Alister MacKenzie
Obsessive students of golf architecture should file away the latest revision of a comprehensive chronology of the life of Alister MacKenzie, the designer of Augusta National, Cypress Point, Royal...
View ArticleMasters Countdown: Fifth Hole
The fifth hole is the centerpiece of what has sometimes been called Augusta National’s other Amen Corner. It’s ranked by more than a few players as the second best par-four on the course (after the...
View ArticleMasters Countdown: Seventh Hole
The seventh wasn’t much of a hole in the early days. (The consensus, as described by Clifford Roberts, the club’s co-founder and chairman, was that it was “the only weak hole out of the eighteen.”)...
View ArticleBack-Roads Scotland: Moray Coast
The photo above was taken this past Monday evening in Lossiemouth, Scotland, about two hours’ drive northwest of Aberdeen. You are looking across a corner of the North Sea toward the Moray Golf Club,...
View ArticleWhy a Golf Course is Not a “Links”
Most people think of the word “links” as a synonym for golf course, but it’s actually a geological term. Linksland is a specific type of sandy, wind-sculpted coastal terrain—the word comes from the Old...
View ArticleWomen’s National Golf Club
The winner of the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur was Marion Hollins, who improved the qualifying record by four strokes and won the final, 5 and 4, over Alexa Sterling, who had won the previous three years....
View ArticleMasters Countdown: Tenth Hole
In Alister MacKenzie’s original conception of the golf course at Augusta National (shown above), the holes were numbered as they are today. MacKenzie’s thinking changed in 1931, before construction...
View ArticleMasters Countdown: Bobby Jones’s Father, the Great Flood, and the Eleventh Hole
The Masters tee on the eleventh hole was originally positioned above and to the right of the tenth green, not far from the seventeenth green. The hole ran downhill and played considerably shorter than...
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