t's long been a given among most close (but perhaps not close enough) followers of golf that Clifford Roberts, the man behind the curtain at the Masters for its first 43 years, was autocratic, vindictive and racist. The truth is, however, that such a portrayal was never more than an educated guess, which Roberts never deigned to clarify. Ultra-insiders had the best take on him, but were largely silenced by Augusta National Golf Club's fierce version of omert. As someone who was obliged to write about the Masters and its history, I carried some of the typical assumptions about Roberts -- whom I never met -- though they were shaken when a number of the club's black former caddies told me that they remembered Roberts as decent and fair.

Not in dispute is that Roberts, from his founding of Augusta National with Bobby Jones in 1931 to his death in 1977, was the most innovative golf administrator in history. The club faced financial ruin throughout its first 15 years. But because Roberts dedicated his life to exploring every way possible to make the tournament better, the Masters is universally considered the best-run event in golf and the most spectator-friendly. Roberts was the first to install the over-under par system of scorekeeping, gallery ropes, grandstands, pairings of twosomes rather than threesomes and complimentary pairing sheets. He also used his power to reduce both the chatter and the commercial breaks on Masters broadcasts. His example has been a beacon for how professional golf is staged.

But Roberts's persona has always been both problematic and an easy target. In two recent books, ''Augusta,'' by Steve Eubanks, and ''The Masters,'' by Curt Sampson, Roberts is presented as almost cartoonishly evil, in episodes often attributed to anonymous sources. To counter this image, the club made David Owen, a contributing editor at Golf Digest and staff writer at The New Yorker, the first journalist with open access to its archives, employees and members. ''The Making of the Masters: Clifford Roberts, Augusta National, and Golf's Most Prestigious Tournament'' is the result.

Such origins by definition make Owen's work a house job. There are places where Owen assumes a carping tone when correcting past inaccuracies or when debunking poorly substantiated claims. But Owen himself used a more rigid standard than previous books, relying as much as possible on primary sources like letters, contracts and diaries. Everyone who is quoted is named, though there are no sources that could be called unfriendly or adversarial to Roberts.

Still, within these boundaries, Owen is remarkably complete. He presents convincing rebuttals to some of the more established tales of Roberts at his most arbitrary and abusive, including those concerning Frank Stranahan's expulsion from the 1948 Masters, Jack Whitaker's removal from the CBS broadcast of the tournament and Charlie Sifford's attempt to become the first black golfer to play in the Masters. Owen is not as incisive on Roberts's later relationship with Bobby Jones, giving little attention to the reports of a possible rift between the two, nor explaining why Roberts was not invited to Jones's funeral.

But while the book can't completely erase the suspicion that Roberts to some extent is being sanitized, Owen accomplishes something more important and long overdue in this sometimes revelatory work -- Roberts is humanized.

Not that the man who emerges was any day at the beach. Complicated and eccentric, grim and demanding, Roberts obviously reveled in his power, holding anyone he talked to hostage to a cadence that Owen describes as akin to someone ''dictating to an engraver.'' A former club chairman, Jack Stephens, who knew Roberts well for the last 15 years of his life, said he never won an argument with Roberts. Although Roberts was loyal to many on the club's mostly black staff, he was clearly the product of a time when blacks served whites and was most comfortable when that dynamic was retained. While his proudest accomplishments were becoming an indispensable friend to Jones and, later, to Dwight D. Eisenhower while he was President (Roberts, a stockbroker, was his financial adviser), he was a distant figure in three marriages and even in his closest relationships at his beloved club. ''I just figured Cliff had never been a child,'' Stephens told Owen.

But Roberts had been, and through the use of the journals of his mother, Rebecca Key Roberts, Owen gives texture to his subject's personality. A perceptive but unhappy woman who would take her own life at the age of 44, Rebecca chronicles a desolate, quietly desperate family led by a small-time businessman, Charles Roberts, who put his wife and five children through a dozen moves to small towns throughout the Midwest as he compulsively chased marginal ventures. It was a process that would forever leave Clifford an outsider. ''That was how he attached himself to the world,'' Owen writes. ''His chosen place was always at the edge of any circle to which he belonged.''

After quitting school in the ninth grade, Roberts was a traveling salesman of men's clothing for several years. An avid reader of biographies, he headed to New York and Wall Street to remake himself. There he would first ingratiate himself with the hugely admired Jones, a figure who possessed the aura of a great man, which Roberts found irresistible. Soon after he would devote his talent and energy to serving an icon and to making Augusta National a success. Byron Nelson said, ''This place was his bride.''

Still, there is little joy that emanates from Roberts's life. Like his mother, he committed suicide -- at the age of 83, shooting himself on the banks of Augusta's par-3 course and leaving instructions for an unmarked grave.

As Owen writes early on: ''To know Roberts at his worst is easy, because he did not dissemble. To know him as he really was requires both effort and an open mind.'' To that purpose, this book provides the best tools available.

Jaime Diaz covers golf for Sports Illustrated and is the author, with Raymond Floyd, of the instructional book ''The Elements of Scoring.''