For golf fans, the month of April means only one thing: the US Masters at the Augusta National, the first major championship of the year. While, the three other majors all change venues, Augusta is, and always has been, the permanent home of the Masters, which is why it enjoys such hallowed status – that, and its extraordinary setting in what used to be one of the American South’s foremost plant nurseries. Indeed, it is hard to think of any other sporting event as telegenic as the Masters, with its dramatic backdrop of blossoming dogwoods, azaleas and rhododendrons.

In the flesh, or more accurately in bark, leaf and flower, the Augusta National is even more spectacular than it looks on the TV; its undulations more pronounced, its fairways more manicured. I have managed three times to get my hands on the hottest ticket in golf, indeed one of the hottest tickets in sport, and can testify that, fanciful as it sounds, there is a spirituality about the place that has a lot to do with the tournament’s co-founder, the late, great Bobby Jones, who, 80 years ago, was the finest golfer on the planet and much else besides. An engineer, a lawyer, but most of all, the embodiment of sporting decency and integrity; it was Jones who, on being complimented for calling a penalty on himself when unobserved, deep in the rough, said “you might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank”. Augusta is still filled with his spirit, and sport in general could do with his values.

If you are ever lucky enough to get to the Masters (spectator numbers are strictly limited, and you can’t just buy your way in; you need to pull favours, exploit contacts, grease palms) or simply to be in Georgia in the spring, then take a detour to play at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. That’s not straightforward either; you’ll need an introduction, but it also has occasional public tours of the clubhouse, which is, in effect, a Bobby Jones museum, and that alone is worth doing.

East Lake is where Jones learnt to play the game he would later bestride, and the sprawling mock-Tudor clubhouse has been turned, in the best possible taste, into a shrine to his memory. On every wall, every surface, there are the trophies he won, the clubs he used, photographs of him in his prime, and contemporary newspaper reports of his remarkable achievements, the greatest of which was the Grand Slam of all four of golf’s most prestigious prizes. He won that in 1930, got a ticker-tape parade through the streets of Manhattan, and promptly retired from competitive golf.

I first played at East Lake 25 years ago, when both clubhouse and course were looking distinctly frayed at the edges. When construction began in 1904 the club had been in a swanky part of town, but by the 1980s it was run-down and dangerous. Then an Atlanta property developer called Tom Cousins got his hands on the place, and not only had it sumptuously refurbished but poured funds into the surrounding neighbourhood, now home to a vibrant mixed-income community. The remodelled course is fantastic, with particularly striking use of water, and two par-3s that aren’t outshone even by Augusta’s famous 12th. These are the 168-yard (153m) sixth, which boasts one of the first island greens in America, and the fiendish 18th, also over water, to a twotiered green. How Zach Johnson scored a course record 60 there in 2007, I will never know. Then again, that was also the year he won the Masters.

Further information:

■ East Lake hosted the 1963 Ryder Cup and is now the home of The Tour Championship. Other courses worth playing in Atlanta include Peachtree Golf Club (+1 404 233 4428), the Atlanta Athletic Club (+1 770 448 2166) and Druid Hills Golf Club (+1 404 377 1766). There is also The Creek at Hard Labor, a decent public pay-and-play course off Interstate 20, exit 105 (+ 1 706 557 3006).

FACT BOX

EAST LAKE
Atlanta, USA

Green fees: $165 (€120) per round.
Contact: + 1 404 373 5722; eastlake golfclub.com
Getting there: East Lake Golf Club is at 2575 Alston Drive SE, Atlanta, GA, 30317. British Airways, Delta, KLM and Air France all fly direct to Atlanta from Europe.