AUGUSTA, Ga. — Earlier this year, partly for my own amusement and more so for those who still read books, I cooked up a list of some of my favorite courses in and around Augusta. I listed them in terms of their accessibility, from most difficult to least difficult. I didn’t quite know what to do with Augusta’s six-hole First Tee course, chiefly because it’s a six-hole course. A solid one at that. Anyway, here’s how the list shook out:
1. Augusta National. Have played it a handful of times. Good course. What they don’t tell you in any on Golf Channel or elsewhere is that there is no grass under your ball. So unless you have some Seve in you, good night and good luck.
2. Augusta Country Club. Old Old-South course. Hugely fun and playable (one ball should do) and now, post Helene, you can see the roof of the Augusta National clubhouse from the Country Club’s halfway house. Same piece of land, really, both courses running down to Rae’s Creek.
3. Palmetto Golf Club. In Aiken, S.C., across the Savannah River from Augusta and an easy half-hour drive away. Private, cozy club with a patrician past and a hot-dog steamer for your midround calorie needs. After a heavy rain, ancient golf balls rise from its turf. The course heaves and hos and celebrates scruffiness as an enduring value in traditional course maintenance.
4. West Lake Country Club. A housing development course off Furys Ferry Road on the outskirts of town and almost in the country. Not a memorable course but one a lot of us (golf bums posing as writers) have played often over the years, courtesy of Masters-week house rentals.
5. Forest Hills Golf Club. In Augusta, owned and operated by Augusta University, some of it very Donald Rossy (with a few holes that would leave D. Ross scratching his head right through his woolen cap). The trademark of Georgia golf is an elevated tee, a swale, an elevated green; pine needles; tall pines. As Ross, in his save-some-ink way, used to say, FH gotz.
6. Aiken Golf Club. I should point out that the counter people won’t let me pay a green fee here, which is kind but robs me of the chance to fork over $30, cash money, and get change. The green fee is $28, after 1 p.m., hoofing. As the song goes, afternoon golf on a public course, bag on back, is where it’s at. One of my post-Masters Monday plays. Not even 5,800 yards with unreachable par-3s and double greens. Straight outta Scotland.
7. Augusta Municipal Golf Course, aka The Patch. If you have never played it, you’ll be playing a new course when you do. Hurricane Helene last year felled well more than 1,000 trees and the course has been closed since Jan. 1, not because of the storm damage but because of an overhaul the course is getting, courtesy of some well-intentioned golf-minded philanthropists with ties to Augusta National. The old Patch was baked and tilted and odd, but also huge fun. The new Patch will be different. Whether it is better is another question. When it comes to golf courses, as is the case in other aspects of life, better is in the eye of the beholder.
But most any beholder would consider Palmetto, Augusta Country Club and Augusta National to be memorable, outstanding courses. If you’re way into golf-course architecture, or just playing golf, your life will be richer for having played these courses. (Especially — fill in the blank.) Three in one place (pretty much) is something. I’m not saying greater Augusta is, as golfing mecca, Philadelphia (my longtime home) or New York (born and raised) or Chicago (engaged there), but it has a heavy-duty golf magnet. Ben Crenshaw will tell you that. So will Rees Jones, the architect son of the architect Robert Trent Jones. Herbert Warren Wind wrote about how Bobby Jones was drawn to Augusta for golf long before there was an Augusta National.
In 1989, I asked Crenshaw (who had one Masters victory then), Trent Jones (who deserves more credit for Augusta National’s strategic use of water through the back nine) and Wind (who came up with the phrase Amen Corner) to name the three great golf capitals of the United States. Crenshaw’s list went New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. Trent Jones’s order was Philadelphia, New York, Chicago. And Wind’s ranking was Chicago, Philadelphia, New York. I don’t recall Augusta coming up in these conversations, which took place a few weeks after the ’89 Masters.
Recently, I posed a similar question to Gil Hanse: What would he consider the great American golf capitals?
“Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, San Francisco,” he said. Gil, who lives in the semi-rural Philadelphia suburbs, said of our adopted home, “Philadelphia has two of the all-time greats and a very deep bench. Pound for pound, in the tightest area, the best!” Pine Valley and Merion, of course.
From there, Hanse went to New York: “Arguably the best lineup but penalty points for being spread out over a large geographical area.” Yes. National Golf Links, on Long Island, to Quaker Ridge, in Westchester County, can take three hours, given the moods of the Long Island Expressway.
And then, Chicago: “Like Philadelphia, two all-timers at the top but the bench is not as strong.” I’m quite sure Chicago G.C. is at the top of his list. When I find out his No. 2, I will update ya! Could be Medinah. More likely Shoreacres.
Finally, batting fourth, San Francisco:
“Talk about a compact center of gravity — the stretch from Cal Club to Harding Park and the other courses in between, more if you grab Meadow Club to the north and Pasatiempo to the south.” The San Francisco Golf Club and the two courses at Olympic are in this fertile stretch, of course.
I asked Gil about greater Augusta and whether it deserved consideration and this is what he said:
“I thought about it, but it is really only three or four deep. Augusta National, Palmetto, Old Barnwell and Tree Farm. Not much else that would sniff the other cities’ Top 10s, in my humble opinion.”
