Now available for Links 2005, the course re-created in all it's glory, is a pleasure to look at but a monster to play.

The apcd version of Augusta National, played with the “mod” (see the resources and extras page) at the appropriate settings, captures the real-life difficulty and challenge of North America’s most famous course. The “mod” was designed specifically to re-create the dynamics of play at Augusta National. Set playing conditions at moderate firmness and fast speed. The wind is one of your playing partners on Augusta, so make sure your settings are set for at least “breezy”.

Remember that Augusta National is no “grip it and rip it”, “just aim for the pin” kind of course. Not in real life and not in its PC incarnation either.

Those greens are undulating, contoured, mounded, and fast. They’re bent grass, cut down to an eighth of an inch for the Masters. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself sharing with Sam Snead or Seve Ballesteros the sight of one of your chips or putts making a u-turn 40 feet away and coming back to your feet. This, after all, is Augusta!

The first incarnation of the course was released back in 2001 by Andrew Jones and although very well received at the time, there were areas where the course could have been better as Andrew was the first to admit. With a new determination Andrew set about creating a new more accurate version based on high resolution aerial photographs to capture the exact layout of the course. Wisely, rather take on the mammoth task of creating the course on his own he asked for help, most of the 3D objects around the course have been made by Anders Besserman, from scoreboards to various buildings, clubhouse, TV towers, they are all in there as they are on the real course. Mike Jones concentrated on the elevations, and building on the basic work that Andrew had in place, the course started to take shape. Mike also created a new set of textures for this course based upon real photographs of the Augusta grass. They don't have mow lines because Augusta doesn’t have mow lines!

Swapping the file back and forth amongst the people involved with creating the course, caused it's fair share of problems, time after time Mike did some planting around Amen Corner only to lose it for one reason or another.

Eventually in frustration I was asked to help plant the course. I felt very fortunate to be asked to work on Augusta, for the obvious reasons. The course was planted roughly here and there, and there were no under plantings other than the areas that Mike was trying to perfect, before his crashes. So I took to the course with a chainsaw and deleted most of the plantings so I could start from scratch. I kept some spots where I felt they were fairly spot on. The other 90% was replanted and replanted and replanted, until I got it right. With the many photos taken from the course during the last few Masters Tournaments it was a much easier job than I first thought. If you go for a walk around the clubhouse you will see that I have tried to plant as many areas as I could based on the photos I had to work with and using the 360 degree panoramas available at the Masters website. I also re-elevated a few sections here and there, but Andrew and Mike had that pretty much spot on. The main areas that I changed were the 7th green site and the area between Hogan’s bridge and the 12th green.

If you have any doubts as to how accurate the elevations and green slopes are, I recommend that you download the saved shot (Masters2k5-16th.SHT) on the resources page and view it with the 1.06 modded version of the game. I’m sure you will recognize the shot...!

Not only that but based on beta feedback from the many testers, Andrew, Mike and myself continued to tweak the elevations and planting until we were satisfied we had the course as accurate as we could manage. Included in this course, are a list of course originals, the most important of which is the variable texture properties. The rough at Augusta is not rough it is light rough. Andrew created a new texture "Light Rough" was created using a modified APCD to achieve this. In addition a modified sand texture was used to ensure the ball rolls down the steep slopes on the bunker faces. This course is a FREE release.

It is now available for download at apcd-courses.com and Links corner.

The Augusta team wishes you many happy rounds!