Destination: History of Augusta National Golf Club The History of Augusta National Golf Club From Indigo Fields to Magnolia Lane and the Untold Story of the Men Who Knew Every Blade of Grass “I shall never forget my first visit to the property which is now Augusta National. It seemed that this land had been lying here for years just waiting for someone to lay a golf course upon it.” — Bobby Jones Before the Green Jackets – The Land’s First Stories The history of Augusta National Golf Club has many twists and turns. Every April, the eyes of the golf world turn to a gentle, flower-draped stretch of Augusta, Georgia, where azaleas bloom in shades of pink and coral and the world’s best golfers walk beneath ancient oaks toward a destination that has become the most famous address in the sport. Augusta National Golf Club. Amen Corner. The Masters. Green jackets and birdie roars and Magnolia Lane. But the 365 acres that hold these legends carry stories far older and far more layered than the game of golf — stories of indigo, of peaches, of a Belgian family’s botanical ambitions, and of the Black men who, before anyone chased a trophy here, helped transform this land into what it became. To understand Augusta National fully, you have to begin not in 1934 with the first Masters Tournament, and not even in 1932 when Bobby Jones first walked the property. You have to begin in 1854, when an Irish-born indigo farmer named Dennis Redmond purchased the land and gave it a name that would echo through American horticultural history. Dennis Redmond and the Birth of Fruitland Dennis Redmond was not, by most accounts, a man of great historical fame. He was a practical farmer with an eye for what land could produce, and the 365-acre parcel he purchased from Augusta Judge Benjamin Warren was, in his vision, an opportunity. Redmond grew indigo on the land — the deep blue dye crop that had been essential to the colonial economy of the South for a century before the Civil War made its economic foundations untenable — but he also had grander ambitions. He named the property “Fruitland” and began filling it with life. Peaches, apples, grapes, strawberries, fruit trees of every variety he could obtain. He began construction of a large manor house on the property he called Fruitland Manor — a structure that would eventually become one of the most recognizable buildings in American sports. Believed to be the first concrete house built in the American South, its walls were 18 inches thick, its construction of lime, gravel, and sand. The house had seven rooms downstairs and seven up, and from its grounds one looked out over what Redmond had planted with such care. The property under Redmond was already beginning its transformation from plantation to nursery, from commodity agriculture toward something that would prove far more lasting — a legacy of botanical cultivation that would shape the appearance of an entire region and, eventually, one of the world’s most beautiful golf courses. The Berckmans: Horticulturists, Visionaries, and the Georgia Peach In 1857, a father and son arrived in Augusta from Belgium with dreams of building a world-class nursery. Louis Mathieu Eduard Berckmans and his son Prosper Julius Alphonse had traveled through Europe and America in search of the ideal climate and location for their botanical ambitions. Augusta, with its rich soil, mild winters, strong rail and water transportation links, and proximity to the markets of the Atlantic seaboard, was exactly what they were looking for. The Berckmans initially acquired a fifty percent ownership stake in Redmond’s Fruitland, and within a year, Prosper had assumed full ownership. He completed the construction of the manor house that Redmond had begun, transforming it into the Berckmans family mansion, and he planted along the long approach from Washington Road a double avenue of magnolia trees grown from seed — sixty-one trees that would one day become Magnolia Lane, the most famous driveway in golf. Those magnolia trees, planted in the 1850s, still stand today. Under Prosper Berckmans, Fruitland Nurseries became the most significant horticultural enterprise in the American South. The nursery imported plants from around the world — more than forty varieties of azalea were brought in, popularizing their use throughout the South and creating the flowering landscape that would one day become Augusta’s visual signature. Prosper also developed and improved hundreds of varieties of trees, shrubs, and fruits, and in 1858 he shipped the first commercial consignment of Georgia peaches to the New York market, an act that would launch one of the most important agricultural industries in the state’s history. Prosper Berckmans became known throughout the South as the “Father of Peach Culture.” Under his guidance, Fruitland developed and improved the Chinese Cling variety of peach, which eventually produced the primary