If you've ever watched or attended the Masters Tournament, you know just how pristine Augusta National Golf Club looks every year -- and every day of the championship. In fact, if you think about it, can you ever recall seeing divots on the tee boxes at Augusta National? You can't, can you?
That's because there are no visible divots on the tee boxes at the start of each round of the Masters.
After each round of the tournament, the Augusta National grounds crew meticulously goes around the golf course, removes the divoted turf and replaces it with plugs drawn from a turf farm on property. These plugs are about 6 inches deep, and they're inserted directly into the ground where the old divots were dug out by the crews.
Ever wonder why there are no divots on the tees at Augusta National? Now you know. Daily plugging keeps the place pristine. #themasters2018 pic.twitter.com/v29dqnwawF
— Joshua Kelley (@Joshua_E_Kelley) April 3, 2018
The plugs are easy to put in place but take lots of time and effort to fill in after a full day of golf.
This way, when Masters patrons and contestants show up on the course the next day, it looks like the course wasn't even played the day prior.
Of course, it would be impossible to fill and replace all of the divots in the fairways and second cut on the golf course, so that's not done. However, the teeing ground looks perfect for each day, and it's done on purpose to only further Augusta National's presentation for the Masters Tournament.
Naturally, the teeing ground is moved on each hole during each day of the Masters Tournament, so contestants are not expected to be playing off of sod-filled divots from the day prior. They wind up playing from different positions. But it looks to the patron and the fan watching on TV that the tee box is as pristine on Sunday as it is at the start of Masters Weeks on the Saturday final round of the Augusta National Women's Amateur.
