front nine at Augusta National become too high on risk and too low on reward?
With scoring records dating to the early 1940s as a reference, the answer seems like an easy no. All is well. The outgoing nine generally plays about the same every year with a scoring average of 36.889 from 1942-2023, with the high year coming in 1956 when it averaged 38.353. That was also a few hundred yards ago and players using much tougher clubs to hit.
Fast forward to today. Let’s ask ChatGPT if various course changes through the years have maintained Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones design philosophy? Maybe not. That’s where still-in-training AI might offer caveats. Assuming the A.I. models have figured out the difference between Augusta National and Augusta Country Club.
I digress.
Longtime Masters watchers will insist something seems different in the way Augusta National’s opening nine ebbs, flows and dangles carrots. The course always seems to have a knack for luring players into more aggressiveness than is necessary and generally produces more drama than the traditional tournament course. But since the aggressive changes of the early 2000’s, several holes still have permanently put players on the defensive.
Is there now too much risk and not quite enough reward?
The counter to this supposition can easily point to Jones’ 1960 writings in Golf Is My Game where the co-founder says he wanted birdies “dearly bought.”
So how do we settle this vital first world mystery that keeps only us deranged Masters fanboys up at night?
Let’s go back to the Jones writings that also guide the current leadership’s in shaping their annual course evaluations. In this quest I’ve received assistance from some fine statisticians to help separate facts from feelings. And if this all just seems little too wonky, we’ve got some lively imagery from the The MacKenzie Reader to whet your 2024 Masters appetite.
When the home of the Masters was 35-years old and several holes had been significantly modified, Jones revisited the creation of Augusta National in Golf Is My Game. While billed as an instruction book, he devoted a nice amount of space to golf architecture and his issues with haters of the “stymie.” The writing remains incredibly concise with each word so carefully chosen that it’s become the most important insight into Augusta National’s evolution.
Jones stated his belief that a golf course was to “give pleasure” and that every hole must be designed with “something to do, but that something must always be within the realm of reasonable accomplishment.”
He wrote of a minimalist philosophy shared with MacKenzie that resulted in Augusta National’s lean Depression-era approach. Carefully placed bunkers would play outsized roles to emphasize his belief that most courses presented too many hazards for the average golfer. Jones and MacKenzie ended up creating around 28 bunkers when the course opened . Contours, slopes, mounds and water hazards would do most of the work.
“First, there must be a way around for those unwilling to attempt the carry; and second, there must be a definite reward awaiting the man who makes it,” Jones wrote. “Without the alternative route the situation is unfair. Without the reward it is meaningless.”
Jones then explained the essence of strategic design and his Old Course-inspired philosophy.
“There are two ways of widening the gap between a good tee shot and a bad one,” he wrote. “One is to inflict a severe and immediate punishment on a bad shot, to place its perpetrator in a bunker in some other trouble which will demand the sacrifice of a stroke in recovering. The other is to reward the good shot by making the second shot simpler in proportion to the excellence of the first.”
Jones outlined four ways to do this:
“A better view of the green.”
An easier angle from which to attack a slope.”
“An open approach past guarding hazards.”
“Or even a better run to the tee shot itself.”
Every fan of the Masters feels invested in the course thanks to the general sense Jones and MacKenzie’s design rewarded great play. There is also the brilliant way the club makes golfers and spectators feel like they have a vested interest in how the course plays. And Jones’ design fundamentals also happen to be the secret to fun, feisty, rewarding and an “always interesting” course, as he wrote.
Yet a counter argument to any case questioning Augusta National’s evolution can also be found in the Golf Is My Game scriptures.
“We hope to make bogies easy if frankly sought, pars readily obtainable by standard good play, and birdies, except on par fives, dearly bought,” Jones wrote.
Jones wrote about the “dramatic and exciting” finishes of the Masters and his conviction that they were a result of the second nine’s “make-or-break” quality. He made no mention of the front nine’s qualities.
