Jones and MacKenzie gave the golfer the opportunity of playing each hole in several different ways, depending primarily on ability and willingness to take chances. A player could either 'go for it' or 'play it safe'. Strategic courses are designed to lure the unsuspecting golfer into difficulties if he tries for too much. To be on the wrong side of the fairway at Augusta is to give yourself a difficult shot to the green, and position on the greens is all important. Three and four putts are not uncommon here.
Many players are surprised at how hilly the course really is.
From an aerial view it seems almost flat, but there are plenty of hillocks to negotiate when one is playing it. And at the far extremities of the course lurk three holes upon which The Masters is often won or lost. Amen Corner, so named by golfer writer Herbert Waren Wind because if golfers negotiate these holes in par figures they are apt to whisper 'amen', consists of eleven, twelve, and thirteen. On the treacherous eleventh, Ben Hogan always aimed short and to the right of the green because of the pond on the left. But Larry Mize was fortunate enough to chip in from fifty feet out to win a playoff in 1987.