What Type of Grass Is on Augusta National Golf Course?

That impossibly perfect, vibrant green carpet at Augusta National isn't just one type of grass, it’s a brilliant, scientific blend of different varieties, each chosen for a specific purpose. This manicured masterpiece, the stage for The Masters Tournament, is the result of painstaking agronomy. This article breaks down exactly what grasses are used on the fairways, greens, and the famous second cut, and explains how these choices create the unique challenges players face every April.

The Green Carpet: Why Augusta's Fairways and Tees Look So Perfect

When you picture Augusta National, you're likely thinking of its expansive, perfectly uniform fairways. They look like a seamless ribbon of green winding through the Georgia pines. That iconic look is primarily thanks to a cool-season grass that actually isn't the course's permanent resident.

The Masters-Time Secret: Perennial Ryegrass

The fairways and tee boxes at Augusta are actually a base of Bermudagrass ("Tifdwarf" is a commonly cited strain). Bermudagrass is a wonderful warm-season grass that thrives in the hot, humid Georgia summers. However, it has one major drawback for an April tournament: when the weather cools in the fall, Bermudagrass goes dormant and turns a brownish, straw-like color.

To achieve the lush green viewers expect for The Masters, the grounds crew performs a massive overseeding process in the fall. They close the course for a few months and plant Perennial Ryegrass directly over the top of the dormant Bermuda. Ryegrass is a cool-season grass. It germinates quickly and flourishes in the cooler temperatures of a Georgia winter and spring, providing that stunning, deep-green color and a perfect playing surface.

What you're seeing during tournament week is the Ryegrass at its absolute peak. After the tournament ends and the summer heat returns, the Ryegrass naturally dies off, allowing the Bermudagrass base to take over again and thrive through the hot months. This cycle is repeated every single year.

From a Player's Perspective

As a coach, I tell my students that this Ryegrass surface is about as good as it gets. It's an upright-growing grass, which means the ball tends to sit up beautifully on a perfect tee shot, almost like it's on a short peg. This gives players a huge confidence boost on their approach shots, as a clean strike is much easier to achieve. There’s little to no grain to worry about, just pure, consistent lies. The challenge at Augusta isn’t a poor lie in the fairway, it's the strategic questions the course asks you on every hole.

The Glass-Like Greens: What Makes Them So Fast and Tricky?

Augusta National's greens are famous - and infamous - for their speed and severe undulations. Hitting the green isn't enough, you have to hit a specific section of the green to have a makable putt. A large part of this challenge comes down to the sub-surface technology and, most importantly, the type of grass used.

The Gold Standard: A-1 Bentgrass

The greens at Augusta are planted with Creeping Bentgrass, and while they have used different cultivars over the years like Pencross, reports point to them currently using a modern strain called A-1. Bentgrass is the premier choice for high-end golf greens in climates that can support it. Here's why:

• Blade Density: Bentgrass grows incredibly thick and dense. It has a very fine, thin blade which allows it to be mowed to incredibly low heights - we're talking fractions of an inch.
• Upright Growth: Like Ryegrass, it has an upright growth habit. This quality creates a remarkably smooth surface with very little grain, allowing the ball to roll incredibly true. Whatever line you start your putt on, it will hold that line.
• Heat Tolerance (with assistance): Traditionally, Bentgrass struggles in extreme heat. Which leads us to Augusta’s not-so-secret weapon...

The SubAir System: Augusta's Secret Weapon

In the hot Georgia sun, maintaining cool-season Bentgrass greens would be a nightmare. Augusta National famously installed a state-of-the-art SubAir system beneath every single green. This is, essentially, a sophisticated underground climate-control system.

A SubAir unit can perform two primary functions:

1. Vacuum Mode: After a heavy rain, it can be switched on to literally suck excess water out from the root zone of the greens. This allows the staff to get the greens back to their desired firmness and speed in a remarkably short amount of time.
2. Pressure Mode: On hot, still days, the system can pump cool air up through the SubAir an and into the root zone. This airculates the roots an brings valuable gas exchange helping to prevent the grass from wilting and dying from heat stress. In cooler times, they can pump warmer air into the roots as needed.

