Course Review - Augusta National Golf Club

After weather disruptions at the Shell Houston Open, the biggest week thus far of the 2012 golf season has arrived bringing the feast of superlatives we have come to expect in early April in Augusta, Georgia as the Masters takes centre stage. Augusta National Golf Club hosted the first Masters in 1934, barely a year after opening for play and has gone on to become arguably the most famous course in the world .

With the golfing world coming to a standstill for the annual festival that has grown from Grand slam Great Bobby Jones' brainchild, the Augusta National golf course has evolved into the universal benchmark against which every aspiring layout is measured. Magnolia Lane, Rae's Creek, the Sarazen Bridge and Amen Corner are names familiar to golf fans around the globe.

This marvellous meadowland creation was a collaboration between Jones and the iconic architect Alister MacKenzie and features expansive impossibly green fairways bordered by towering pines punctuated by flashes of white sand. But Augusta has not always been the immaculately conditioned jewel we idolise today. Over the years the course has been tweaked, stretched, and overhauled by some of golf's greats including Tom Fazio and Jack Nicklaus, transforming some of the weaker holes into a more worthy examination. However, the most defining change to Augusta came when the original Bermudagrass greens were controversially changed to bent grass in 1981. Many felt that the humps, hollows and contours of the original Jones/MacKenzie design were just not compatible with the finer-bladed and less dense thatch layer of a grass strain that would produce a much faster putting surface.

Today, the slopes are softer and the undulations less pronounced, but many pin positions severely penalise mistakes especially when the greens firm up and speed up over the weekend. Although the Stimpmeter reading of the greens are never officially announced, the pace has become one of Augusta's signature features, leading to many other courses trying to emulate their speed.

With Phil Mickelson in pursuit of a 4th green jacket, Rory McIlroy trying to erase the memory of last year's Sunday back nine meltdown and an in-form Tiger Woods brimming with confidence, the hallowed turf of Augusta National is the perfect setting for a spectacular start to the Major season.