Yet the first nine holes also had “make-or-break” quality. They just lacked the beauty and drama infused by Amen Corner, Rae’s Creek and pretty ponds with occasionally sunning turtles enjoying tightly mown banks. But several first nine holes threaded that beautiful fine line between birdies and bogeys. The slightest miscalculation altered the rhythm of a Masters round or even a career. Or at least, they once did. But has the character we’d come to love and know gone too far in trying to fend off modern distances?
Readers of Golf Architecture For Normal People know how I love sweeping declarations regarding the success or failure of an architect’s “routing” decisions. The word is too often hijacked by design wonks when only the architect could know what options were thwarted or what constraints influenced the finished product.
In Augusta National’s case, millions who have never played the course have come to know the holes, pars and general yardages. They can explain what direction the holes play and where players could attack based on weather or the pin placements. During Masters week, most in person or even on TV can tell by various crowd reactions where something happened and whether the cheers were for a birdie, eagle or a hole-in-one. No other golf course on the planet holds such a familiarity or well-known hole-by-hole idiosyncrasies.
In the early 2000’s when Chairman Hootie Johnson and architect Tom Fazio reacted to a distance spike by trying to get ahead of expected gains, many took offense at the severity and size of the leaps. Never helped that Hootie also didn’t exactly sell things with grace or wisdom. But even if he had, they were meddling with Augusta National’s trademark rhythm and soul. They were altering the familiarity fans and players had become attached to. Holes that put players in a position to succeed were turned into par-protecting struggles. In a few radical cases it seemed like they were sticking a Def Leopard guitar solo within an intricate Beethoven symphony.
While Johnson and Fazio never changed the actual routing, they disrupted the flow to a story arc that had produced so many thrilling rounds and tournaments. Not surprisingly, the Masters saw a rough run of defensive and less exciting tournaments for several years.
Augusta National’s sequencing had also been a subject of conjecture thanks to its well-chronicled early history. The initial 1931 plan put to paper sent the golfers out in a sequence millions had grown to know by heart. But during Augusta National’s construction, the nines were switched by architect MacKenzie. Author David Owen, who had access to all of the correspondences between club co-founder Clifford Roberts and MacKenzie, concluded in The Making Of The Masters that the switch was likely made to provide a better view of the last green (today’s 9th) from the locker room’s big picture windows.
Routing is a strange art subject to often unimaginable influences.
Whatever the reason for the original switch, today’s first hole opened as the tenth and that’s how Augusta National played in the inaugural invitational.
Knowing what we know now after 87 Masters tournaments, its inconceivable to think Amen Corner would play as the second, third and fourth holes. Mercifully the club switched the nines in 1934 due to morning frost issues. This allowed tee times to start earlier since most of today’s front nine sat on the highest ground. Then Gene Sarazen hit the shot heard round the world at the new 15th/old 6th. There was no going back.
So MacKenzie had it right the first time and Owen suggests the early rounds in both member and club play made obvious to most that wasting the future “Amen Corner” early on was the equivalent of sticking the huge scene-stealing plot twist right after the opening credits.
In the decades since, the intricacies of Augusta National’s course sequencing became appreciated by regulars, tournament contestants and diehard patrons. This familiarity created a sense of ownership in the Masters as television coverage expanded and became a cherished Sunday tradition unlike any other. Everyone knew from past tournaments or announcer declarations where players could be aggressive and when they should play carefully. This sense only expanded as television and Masters.com began showing front nine holes. Even more people appreciated how each hole fit into the puzzle.
But when Johnson and Fazio started aggressively lengthening and toughening the course in anticipation of future Tiger’s coming along, the renovation work also included extensive tree planting to narrow fairways in a violent betrayal of the architect’s Old Course-inspired vision. (Jones once famously told writer Alistair Cooke that he saw no “need for a tree on a golf course.”) The Hootie era changes also highlighted constraints in the club’s maximum of two tee boxes per hole, which hinders flexibility when extreme conditions called for adjustments to ensure players face similar decisions as their predecessors. Think Zach Johnson winning by laying up at par 5’s and you get the gist.