Augusta National Golf Club

Augusta National grew from Bobby Jones's wish to build his ideal course after retiring from competition in 1930. With financier Clifford Roberts, Jones acquired the former Fruitland Nurseries, a 365-acre plot whose azaleas and pines still define the grounds. Jones admired Alister MacKenzie's work at Cypress Point and Pasatiempo and hired him to translate his ideas into a strategic, minimally bunkered layout inspired by the wide fairways and firm ground of St. Andrews. Construction ran through 1931 and 1932, and the club opened in January 1933. MacKenzie died in early 1934, weeks before the first Augusta National Invitation Tournament, later renamed the Masters. Now played every April, the Masters is golf's only major contested at the same venue each year, and the course has been continually lengthened and refined while preserving Jones and MacKenzie's core routing. For most of its history the club's caddies were Black men, many from Augusta's Sand Hills neighborhood; until 1983, every Masters player had to use a club caddie. Lee Elder became the first Black golfer to play the Masters in 1975, with Augusta National caddie Henry Brown on his bag. The club admitted its first Black member, television executive Ron Townsend, in 1990. After Hurricane Helene in 2024, Augusta National led the rebuild of the city's municipal course, The Patch, where Augusta's Black golfers first won the right to play in 1964; it reopened in 2026.