This system gives the superintendent nearly total control over the consistency and firmness of the putting surfaces. It's the reason why the greens are in flawless condition, rain or shine, and can be calibrated to their lightning-fast tournament speed.

No Rough? Talking About Augusta's "Second Cut"

One of the most distinct features you’ll notice about Augusta is its lack of traditional, penal rough. Unlike a U.S. Open where straying from the fairway means hacking out of fescue up to your shins, Augusta takes a different approach. They don’t have "rough", they have a "second cut."

Exactly the Same Grass, Just Shorter

The grass in the second cut is identical to the fairway and tee-boxes: overseeded Perennial Ryegrass. The only difference is the mower height. While the fairways are typically mowed to around 3/8 of an inch, the second cut is kept at a uniform 1 3/8 inches.

This distinction is extremely important. It was a conscious choice from the club's leadership and designers. The goal isn’t to force a player to wedge out sideways. Instead, the design philosophy of Augusta National is to present strategic challenges and options. The second cut is penal, but it allows for skilled recovery shots. A creative player can still try to get the ball to the green, but it introduces an element of uncertainty.

The Golfer's Challenge

Don't be fooled - just because it's not thick, tangled rough doesn't mean it's easy. Hitting from the second cut creates a few key problems for players:

• Lie Uncertainty: The ball can nestle down into the slightly longer grass, making a clean strike difficult. You can very easily catch the ball "heavy" or "thin."
• Reduced Spin: The grass blades get between the clubface and the ball at impact, significantly reducing the amount of backspin you can generate. This is the biggest challenge. On Augusta's firm, fast, and undulating greens, approach shots with little-to-no spin are incredibly hard to control. The ball is far more likely to "release" or bound forward on landing, running through the greens and into collection areas.
• "Flyer" Lies: Occasionally, the ball will sit up perfectly on top of the grass. This can lead to a "flyer," where the reduced spin and lack of friction cause the shot to fly much farther than intended. This uncertainty makes club selection a real headache for players and their caddies.

The Agronomic Artistry: Perfection on Demand

Creating picture-perfect playing surfaces requires more than just mowing and watering. The grounds crew at Augusta are considered the best in the business, and they use every tool at their disposal to present the course flawlessly.

A Constant War Against Poa Annua

One enemy looms large on a Bentgrass green: Poa Annua, or annual bluegrass. It’s an invasive, weedy type of grass that produces seed heads, especially in the spring, creating a splotchy, bumpy, and inconsistent putting surface. The maintenance team at Augusta is in a perpetual battle to keep every single plant of Poa Annua off their greens to maintain that perfectly pure Bentgrass surface.

A Touch of "TLC" (Theatrical Landscaping Color)

It’s also an open secret that Augusta goes to extreme lengths for aesthetic perfection. If certain areas of grass aren’t as green as others, they are not above using a little help. The maintenance team reportedly uses food dyes and special pigments to enhance the color of the grass, making it pop even more on high-definition television. They are also known to use a dye in the pond water, particularly on holes like the 16th, to give it that deep blue or black color as a contrast to the brilliant green.

This level of dedication is what makes Augusta National's turf so legendary. It’s a combination of ideal grass choices, groundbreaking technology like the SubAir system, and an unmatched commitment to agronomic detail.

Final Thoughts

So, the iconic look of Augusta National is not one a single grass, but a perfectly managed team effort. Fast, true-rolling Bentgrass is used on the greens, while the fairways are a base of Bermudagrass that gets overseeded with photogenic Ryegrass to provide that perfect green carpet every April.

Thinking about the obsessive detail at Augusta - managing flyers from the second cut, knowing how the ball will react on Bentgrass greens - highlights how much nuance there is in course management. It underscores the importance of making the right decision based on your specific lie. When you’re stuck in the trees or facing an awkward stance in person, that decision is all that matters. This is precisely where our expertise can help, I and my fellow golf coaches at Caddie AI built a tool to support you in these situations. Our AI allows you to snap a photo of any tough lie, analyze the situation like a pro, and receive a simple, smart strategy to help you navigate the challenge and play with more confidence, no matter what kind of grass you're playing on.