More from the 1959 Sports Illustrated article – in which Bobby Jones describes his philosophy behind the design of Augusta National and offers a hole-by-hole strategy for playing it:
We are quite willing to have low scores made during the tournament. It is not our intention to rig the golf course so as to make it tricky. It is our feeling that there is something wrong with a golf course which will not yield a score in the 60s to a player who has played well enough to deserve it.
On the other hand, we do not believe that birdies should be made too easily. We think that to play two good shots to a par-4 hole and then to hole a 10-foot putt on a dead-level green is not enough. If the player is to beat par, we should like to ask him to hit a truly fine second shot right up against the flag or to hole a putt of more than a little difficulty. We therefore place the holes on tournament days in such locations on the greens as to require a really fine shot in order to get close. With the greens fast and undulating, the putts from medium distances are difficult, and the player who leaves his ball on the outer reaches has a real problem to get down in par figures.
The contours of the greens at Augusta have been very carefully designed. We have tried to provide each green with at least four areas which we describe as pin locations. This does not mean that the pin is always placed in one very definite spot within these areas, but each area provides an opportunity for cutting the hole where the contours are very gentle for a radius of four or five feet all around.
Again, a few things stand out, such as: "We are quite willing to have low score made during the tournament." Yet it seems the current overlords lost sight of this, at least temporarily, in the years (in particular, 2007 and 2008) when they were making the Masters feel a little too much like a U.S. Open.
