And to think this ground has been lying here all these years waiting for someone to come along and lay a golf course upon it."[7] The land had been an indigo plantation in the early nineteenth century and a plant nursery since 1857.[8] Jones hired Alister MacKenzie to help design the course, and work began in 1931. The course formally opened in 1933, but MacKenzie died before the first Masters Tournament was played.[9]