Everyone knows the first rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club. Fortunately, the same does not hold true for the Masters Club, the fraternity of past Masters winners who gather annually on Tuesday night of tournament week for the storied Masters Champions Dinner.
This is not to suggest that the champs are going live on Instagram between courses or posting Ben Crenshaw speech videos to Tiktok. Nothing of the sort! But over the years, enough of the victors have spilled enough tales and insights from the dinner that a picture has formed of the evening’s mores — its dos and don’ts, if you will. Here, from those published interviews and sound bites, is an unofficial list of the Masters Champions Dinner rules.
1. BE PUNCTUAL(ISH)
The dinner is, of course, the main event but the festivities begin around 6 p.m. with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on the clubhouse balcony. A year ago, Scottie Scheffler warmed up appetites with meatball and ravioli bites; in 2018, Hideki Matsuyama teed up Yakitori chicken skewers. The dinner officially starts at 7 but typically it’s a bit later than that when all the guests have found their seats and bellied up to table. A year ago, Rory McIlroy — not a champion at the time — met Justin Rose for dinner at the clubhouse. As he was pulling up his car, he could see the past champions socializing on the balcony. “I’m like I don’t want to valet, get out, they’re going to see me and it’s going to be weird,” McIlroy said Tuesday. “So I had this really awkward moment.”
2. DRESS CODE
This will come as no surprise: green jackets mandatory! Crisp white oxfords and neckties also appear to be a requirement, but the players have a bit more flexibility with tie color. Greens and yellows are most popular but a year ago Raymond Floyd, Mark O’Meara and Jon Rahm all elected shades of blue.
3. HOST BUYS
Ben Hogan is credited with dreaming up the dinner, which dates to 1952 — and with sticking the champion with the bill. That’s not a huge deal considering modern-day Masters winners pocket north of $4 million, but still . . . the tab can get up there. Earlier this year, sportsbook Hard Rock Bet crunched the numbers on recent Champions Dinners and put the average per head cost in the range of $100 to $350, contingent upon the host’s menu selections. Multiply that by 33 (or so) and, on the high end, you’re well into five figures.
But those tallies don’t include booze, which is where Rory McIlroy is really going to run up a number Tuesday night. McIlroy’s pricey pours — Salon Cuvee “S”, Brut; 2022 Domaine Laflaive, Batard-Montrachet; 1990 Chateau Lafite Rothschild; and 2022 Domaine Laflaive Batard-Montrachet — each fetch anywhere from about $500 to $1,800 at retail. “I don’t know a lot about wines,” Ben Crenshaw said on “Fairways of Life.” “But a lot of my friends said, ‘Oh my god, this is going to hurt Rory in his wallet.”
Mike Weir, who hosted in 2004, said on the Vanity Index podcast, that his bill was “north of 20K for sure.” The Canadian’s menu included elk, boar and arctic char. “I had a friend of mine that was a good buddy growing up that’s a chef in Canada, and let him put the menu together.”
Whatever the offerings, the guests aren’t shy about indulging. When an injured Tiger Woods missed out on Dustin Johnson’s 2021 dinner, Woods tweeted, “I’ll miss running up @DJohnsonPGA’s bill at the Champions Dinner tonight. It’s still one of my favorite nights of the year.”
4. NO ASSIGNED SEATING (IN THEORY!)
Finding your seat at your first dinner is easy because, as defending champion, you sit at the head, flanked by the dinner’s resident host, two-time champion Ben Crenshaw, and Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley. “It’s your first time in that room, you don’t really know what to expect,” Scottie Scheffler said earlier this year. “The only thing I really knew is where I was going to sit. That’s basically the only thing I knew, sitting next to Mr. Crenshaw and the chairman.”
Year 2 is more complicated. There are no place cards at the table, so in theory the players can’t sit wherever they please. In practice, though, the champs, as if by gravitational pull, end up if not in the same chairs every year, then in the same vicinity. Adam Scott said he navigated his sophomore dinner appearance by saddling up next to his old junior-golf pal Trevor Immelman, a pocket of the table where Nick Faldo also is a regular. Zach Johnson shoulders up with Jordan Spieth, with the likes of Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed and old-timers Larry Mize and Bernhard Langer nearby. The Spaniards hang together. Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Tom Watson occupy seats just to the left of the head. The late Fuzzy Zoeller used to favor the far end of the table.
At Tiger Woods’s first non-hosting dinner, in 1999, his closest Tour pal at the time, Mark O’Meara, was hosting, so Woods parked next to another familiar face in Fred Couples. “Certain people sit in certain parts of the room, and that’s the way it’s been since the ’60s and before that,” Woods said. “I have my spot.”
Zach Johnson, the 2207 winner, was wide-eyed at his second dinner. “I asked Larry Mize and Bernhard Langer, ‘Where can I sit?’” he told ESPN in 2015. “And they said, ‘Just park it right here.’ I sat next to Billy Casper. Since my first one, I’ve changed seats, but probably just a four- or five-seat radius.”
5. PHONES AWAY
Cell phones are a no-go. Again, in theory, because if Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods wants to smuggle in a Samsung, the servers aren’t likely to shake them down. Zach Johnson told ESPN that in 2014 then-club chairman Billy Payne used his phone to fact-check a seemingly outlandish story that Phil Mickelson shared. Of his phone usage, Payne reportedly said, “There are perks to being the chairman.”
6. CIVILITY REIGNS
Cordiality is a given when the gents break bread. That’s not to say some of the champs don’t hold gripes or (medium rare) beefs with their fellow winners, but any such grievances are best aired elsewhere. Even at the 2023 dinner, when tensions were high at the first Masters in the LIV era, the boys, by all accounts, behaved. “The tone has been really good here this week,” chairman Fred Ridley said at the time. “Last night at the Champions Dinner, I would not have known that anything was going on in the world of professional golf other than the norm. So I think, and I’m hopeful, that this week might get people thinking in a little bit different direction and things will change.”
Three-time champion Phil Mickelson, who is sitting out this year’s Masters, has been known to hold court at the dinner. So, too, did 1968 winner Bob Goalby, who was a master of spinning yarns from Masters past. Then there was Sam Snead, whose infamous R-rated jokes could turn a green jacket red. As Raymond Floyd said of Snead’s quips on Golf Channel last year, “Those, you couldn’t go home and tell them to your wife!”