commercial varieties that would make Georgia synonymous with the fruit — the Elberta, the Belle, and the Thurber. By 1861, Fruitland was producing over 300 kinds of peaches and countless other fruits and trees. When the first commercial Georgia peaches made their way north to New York City, they were being sold by a man whose family name would one day grace a hole at Augusta National: the fourth hole, named Flowering Peach. HORTICULTURAL LEGACY: The hole names at Augusta National are a direct homage to the Berckmans’ nursery. Each of the 18 holes is named after the flowering plant or shrub associated with it — Tea Olive, Pink Dogwood, Flowering Peach, Magnolia, Azalea, and more. Hole 13, Azalea, is home to over 1,600 azaleas of more than 30 different varieties. The plants that make Augusta National bloom every April in such extraordinary beauty are the living descendants of Prosper Berckmans’ botanical vision. Prosper Berckmans died in 1910, and the family business that bore his vision began to unravel. His will, which divided interests among his children from multiple marriages, created complications that the business could not survive. By 1918, less than a decade after his death, the Fruitland trade name was sold and the nursery formally closed. The land, with its magnolias and azaleas and flowering peaches, fell idle — a beautiful ruin waiting for its next chapter. In 1925, a Miami hotel developer named J. Perry Commodore Stoltz arrived with visions of a fifteen-story winter resort hotel. He poured some concrete foundations and then the Florida hurricane of that autumn swept away both his finances and his ambitions. The property sat idle again through the rest of the 1920s, its magnolias growing taller, its azaleas spreading wild, its manor house standing empty and magnificent — until a retired golfer came looking for a dream. Bobby Jones and the Creation of Augusta National Robert Tyre Jones Jr. was, by any measure, the greatest amateur golfer who ever lived. By the time he retired from competitive golf in 1930 at the age of twenty-eight, he had won thirteen major championships in just eight years, including in 1930 the Grand Slam — the British Amateur, the British Open, the U.S. Amateur, and the U.S. Open in a single calendar year — a feat that had never been accomplished before and has never been equaled since. He had nothing left to prove on the golf course. What he wanted, now, was to build one. Jones had always dreamed of a golf course of his own — a winter club in his native Georgia where friends and fellow golfers could gather in the mild months and play on a course of genuine championship quality. His vision was specific: rolling natural terrain that would challenge the best players in the world while remaining pleasurable for the average golfer. No excessive artificial hazards. Beauty and intelligence in every hole. A course that played the way great courses should — using the land rather than fighting it. His friend Clifford Roberts, a New York investment banker who would become the club’s inaugural chairman and the most powerful figure in its history, suggested Augusta as the location. A mutual friend introduced Jones to the abandoned Fruitland property. When Jones first walked through the magnolia avenue and out onto the rolling grounds, his response was immediate and famous. “I shall never forget my first visit to the property,” he wrote years later in Golf Is My Game. “The long lane of magnolias through which we approached was beautiful. The old manor house with its cupola and walls of masonry two feet thick was charming. The rare trees and shrubs of the old nursery were enchanting. But when I walked out on the grass terrace under the big trees behind the house and looked down over the property, the experience was unforgettable. It seemed that this land had been lying here for years just waiting for someone to lay a golf course upon it.” For $70,000, the property was his. The Fruitland Manor Corporation — whose officers were not initially identified — completed the purchase in June 1931. Weeks later, the Augusta Chronicle announced that Bobby Jones would build his ideal golf course on the Berckmans’ place. Designing the Course — Jones and MacKenzie Jones enlisted Dr. Alister MacKenzie, a Scottish-born golf course architect whose work at Cypress Point in California had already demonstrated a genius for creating courses of extraordinary natural beauty. The two men shared a philosophy: a great golf course should use the land as it finds it, enhancing rather than overriding the natural contours and vegetation. At Augusta, with its rolling hills, ancient trees, and botanical richness, they had the perfect canvas. The course was designed with a particular vision of the ideal golf hole — wide fairways that encouraged aggressive play, undulating greens that rewarded precision and punished carelessness, and a routing that created a sequence
