There is a temptation to treat the front nine at Augusta National Golf Club as a prelude. A friendly warm-up before the chaos of Amen Corner and the drama of the closing stretch.
Spend time walking the course though, as the NCG Top 100s Podcast team did during the 2026 Masters, and it seems that perception quickly starts to crumble.
Augusta is the sole venue of the Masters. There are few courses that have the same level of prestige and allure.
Often overshadowed by the iconic closing stretch, its opening holes show just how the course has adapted to keep pace with the modern game.
Tom Irwin and Dan Murphy, the hosts of the NCG Top 100s podcast, offered some insight into how each hole now plays, relieving their experience from Masters week.
1st Hole – A gentle opener, that can cause some problems
The opener remains one of the least altered holes on the course. However, the power of modern golf professionals is beginning to erode the intent of its original design.
“I do think it feels like it’s lost some of its teeth,” Irwin noted.
“I do worry for it, because Rory McIlroy hit driver three times, and he’s able to fly that bunker, and not just fly it, quite comfortably fly it.”
Although Murphy pointed out that it was the sixth hardest hole at the 2026 Masters and, therefore, still offers up a considerable challenge.
“I think it’s harder than you’re giving credit for because if you do end up out of position off the tee you are in, you are in a world of pain,” he said. “The green is such an awkward shape and has a set of contours that means you can make a real nonsense of it around the green.”
2nd Hole – Power vs precision
A downhill par five that should be a birdie chance, but so often isn’t.
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Modern bunkering, which now covers a lot of the right half of the fairway off the tee, and added length has complicated the hole.
“You can tell this a bunker designed with a modern tour player in mind, because it works very, very effectively,” Murphy explained.
“It kind of feeds you into it, doesn’t it? But if you play short of it, which a lot of players choose to do, you effectively give up any realistic chance of hitting the green in two, because it’s a combination of being so far back, but also that the way that the green is designed.
“If you’re able to hit it down the left, which is a very brave tee shot, then that is then giving you the chance to attack the green in two (shots).
“There was a tour player back in the day that called it the Delta counter down the left. By which he meant that if you hit it down there, then you were you’re checking in for your flight home.”
3rd Hole – A short par four
“A different type of par four to anything else on the property,” explained Murphy.
It’s 350 yards long, and interestingly, that means that it is, by 90 yards, the shortest par four on the course. Remarkably, that also makes it the only par four around Augusta that is under 440 yards.
“It might be the best short par four in the world,” claimed Irwin.
“Despite all of the data that people have you are still getting people employing different strategies, and you also getting players employing different strategies within the same tournament.”
4th Hole – Brutal simplicity
Stood at over 240 yards, the first par three at Augusta is a beast. But is it too long?
Irwin pointed out: “I think it’s a much better hole from that 180 yard tee, but I guess it’s then too short an iron for quite a lot of the field.
“If you’ve just made bogey the previous two holes, and then you then stand on that tee, that 240 yards begins to look so kind of impossible.”
With a scoring average of 3.22 this was the fourth hardest hole across Masters week. The pair noted that tour pros were using a variety of clubs off the tee, ranging from a five-wood to a five-iron.
5th Hole – Augusta at its toughest
Inspired by the legendary Road Hole at St Andrews, Magnolia, as it is called, was the toughest hole for players during the 2026 Masters.
It’s a hole that shapes from right-to-left and has bunkers that are designed to demand accuracy off the tee. But does it still have offer the same degree of challenge as in years gone past?
“Whilst I think they obviously want the golf course to give an advantage to long straight driving, the straight bit of that is kind of almost removed if you can fly that bunker,” Irwin noted.
“I think the idea of long and straight is that you have to hit it into the narrow bit to the right of that bunker, and that is just totally negated if you can fly it.”
“The greens’ absolutely evil,” said Murphy. “The other thing is, you can’t really see it from that far back, so you’re kind of aiming at the top of a flag but you know that this green is like the ocean on a bad day.”
6th Hole – Drama or subtlety?
A rarity for Augusta in that this hole still operates on the same bit of land as originally designed on, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t have a totally different look.
“I don’t love this hole, actually,” Murphy admitted. “It’s dramatic from the tee. I feel that more could be done with the green to make it more interesting.”
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Irwin disagreed pointing out that: “I think that where it’s situated relative to the other holes, and that little sort of variability that the wind offers, I think it’s still got quite a lot going on.”
7th Hole – The ugly duckling
“I think it’s my least favourite hole on the property,” said Irwin.
“It’s changed in character from being a gettable par four, which I feel like the kind of routine kind of needs.
“I think that a lot of the subtlety and strategy has kind of gone out of it because of the lengthening of it.”
Murphy also spoke about the strategy of playing the seventh – or the lack of it.
“It just feels like one of the less strategically interesting holes, because it feels to me like there’s only really one way to play it, and that’s to hit it as straight as you can twice,” he said. “You need your second shot to be coming down from a height.”
8th Hole – The hidden gem of Augusta?
Possibly the least talked about and admired par fives at Augusta, the eighth can be somewhat overlooked.
“This was a little bit of a slow burner for me,” Murphy admitted. “Actually, I think I came initially thinking it was probably the dullest of the par fives, it probably still is really, I actually came to enjoy it more.
“And I do think that those outrageous bumps on the left, some sort of conceptual art that Mackenzie was experimenting with at the time, I absolutely think that he pulled them off.
“This is one of the bits where you go from a busy part of the middle of the middle of the golf course and then it takes you off to it to a quieter corner. I quite like the eighth.”
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9th Hole – All about the angles
“It’s a hooker’s tee shot,” claimed Murphy. “And if he can hit it the distance he can (McIlroy), you’re then able to find yourself a lovely flat stands in the bottom, going straight up the green with no club at all. And then it suddenly becomes very playable.
“This is all about spin control once you’ve found the position. A very, very attractive, clever hole, I would say.”
“It’s kind of genius, isn’t it? I think it’s another sleeper for me,” said Irwin.
“I think what it’s indicative at Augusta is that there’s never a moment to switch off, because once you’ve had that sort of free hit tee shot, you then face with something where you’ve really got to have laser light focus.
“You’ve got to hit the exact right distance on exact right line, otherwise it’s back at your feet.”
NOW LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
- NOW READ: Why Augusta National sets the standard for spectator viewing at The Masters
- NOW READ: Three things that our golf courses can learn from Augusta National – and three things we can’t
- NOW READ: 10 things we learned when walking around Augusta National – while avoiding the cliché minefield
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