In a few weeks, Tiger Woods will hand the green jacket to someone at Augusta National. But the more interesting Tiger Woods story this April is happening about a mile down the road, at a scruffy municipal golf course called The Patch.
On April 15, Augusta Municipal Golf Course will reopen after a 16-month renovation that includes a completely redesigned 18-hole layout by Tom Fazio and Beau Welling — and a brand-new nine-hole par-3 course designed by Tiger Woods and his firm, TGR Design. They're calling it The Loop at The Patch.
It's not a luxury resort. It's not a members-only enclave. It's a public muni in Augusta, Georgia, and it might be the most meaningful thing Tiger has ever put his name on.
A Course With a Story That Matters
The Patch has been part of Augusta since 1928 — a year before Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts even broke ground on what would become Augusta National. It opened with nine holes and sand greens, expanded to 18 the following year, and got proper grass greens during the Great Depression courtesy of a WPA project.
But the real history of The Patch is about who played there.
For decades, Augusta National's caddies — nearly all of them Black men who carried bags for the most powerful people in golf — had almost nowhere to play the game themselves. The Patch, officially integrated in May 1964, became their course. It was where caddies gathered before and after loops, where they honed their own games, where the golf community that existed in the shadow of the world's most exclusive club could actually belong somewhere.
Jim Dent, who learned the game as a caddie at Augusta National and went on to win 12 times on the Champions Tour, came up through The Patch. He wasn't alone. Generations of caddies and local players built their golf lives on those fairways.
The name "The Loop" is a direct tribute to those caddies. In caddie parlance, a "loop" is a round — you'd carry a bag for 18, and that was your loop. Tiger, to his credit, understood what that name would mean.
What Tiger Is Actually Building
The Loop is a nine-hole par-3 course situated on the high point of the property, in the northwest corner of the municipal grounds. It features artificial turf tees — a practical choice for a public facility that needs to handle heavy traffic without the maintenance budget of a private club.
If you've followed TGR Design's work, this fits a pattern. Tiger's design philosophy, as his firm describes it, emphasizes three things: playability, options, and bringing people together. That sounds like corporate boilerplate until you actually look at what he's built.
Payne's Valley in Branson, Missouri, was TGR Design's first fully public course, and Golf Digest named it the best new public course in America when it opened. The Playgrounds, a 10-hole par-3 layout, was designed to be walked quickly with one or two clubs and is lit for night play. These aren't the stamped-out, cart-path-mandatory courses that defined the golf boom of the '90s. They're designed around the idea that golf should be fun, accessible, and social.
The Loop continues that thread, but with an added layer of historical significance that Tiger's other projects don't carry. This isn't just a short course — it's a short course on sacred ground.
The Irony That Makes This Work
Here's what makes The Patch renovation genuinely fascinating: it's funded and supported by Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament.
Augusta National — the most private, most exclusive, most controlled institution in golf — is bankrolling the renovation of a public municipal course a mile from its gates. Chairman Fred Ridley announced the partnership in April 2025, and the scope is enormous: a full 18-hole redesign by Fazio and Welling, Tiger's nine-hole Loop, and a TGR Learning Lab (an educational facility run by Tiger's foundation) expected to open in 2028.
You can be cynical about this. Augusta National has the resources of a small nation, and a renovated public course across town is good PR during a period when the club still faces scrutiny over access and inclusion. That's fair.
But you can also recognize that this is a genuinely good thing for the Augusta community — a world-class public golf facility, designed by some of the best architects alive, that will be open to everyone. The Patch was deteriorating. Now it's getting the kind of investment that usually goes to $500-a-round destination courses.
And Tiger's involvement isn't cosmetic. TGR Design has a real track record, and the Learning Lab adds an educational dimension that goes beyond golf. It's the same model his foundation uses in other communities — STEM education, college prep, and career readiness programs with golf as the entry point.
Tiger's Second Career Is Quietly Impressive
We spend so much time talking about Tiger's body — his back, his leg, whether he can walk 72 holes — that we overlook what he's building off the course. TGR Design now has a growing portfolio that includes championship courses, short courses, and practice facilities across multiple countries.
What's interesting about Tiger's design work is that it doesn't try to replicate Augusta National or any of the courses he dominated as a player. His layouts tend to be wide, forgiving off the tee, and designed to give every skill level multiple options on every hole. If you've played Payne's Valley, you know the course doesn't beat you up. It invites you in.
That's a deliberate choice, and it tells you something about how Tiger thinks about golf's future. He's not building monuments to difficulty. He's building courses that make people want to play.
Why This Matters Right Now
Public golf in America is at a crossroads. Rounds are up since 2020, but many municipal courses are crumbling from decades of deferred maintenance. The economics are brutal — municipalities can't charge resort prices, but they still need resort-quality conditions to attract players.
The Patch renovation offers a model: private investment (from Augusta National and affiliated charities) in public infrastructure, with world-class design talent donated to a facility that serves the community. It's not a model that scales easily — not every muni has a billionaire club next door — but it proves that top-tier public golf is possible when the will and resources align.
The opening date is no accident, either. April 15 falls during Masters week, when the world's attention is already fixed on Augusta. Every golf journalist, every fan, every social media account will be in town. The Patch will get a spotlight it could never buy on its own.
The Takeaway
Tiger Woods has 82 PGA Tour victories, 15 major championships, and a career that changed the sport forever. But when people look back at his full legacy decades from now, The Loop at The Patch might matter more than any of that.
Not because it's a great golf course — it might be, but that's almost beside the point. It matters because it represents what golf can be when you strip away the exclusivity and the cost and the gatekeeping: a game that belongs to a community, played on ground that carries real history, designed by someone who understands that golf's future depends on who gets to play, not just who wins.
The Patch opens April 15. If you're anywhere near Augusta this spring, go play it. The greens fees will cost less than a sleeve of Pro V1s.
