IT WOULD BE unfair to say there's a "senior" course in Augusta, Ga., and everything else, by mere comparison, is second-rate. Everyone knows "the National," the reason why for one week each April it's impossible to get a hotel room in town, every restaurant has a wait and all the vehicles, especially those in the bumper-to-bumper standstill on Washington Road, seem to have out-of-state plates.

But secluded among the massive treed estates of a stately residential area, not far from Augusta National's Magnolia Drive, is another club. A club whose roots are as deep and as storied as any other, including its more famous neighbor. A club whose juniors appear to be headed for prominent levels of achievement in their own right.

It matters not to the members of Augusta Country Club that "the National" is treated as a mecca to the world's golfing pilgrims. This is a club whose inception dates back to 1899, nearly 40 years before that of its neighbor, and which for three decades was the site of its own major championship. No, the story of golf in Augusta, Ga., has more than a single chapter.

Living next door to one of the world's most famous courses has its drawbacks. Mail intended for one is often addressed to the other, and it is customary to see strangers walking the grounds of Augusta Country Club, often stopping to take pictures in front of the clubhouse or on the patio that overlooks the first and 18th holes. Even the club's bermudagrass fairways and roughs, tan and dormant all winter, don't cause many unsuspecting visitors to think twice. "You break the news to them as gently as you can," explains club manager Henry Marburger. "It's usually pretty easy to tell they really don't know where they are."

It's much easier to recognize them on the four days the Masters is played. They're the ones who try to sneak onto the course and find their way over to the ninth fairway, hoping to get a free seat and an unobstructed view of the field as it makes its way through Amen Corner.

But frankly, the view isn't very clear at all, and officials at the Country Club have done a good job sending unwanted visitors back off the grounds. You can hug the chain-linked, barbed-wire-topped fence that separates the two properties, but even then the foliage is dense enough to prevent one from seeing an entire stroke at the three holes -- the 11th, 12th and 13th -- visible along the site where the courses abut.

"At one time you couldn't even do that," says Eileen Shulb, an honorary member who's currently writing the history of the Country Club. "The fence was electrified. My, the caddies were terrified to go anywhere near it."

Masters week is also Augusta Country Club's busiest week. Although it has a golfing membership of nearly 800, for 51 weeks a year no starting times are ever taken. "We kind of play by groups," says club president Dick Shearouse. "Everyone knows this group generally plays around 9 o'clock, this group around 10, and so on." Only during Masters week, when the club does its best to accommodate corporate and out-of-town guests, are starting times required, and for those seven days there is never a vacancy.

The Masters began in 1934, and three years later Augusta Country Club could boast of its own championship play. The Titleholders, initiated in 1937, was a major player in the arena of women's competitive golf.

At first the event was primarily for amateurs, but as the years passed the proportion of amateurs to professionals shifted in favor of those playing for money. As purses increased, the Titleholders committee found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

"We started with $600," Shulb said of the event's first purse, "three [hundred], two and one. We eventually went up to $10,000 for our last purse and we just ran out of money. The purses just went up so high."

Every March, the best names in women's golf battled in what became the LPGA's first major championship. Patty Berg won the Titleholders seven times, the first and last coming 20 years apart, Louise Suggs added four and Babe Zaharias three.

"The greatest battles in women's golf were played here," Shulb said. "I can remember Kathy Whitworth came here on a bus from Jal, Mexico, with her mother, to play in the Titleholders. She won her state championship and that made her eligible."

The backbone of the Titleholders was Dorothy Manice, a well-to-do member. "Back then, Mrs. Manice underwrote nearly all of it," Shulb said. "She went out and bought all the silver prizes, because they were all amateurs in the beginning."

The event became financially unsound in the mid-1960s and, after Kathy Whitworth won in 1965 and 1966, it was cancelled. Restoration was attempted in 1972, when the only major women's events of note were the LPGA Championship and the Women's Open, but it was not to be. "We ran it for one more year and lost our shirts," Shulb said sadly.

Today the event, having departed Augusta, is a cornerstone of the LPGA schedule. With a major sponsor kicking in corporate support, it offers one of the richest purses, $1.2 million, in women's golf. "It's nice the name is back," Shulb reflected, "but those early days . . . they were really something."

Now some stiff competition can be found at Augusta Country Club virtually every day, and it comes in the form of a ridiculously successful junior program. The kids certainly belie their choirboy looks.

Last year, the second year juniors were permitted to play in the club championship, 16-year-olds finished first and second. John Engler won the 54-hole event with a 1-over-par total of 217, two strokes ahead of his good friend Scott Volpitto.

But the depth of the club's junior ranks extends much further. Last year, the four-member team representing Georgia in the American Junior Golf Association's Junior Challenge were all from Augusta Country Club. Engler, Volpitto, Brian Scurlock and Will Snellings combined to win the event by three strokes, and what makes the feat all the more remarkable is that the team did not include Charles Howell III, who is merely considered to be the best of the bunch. Howell, ranked among the country's premier juniors, has reached the semifinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur twice, the first time when he was only 14.

"In some areas," Engler said, "you have a great football program and everyone strives for football. Living in Augusta, everybody around here strives for golf. For a whole week every year people everywhere see how much of a golf town this is. But we know what a golf town this is all year."

The club has so many good junior players in part because of its generous policy regarding practice and play. No one can ever remember when the club didn't provide free balls for juniors on the practice range, and there are only two small windows on weekends when juniors are not allowed to play off the first tee. Come 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon, when junior-restricted play ends, the line from the first tee is so long you'd think Sega was giving away free video games.

Many juniors use the club as an after-school gathering place, practicing for hours and often getting together for a loose but competitive nine holes. "They're up on that range from the time it opens until it closes," Shulb says. "Some of those youngsters probably hit 500 or a thousand balls in a day, and they can get all the competition they want without even leaving town."

A dozen or so juniors from the club play first or second on their high school team, which at least evens the competition. "Yeah," Engler considered, "if we were all on one golf team I think we'd do all right."

In fact, that's the case at Aquinas High School, where the starters on last year's golf team, comprised solely of players from Augusta Country Club, among them identical twin sisters Brigid and Audrey Fisher and their brother Brendan, won the Class A state championship by a relatively safe five strokes.

Engler and some of the other juniors work as volunteers at The Masters, as do a considerable number of Country Club members, 20 or so of whom belong to both G.C. and C.C. The clubs have enjoyed a cordial relationship since Day One, obviously bonded in some respects by their proximity.

Augusta National will forever be linked to Bob Jones, but Jones had other ties to Augusta long before anyone thought about building another golf course there.

Jones married an Augusta girl, Mary Malone, and he was also a good friend of Alfred Bourne, whose contributions helped lead Augusta Country Club through the early years at its present site; the first course, designed by longtime head professional David Ogilvie and members Dr. William Henry Harrison and Henry H. Cumming, and named for the famous Bon Air-Vanderbilt Hotel, was across the street from the current location. Bourne and Jones often played golf together, and Bourne, whose generous gifts to the club include a grand collection of photos of U.S. Open champions, was also one of the founders of Augusta National when it was built in the early 1930s.

"He was here frequently," Shulb says of Jones, "and he played a lot of golf with the local members. He was made an honorary lifetime member by the club -- before he won the Grand Slam."

That's just the kind of place Augusta Country Club is. First-rate.

-- Rich Skyzinski