It’s hard to see, but Augusta National owes the Boers
The beginnings and building of Augusta National, the home of the Masters, has a small link to SA. Its designer, Dr Alister MacKenzie, fought in the Anglo-Boer War. He served as a civilian doctor with the British.
It was there that he is said to have first become interested in the science and principles of camouflage. The Alister MacKenzie Society writes that “he saw the defensive value of the concealed trenches and camouflage techniques of the Boers”.
His experiences in Flanders early in World War 1 led him to resign his commission as a major in the medical corps to act as second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in order to teach camouflage techniques at the Army Camouflage School in London.
These skills were to prove of great value in his subsequent career. That subsequent career was in golf course design.
He had followed his father into medicine, but golf was his love. He often prescribed a round of golf to his patients to fixed what ailed them.
“How frequently have I, with great difficulty, persuaded patients who were never off my doorstep to take up golf, and how rarely, if ever, have I seen them in my consulting rooms again,” said MacKenzie.
He took up golf course architecture and his society has discovered his hand in at least 59 courses and counting.
But one course stands out above them all.
Augusta National. MacKenzie was one of a trio who created the course and, by extension, the Masters. Clifford Roberts, a young, wealthy stockbroker, was the money man. Bobby Jones was the amateur golfer, who in the words of ESPN, “took his place alongside such giants as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange and Bill Tilden”.
He retired at 28, to escape the “cage” of championship golf. He teamed up with Roberts and MacKenzie. Roberts found the money to buy the Georgia Nursery which was owned by a Belgian aristocrat, a Baron Berckman. The azaleas and the double magnolias you see around the course are part of that nursery legacy.
Jones was the idea man for the course, giving a broad outlook of what it should be. MacKenzie made it reality.
“It would have ‘similar features’ to St Andrews [two holes], two with Cypress Points, one hole similar to the fourth at Alwoodly, Leeds, and one each from North Berwick and Muirfield. The two men firmly believed it would become ‘the world’s wonder inland course’,”
James Cusick wrote in 1996.
MacKenzie drew on the love of camouflage that had begun in the Anglo-Boer War in SA.
“The practitioner of camouflage tries to set up insoluble confusions with the enemy, the course designer uses the same skills to set soluble puzzles for the competitor,” said MacKenzie.
Amen Corner is full of hidden dangers to trick the eye and mind. It tempts and beguiles, it worries and hurts.
MacKenzie died in Santa Cruz just before Augusta was fully completed. The late James Scott, a professor who wrote a biography on MacKenzie, described him as an “autocrat”, who would have embraced the conservative ways of the American south.
For conservative, read racist. Jones remained president of Augusta until he died in 1971, but fell out with Roberts after the latter had decided that the then wheelchair-bound and frail Jones was not a good look to conduct his traditional and ceremonial role of handing over the green jacket. Jones, too, was described as “conservative”.
Roberts was also a “conservative”. Charlie Sifford was the first African-American to play on the PGA Tour. Sifford was one of those who was never allowed to play at Augusta. In his book, Just Let
Me Play, he wrote that Roberts had said, as long as I live, there will be nothing at the Masters but black caddies and white golfers”.
On a September morning in 1977, Roberts, then 83 and still chairman, had a haircut at the Augusta clubhouse, then went down to the par three course where the players had fun on Wednesday, and shot himself in the head with a Smith & Wesson .38. He had been struggling with cancer.
It is down to Roberts that the Masters and Augusta National have survived. There have been times when it was on the verge of financial ruin, but he brought it back.
And so, because of him, we have the Masters this weekend. It is played on a course that South Africans have won five times, the second-most wins by a country outside the US. It is a record SA shares with Spain. But Spain can’t lay claim to having a small and yet vital role in the design of this course.
The Anglo-Boer War helped beget Amen Corner. Hallelujah.