WHEN BOBBY JONES and Clifford Roberts conceived of the golf club that became Augusta National, their plans were ambitious: two 18-hole golf courses, one for women; tennis courts, a pool, outdoor squash courts and a bridle trail; an extensive real-estate development with at least two dozen large building lots overlooking the course; and 1,800 members, more than a few of them from overseas. In the spring of 1931, in Augusta, Ga., they found the ideal property: a defunct commercial nursery, which, Jones wrote later, “looked as though it were already a golf course.”
Jones and Roberts, however, had the misfortune to undertake their project at the outset of the Great Depression. They were able to raise only a fraction of the money they needed, and, in three years of conscientious,…
