Monument to the Game

The lucky fellow who wins this week's 32nd annual Masters tournament at Georgia's dogwood-dotted Augusta National Golf Club will receive a check for $20,000, a silver plaque, a gold medal, a gold locket containing a picture of Bobby Jones, and a green blazer. He will also get a bonus that all the money in the world cannot buy: lifetime playing privileges at Augusta National, the most exclusive and autocratic golf club in the U.S.

Augusta National was founded in 1930 by Jones, the wealthy Atlantan who astounded the golfing world that same year by sweeping all four of the game's major tournaments: the U.S. and British Amateurs, the U.S. and British Opens. Retiring after his Grand Slam, Jones decided to build an "ideal" golf club on the site of an old indigo plantation in Augusta, a popular winter watering place for Northern socialites. The plantation's Georgian manor house was converted into a clubhouse, Scottish Architect Alister MacKenzie was commissioned to design a course that would, in Jones's words, "simulate the conditions of British seaside golf firm greens, even a little breeze"--and two years later, Augusta National was ready for play.

Since then, a few of the MacKenzie-designed holes have been remodeled to make them tougher for the 80 or so top pros and amateurs who compete each year, by invitation only, in the Masters. But the course remains essentially a "members' course,"--6,980 yds. of wide Bermuda-grass fairways and huge, rolling greens, flanked by towering pines and largely free of man-made hazards. "We don't have to spend money building bunkers or maintaining them," explains Clifford Roberts, 74, the austere, bespectacled New York investment banker who, as Jones's deputy, rules both Augusta National and the Masters tournament with an iron hand. "We don't want to look at the ugly things the year round." No tennis courts, no swimming pool, no children's playgrounds adorn the Augusta National--nothing, in short, to detract from golf.

Rules of Order. Membership in Augusta National is strictly limited to 200, regulated loosely on a geographical quota system (no more than 50 members, say, can come from the New York area), and rigidly controlled by Roberts and Jones. "As far as I can recall," says Roberts, "nobody has ever been invited to be a member of this club that Bob and I haven't met." Augusta National's dues are a secret, as is its membership list--although some of the members are so prominent (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Rubber Baron Leonard Firestone, Sportsman John Hay Whitney) that their identities are hard to hide. And no club has stricter rules. Unlike other clubs, where a member merely has to vouch for his guests, for example, Augusta members must physically accompany guests around the course to make certain all niceties are observed; if a member is suddenly called away, the game is over. Roberts' rules of golfing order have provoked resentment on occasion. Explains one member: "A lot of our people are accustomed to being boss back home. They say things and people jump. That doesn't work at Augusta."

Only for the Masters each year does Roberts let down the barriers. This week something like 25,000 fans will invade Augusta, trample its fairways and litter its clubhouse lawn; millions more will watch on TV. Only one of the competitors in U.S. golf's most prestigious tournament can win the $20,000, the green coat and the lifetime playing privileges, but all will leave proud that they were even invited to play at Augusta National, the club that three-time Masters Champion Jack Nicklaus calls "a monument to everything great in golf."

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