Take another look at the headline image of this piece. How many golf courses do you see?
The green in the bottom left is the 10th at Augusta National Golf Club, and the hills you see in the top right are Augusta Country Club – a course you could hear about more than usual while watching the 2025 Masters.
As far as watching the Masters, this course has been mostly invisible to patrons and TV viewers. The tall trees and blooming flowers have kept Augusta National inside a mirage of natural beauty and Augusta Country Club outside – until September 2024 when a natural disaster changed things.
Hurricane Helene hit the Augusta area extremely hard. Trees are still down around town, and neighbourhoods were devastated. BBC Sport reported a comment from the National Hurricane Centre that 11 people died in Augusta and over 360 homes and buildings were destroyed. It was the worst US hurricane since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“The spirit of our entire Augusta National family throughout the challenges of the months that followed Helene will be a signature of the 89th Masters Tournament,” said Masters chairman Fred Ridley the day before the 2025 tournament started.
“For weeks, water, power, food, fuel and other basic necessities were either difficult or impossible to access. Nevertheless, our employees were out in the community distributing food, cleaning up debris and donating food and money to help others in their time of need.”
1000 trees were lost at Augusta National, and even for a first-time visitor like me, the openness and newfound transparency of the golf course is absolutely stark. On a walk in the open space to the side of the 9th hole and left of the 18th fairway bunkers, you can see through to the par-5 15th.
