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Historian laments 'lost' holes
Posted: Wednesday April 09
By John Boyette
The Augusta Chronicle
It's a widely held belief that Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie, if they were able to see Augusta National Golf Club today, would hardly recognize the famous layout.
The two men, who designed the course in the early 1930s, each had unique thoughts about how a golf course should play. Jones was the pre-eminent player of the day, and Mackenzie was recognized for his many classic designs.
A new book, Lost Links: Forgotten Treasures from Golf's Golden Age, takes a look at the extensive changes made to Augusta National. Author Daniel Wexler, a golf historian and former golf pro, doesn't think all have been for the better.
"The simple fact is that while Augusta's initial hole-routing plan remains largely intact, the present course bears little resemblance to its spectacular original," Wexler said. "It has been methodically transformed into a less strategic, less exciting, distinctly modern affair."
Augusta National is one of dozens of courses built before World War II that are examined by Wexler. The author does acknowledge that it is odd to start off a book titled Lost Links with a course that is still very much in use, but makes his case in the opening chapter.
It's not just the recent changes made to the course, including nine holes that were altered before the 2002 Masters, that Wexler attacks. He makes convincing arguments on some of the changes, including the seventh hole.
"The par-four seventh is more thoroughly changed, having once been a 340-yard approximation of the home hole at St. Andrews, complete with imitation Valley of Sin," Wexler wrote. "Apparently at the suggestion of (two-time Masters winner) Horton Smith, its green complex was completely rebuilt in 1938, resulting in a steeply pitched, sand-ringed putting surface distinctly inhospitable to the originally intended run-up shot.
"Recently extended to 410 yards, with its driving area nearly strangled by trees, the seventh is now a thoroughly penal hole holding nothing in common with its Mackenzie/Jones original."
Wexler asserts in the book that changes to the 18th, which extended the dogleg par-4 to a testing 465 yards, make it "more suited to closing a U.S. Open than a Masters."
He writes that the course is better now than it was originally if "one supports the USGA 'Protection of Par' doctrine." Now, he says, the Masters is not as exciting anymore.
"What it has become is a poor-man's U.S. Open track, its accent on drama and thrills deliberately traded for a plodding sort of difficulty entirely antithetical to the stated goals of Bobby Jones," Wexler wrote. "And that was before they grew rough."
BOOK: Lost Links: Forgotten Treasures from Golf's Golden Age
AUTHOR: Daniel Wexler
PUBLISHER: Clock Tower Press
COST: $45
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