In any other location at any other time, the debt would be disturbing. But early April in Augusta, Ga., is a fiscally extravagant and abnormal time. The motto is emphatic and ubiquitous: Swipe the credit card now, ask questions later. Get me something with that logo on it.
Patron after patron piles into Augusta National Golf Club’s lavish merchandise center (which, simply, is called the Golf Shop), plenty of whom rack up expenditures in three or four digits, sometimes even five. Why? Because the Augusta National Golf Club logo is undoubtedly the most precious and prestigious in the game. And this is the only place you can get your hands on it.
A crudely rendered, elemental 3D outline of the United States, with a flagstick pegged in the vicinity of Georgia, the logo dates back as far as the club’s existence. Though ANGC has never thoroughly detailed the design’s history, the logo was positioned atop the very first invitations sent to players for the inaugural Masters in 1934, which was then called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament.
In those early days, patches sewn onto club members’ green jackets included “A.N.G.C.” in a bubbly font above the rudimentary outline of the U.S. Clifford Roberts, the club’s cofounder, reportedly wasn’t much of a fan, telling author Frank Christian that the logo looked like “an ancient drawing.” Admittedly, there is something worth nitpicking, even in so timeless a symbol: its casual attention to geographical detail. The logo lets Florida droop off the southeast corner of the continent, rather than point in the direction of the Caribbean. The sturdy shoreline of Lake Michigan is well represented on green-jacket patches but not on the quarter-zips sold by the thousands during Masters week. And every contour of New England is rounded in a way that would offend Cape Codders.
And yet, those Cape Codders swipe, swipe and swipe.
There are two essential reasons why the ANGC logo is the most valuable in golf, and perhaps all of sports. Reason No. 1: It’s everywhere. It’s fashioned out of flowers on the roundabout at the club’s entrance. It’s on the wooden podium Chairman Fred Ridley stands behind when congratulating each year’s tournament champion. It’s on the commemorative cups fans stack by the dozens to bring home to family members. It’s even embossed into the seven gold buttons of defending champ Scottie Scheffler’s fave coat.
Reason No. 2: Augusta National protects its logo as if it were a first child. The club has issued cease-and-desist letters to apparel companies, golf courses, even a group of English golfers who used to compete each December for a green jacket of their own.
Talamore Golf Resort in Southern Pines, N.C., received a strongly worded letter. Their logo features the outline of a brown llama with an upright flagstick rising from its chest. The llama’s front leg extends outward — a bit like Florida — and its head could be confused for the state of Maine. When a version of the logo was rendered in yellow and green, it looked a bit too…familiar.
“We were not going to do battle with [Augusta National],” the club’s head pro, Tag Leon, noted on its website. Nevertheless,a cease-and-desist letter from ANGC has pride of place in the Talamore clubhouse.
Most of the accused, as wary as Tag Leon, fold in the face of legal action. But when one videogame maker elected to fight for fair use in 2009, it found itself in court for trademark infringement. These people don’t mess around.
As is common practice at golf’s elite private clubs — 2023 U.S. Open host Los Angeles CC comes to mind — logos are often stripped of identifying language. The cleanest, leanest iteration of the ANGC emblem is wordless. You can find it all over the sprawling Golf Shop, but more exclusive items featuring it are sold to members only in the club’s modest pro shop. That’s right — you’ll have to know somebody who knows somebody.
For those of us less connected — or who are drawn to a more explicit, impress-your-buddies sort of badge — the merch center is bursting with attire and keepsakes that slip the word MASTERS into the logo. And the good news is, when we flash the plastic at the Masters, our only real constraint is our credit limit. For shoppers whose eyes are bigger than their carrying capacity, ANGC enlists a team devoted entirely to shipping mass-quantity orders to patrons’ homes.
So swipe (which is to say, buy) as much as you please.
The original version of this story appeared in print in the April issue of GOLF Magazine. An earlier version of this story listed a club that received a cease and desist letter as Welsh. The group of golfers was English.
