AUGUSTA, Ga. — The thing about the Masters, when it’s all said and done, is that you’re playing for a coat. A green jacket! The idea is so retro nobody would dare to invent such a prize today. (When was the last time you saw somebody boarding a domestic flight wearing a sport coat? Once it was de rigueur.) Rory McIlroy wanted an Augusta National club coat from the day in 1997 when he saw Tiger Woods win his first one. Tiger wanted one from the day he saw Jack Nicklaus win his sixth, in 1986. Jack saw Bob Jones in a club coat, hundreds of times over the years.
“Rory, the last time you were here, you were wearing a green jacket for the first time, and now you’re back as Masters champion,” John Carr, the son of the Irish golf legend Joe Carr, said to McIlroy Tuesday afternoon. They were seated side by side on a dais in the Augusta National press building, a sea of reporters before them. Carr was there as an interview moderator, and he was wearing a club coat, too. “Tell us how it feels.”
“It feels absolutely incredible,” McIlroy said. “Can’t believe it was 12 months ago that I was sitting here and sort of trying to take it all in. To be able to come back and do this press conference in a green jacket, that feels pretty good. It’s been an amazing 12 months, bringing this thing all around the world, the excitement on people’s faces when they see it, the excitement that I still get putting it on.”
One coat. So much fuss.
You’re playing for a coat, a locker in the Augusta National clubhouse to keep it in, and a Tuesday-night Masters-week coat-and-tie dinner. Rory McIlroy, at the defending champion, is hosting the Tuesday-night dinner this year. He’ll be in his club coat. Every last person at the table will be in his club coat. And that’s what makes the Masters — the winner’s green jacket and everything owning one implies.
Nobody knows or cares how much money Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy earned upon winning their first Masters. (Well, on the unlikely chance you do care, let us save you the trouble: Nicklaus, 1963, $20,000; Woods, 1997, $486,000; McIlroy, 2025, $4.2 million.) We do know they got a coat, a locker, a seat at the table. In this narrow view of life, they are the envy of the world.
It’s much harder to win your first coat than your second. Bubba Watson and Scottie Scheffler and Bernhard Langer and Ben Crenshaw, among others, will tell you that. That’s because you’re already in. The pressure is off. On Sunday afternoon, you can breathe when others are struggling for air. On the basis, nobody should be surprised to see Rory McIlroy contend this year. Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed, the same. Winning or not involves numerous things beyond any player’s control. But to contend all you need is great reserves of talent.
“The nice thing now is instead of it being, ’C’mon, Rory, you know you can do this,’ now it’s ‘Back-to-back!’” McIlroy said on Tuesday. “There’s a real positive connotation to it. Instead of, ‘Geez, Rory: We’ve been waiting a while — when are you going to get this done?’
“I feel so much more relaxed. I know that I’m going to be coming back here for a lot of years, going to enjoy the perks that the champions get here. It doesn’t make me any less motivated to go out there and play well and try to win the tournament. Just more relaxed about it all.”
Last year, McIlroy came to the club for dinner with Justin Rose on Tuesday night of Masters week. As neither had won a Masters, neither had an invitation to the Champions Dinner. The gents in their coats — their Augusta National club coats — were gathering for dinner.
“I was pulling up Magnolia Lane, and you get to the circle, and I’m like, ‘Do I go and park way over at the parking lot?’ Because I’m not going to park in the Champions’ parking lot.
At that moment, the champions were having their cocktails out 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. Thankfully that was the last time that I needed to do that. I think it’s one of the best traditions in sport. And I’m very grateful to be a part of it.” The dinner. The winners in their club coats. The defending champion picking up the tab.
Ben Hogan started the Champions Dinner, a year after he won the 1951 Masters. In his invitation to his fellow winners, he said, “My only stipulation is that you wear your green coat.” Everybody did and has ever since.
In the past, first-time winners have been given a stand-in club coat for Sunday-night purposes, replacing it as needed later, typically for a better fit. McIlroy did not do that. The coat he was given Sunday night a year ago is the one he will wear to his Tuesday-night dinner. The coat he was given a year ago is the one he will hang in his locker, the one he shares with Ben Hogan (in perpetuity) and Ray Floyd.
The coat has been all over the world. He has not brought it to a tailor or a dry cleaner.
“I’m afraid to,” McIlroy said. “I’ve tried to be very careful.”
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
