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About the Masters
Most
people know Augusta because it is the site of the Masters Tournament, played
each spring at the Augusta National Golf Club.
The
tourist boom in the early years of the 1900s brought golf to Augusta, and a
number of excellent golf courses soon sprang up.
The
courses attracted many, including a young Atlantan named Bobby Jones, who often
came to town to play at what are now the Forest Hills Golf Club and the Augusta
Country Club.
Jones
remembered Augusta fondly in later years when he and friend Clifford Roberts
began to plan a special "winter course," suitable for play when most
everyone else was shivering.
Jones
is said to have favored Augusta over his native Atlanta because of its milder
winters.
In 1930,
he persuaded a Scottish architect named Alister MacKenzie to design what would
become Augusta National on a 365-acre site off then-rural Washington Road.
It
opened for members' play in December 1932. There was soon talk of holding a
U.S. Open at the course, but Jones and Roberts thought it might be better to
hold their own tournament.
So was
born The Masters - although for years Jones avoided calling it that.
"We
realized," Roberts later wrote, "that in order to build a tournament
of stature that could survive Bob's eventual separation from the event, it
needed to be operated in a better fashion and made more enjoyable than any
other."
Roberts,
the club chairman until his death in 1977, and Jones, the club president until
he died in 1971, succeeded magnificently.
The
Masters was, and still is, considered the best-run golf tournament in the world
by fans and golfers alike.
- From The Augusta Chronicle
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