...is now re-posted under In My Opinion. Here is the link:
https://golfclubatlas.com/in-my-opinion/wexler-daniel-augusta/Far and away, Augusta National is the most scrutinized and written about course in the United States, if not the world. Recently, additional great pieces have come forth highlighted by Ron Whitten's just published one. GolfClubAtlas.com's take on the evolution of Augusta National is by Daniel Wexler. A slightly different version was posted in March 2009 but it was lost in the melee when we moved everything over to Word Press that April.
The irony in re-posting Dan's work a few weeks prior to the Masters is rich.
On the one hand, The Masters made Alister MacKenzie perhaps the most recognized name of the Golden Age architects. It also has done the world of architecture great good by beaming into to people's living rooms risk reward holes and greens where you have to hit to x to end up at y. These is especially true back in the 1970s and 1980s when such features didn't readily exist on courses that received television coverage (the Kapalua Plantation's of the world have changed that to a degree these days). Certainly, we can all agree that great architecture played a key role in the drama that unfolded on golf's finest day in April, 1986.
On the other hand, The Master Golf Club
has destroyed MacKenzie's most original design. Dan, as usual, nails it when he writes, "But in the end, perhaps the biggest difference between Augusta then and now is simply the role of Bobby Jones. For it was Jones's vision that brought aboard Dr. MacKenzie, and led to the creation of so stunningly unique a golf course, a layout that was the living embodiment of all he believed comprised great design. Jones did, in fact, sign off on numerous course changes made during his lifetime, but when one considers the reduced modern playing strategies of many holes, par 5s which no longer tempt so many aggressive second shots and, above all, the recent addition of rough and trees, it becomes difficult to accept the notion that Jones's wishes for his golf course are still, in any meaningful way, being adhered to."
Seeing Jones's and MacKenzie's vision of great golf trampled for the sake of a hosting an annual event was unnecessary and therefore a tragic loss for golf course architecture. At the end of this article, Dan highlights twelve holes and the changes that would bring the course more in line with its founder's vision. None of the restoration is complicated but the words 'restoration' and 'Augusta National' haven't ever even been uttered together.
In re-reading it, I am reminded of MacKenzie's lost course in Argentina whose plans were rediscovered and hopefully will one day be built in Texas. My question: Why not rebuild- Augusta National? Talk about a lost design/philosophy, one whose architectural remnants are still capable of producing top tier drama despite decade's of artless tinkering. MacKenzie's less is more design was evidently too complicated for the people who called the shots there to understand but that's no longer true. More and more people at the club level grasp what constitutes engaging architecture and there are several architects alive that could find the healthy balance between MacKenzie/Jones's thoughts and the need for the course to test the best each April. Such thoughts don't include trees and the narrowing of playing corridors either
.
Regardless of the thorny matter of a club that wraps itself in history only to then ignore it, it is always a happy day for GolfClubAtlas.com to post anything written by Dan Wexler. Hope you enjoy it, again!
Cheers,