We’d like to think we know every blade of grass – each hole in intimate detail. It’s the joy of returning to such a beautiful venue year after year.
And who reading this hasn’t spent hour after hour fixed to their screens watching every shot and studying every putt?
I thought nothing could surprise me about Augusta National – and then I saw the golf course for the first time.
There are things about this layout you just work out can’t from a 2D image, no matter how much we’ve watched coverage or looked at pictures.
So here’s a trio of things I’ve learned from being able to tread the turf – as opposed to watching Augusta National on TV…
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What you can’t see from watching Augusta National on TV
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How hilly is Augusta National? Very.
No, I don’t mean it is hilly. You know that. I’m talking about undulations, extreme contours, and how they affect the way the ball runs.
The 1st, for example, runs up a steep bank with the huge bunker on the right – which looks almost flat from the TV’s perspective – actually at the top of the hill.
I’d always wondered how players managed to find the left pine straw, given how wide the landing area looks, but anything that is even slightly pulled kicks left off the camber and bounds away into the needles.
The par 3 6th is another where you just can’t take in from a TV screen how much that hole changes in elevation. It’s a massive downhill short hole, dropping propitiously from the tee. You can’t see the tee markers from the bottom of the slope.
Some of the banks off the fairway – like on the left of the 5th – veer away like cliff faces.
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There are zones where it seems almost impossible to get a flat lie – uphill, downhill, hanging, these golfers face them all the time. It’s a very good player that can pick a wedge on the 15th off a quick downhill lie from 50 yards with Rae’s Creek in front!
Unusually, the contours don’t follow any strict compass route. Gradients can roll across different fairways. It all feels very challenging.
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The criss-crossing layout makes it a spectator’s dream
You walk in front of the 9th tee to get to the 2nd hole. So many holes run parallel to each other – like the 1st and 9th , 2nd and 8th, 15th and 17th.
There is a hole that works its way through nearly every point on the compass but that doesn’t just make the course more of a challenge when the wind gets up and hits players from several directions through the round.
That makes Augusta National rather heavenly for Masters patrons. When you reach the centre of the course, you’re never that far away from several holes at once. And those natural undulations mean it’s pretty hard not to find a pretty good spot to watch the action.
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The bunkers are enormous
We get fixated with their colour. The white ‘Spruce pine sand’ has been a fixture since the early 1970s and is really quartz. Its brilliance dominates the eye and obscures this other point.
They are huge. There are fewer than 50 of them. Compare that with Royal Lytham & St Annes, which is getting on for 200.
Some three quarters of these bunkers are greenside and there are a number of fairways – 13, 14, and 15 spring to mind – that have no bunkers at all.
But, when they appear, they become such a feature because of their size. They are enormous. The trio which guard the front of the 7th green feel almost impenetrable – extremely difficult for an average player to clear them and stay on the putting surface.
Get stuck in the huge sand feature on the right of the 1st and someone may need to file a missing person’s report.
You might think it’s the front fairway bunker on 18 that is the pick of the bunch and this hazard is 11 feet down from the lowest point.
The largest, though, according to The Masters is the epic fairway bunker on the 8th. It measures 6,107 square feet and contains some 200,000 pounds of sand.
Augusta National on TV: Now have your say
What springs to mind when you think about the course at Augusta National on TV? Why not let me know your thoughts with a comment on X.
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