The Masters on HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk April 5

Welcome to The Masters on HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk

A unique series of blogs taking you inside the history of Golf''s First Major and looking ahead to the 2013 Masters, as well as providing updates on the play and reports from each day of the first major of the golf season.

I hope you enjoy the series which will publish articles each day between April 1 and 15 EXCLUSIVELY on www.HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk

All feedback is appreciated.

Enjoy.

Matt.

Augusta National Golf Club is now one of the great sporting cathedrals of the world and is the home every April to The Masters Tournament. It stands as one of the world's most famous sporting venues alongside Wembley Stadium, Lord's Cricket Ground, Twickenham, The MCG, The Rose Bowl and any Olympic Stadium, it is a venue of legends just like the biggest venues in every sport. The wealth of Clifford Roberts, the fame and knowledge of Bobby Jones and the golf course design skills of Alister Mackenzie made Augusta National Golf Club a success at a time when America and the world was struggling, much as it is today.

The stock market crash of October 1929 was the starting point of the Great Depression in the United States of America and much like 2008 a worldwide economic downturn ensued. A decade of high unemployment began and industries such as construction, agriculture, shipping, mining, logging, the auto-mobile and electrical appliances all suffered in a major way due to the financial climate. The country became a deeply divided and contradictory place with the effects of the great depression taking their toll but the delights of the modern age rising at the same time with the likes of Disney creating Mickey Mouse and Babe Ruth earning $80,000 a year, which was more than the United States President Herbert Hoover.

At the same time as the global economic downturn took hold there was a drought across the great plains, hitting corn supplies. Unemployment hit 25% by 1932 and ordinary American incomes were slashed in half and poverty took root across the country with shanty towns and bread-lines appearing in most locations. The win in the 1913 U.S. Open by Francis Ouimet is largely attributed to causing the first golfing boom in the United States, the number of golfers in the US tripled over the next decade and Ouimet's achievements being a young caddie beating the world's greatest golfers made the game appeal to the masses. Prior to this golf had been very much a preserve of the rich and well-to-do in society. With the drastic impact of the great depression it can be argued that golf was once again the preserve of the rich and it could be argued it created perfect conditions for someone of the wealth of Clifford Roberts and the influence of the great Bobby Jones to purchase an entire nursery on 315 acres to build a private golf club for friends and guests of Jones and Roberts, who were mostly wealthy. The golf club had an exclusive membership and has continued to do so to this day with the likes of Bill Gates having membership, and membership is by invitation only – if a spot comes up the club messages individuals they consider to be worthy of membership. A preserve of the elite. And in the 1930's with there being so few people with significant wealth the conditions were perfect to establish such an institution.

The fact that Augusta National Golf Club has become such a universally accepted and revered institution is quite bizarre, especially given the clubs very visible attitude towards people of colour and women over the last 80 years, Clifford Roberts once said “As long as I am alive Golfers will be white and caddies will be black” and it was not until late 2012 that the first women members were admitted, among them Condoleeza Rice, who is a black woman but of standing within society. There certainly are not any bin men or dinner ladies with membership at Augusta National Golf Club. But despite this the club and its world famous course have become one of the leading organizations within golf and The Masters Tournament one of the great sporting occasions.

Just as the great depression began Bobby Jones was reaching the peak of his powers as an Amateur golfer, he had won three US Opens and two Open Championships as an Amateur and collected four US Amateur titles prior to 1930, and it was in 1930 that he stunned the golfing world with what has become known as the “Impregnable quadrilateral”. He won the US Open, Open Championship, Amateur Championship and US Amateur in the same year to conquer the four great championships of the world which he could win. Being an Amateur he could not enter the PGA Championship but there is little doubt he would have come close to winning it if he was able to compete. 

Jones was born into wealth and his father was a Lawyer in Atlanta. He took up golf shortly after Francis Ouimet's 1913 US Open win and competed in the US Amateur as a 14-year-old in 1916. His incredible accomplishments on the golf course and the circles in which his family moved enabled Jones to become associates with Clifford Roberts, a New York City investment dealer who was 8 years older than Jones, Roberts would provide the investment to create Jones' dream on the Fruitland Nursery in Augusta. The great depression hit Augusta particularly hard and for longer than most places with its southern location and reliance on cotton, part of the plan to revive Augusta was for the Fruitland Nursery to be sold to a hotel developer but the depression and a coastal hurricane wiped out the capital to fund the project and in 1933 the plantation was sold to a group led by Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones to build Augusta National Golf Club.

So it can be argued that had it not been for the great depression Augusta National Golf Club may never have come to be and golf, and as it turns out, the city of Augusta would have lost out.

Tomorrow on 

The Masters on HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk

 – Woods v Mickelson - The Rivalry