Imagine that the world’s wealthiest and most powerful person invited you over to his house to watch the greatest game you’d ever seen.
That’s what going to the Masters Tournament feels like, only it’s 300 of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people, and they’ve invited 40,000 guests. (And it costs you a lot of money to go.)
The Masters is a golf tournament that has been played at one of the most exclusive clubs in the world—Augusta National—since 1934. Founded by Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts, the club counts titans of industry, such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, among its members. The membership list is secret, and the club won’t be swayed by money alone—or public opinion: Women weren’t invited to join until 2012.
The tournament, on the other hand, is still only for men. The Masters is one of the four "majors" on the PGA tour, and it’s the smallest, with fewer than 100 of the most elite male players in the world asked to play. A badge to attend the Thursday through Sunday competition as a spectator costs $325, assuming you’re on the decades-old "patrons" list. If you’re not, you’ll have to go to a secondary market, such as StubHub, with the rest of us and cough up $5,000 to $15,000 to see all four days of play.
I didn’t used to be much of a fan of golf, but going to the Masters last year changed my perspective on golf completely. In fact, I’ve been privileged enough to attend many of the world’s major sporting events, including the Super Bowl, the US Open, Formula One, and MotoGP, and I like the Masters the best. Here are nine reasons why:
1. The Green Jackets
Members of Augusta originally started sporting green blazers so that it would be easier for the patrons to spot them and ask questions. It’s a big course, and a lot is going at the tournament—and members of Augusta, the most important people in American business, are required to work the lines! That means they interact with the golfers and guests, and you can go right up and talk to them.
Sometimes that’s even cooler than meeting the pros. Last year I met Lynn Swann. The Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver, who played in four Super Bowls and was the MVP of Super Bowl X, was a hero of my childhood. He showed me where the amateurs sleep in the clubhouse; it’s called “the Crow’s Nest,” because it’s nestled high atop the spectacular but not-over-the-top clubhouse, overlooking the first tee.
2. The History
Augusta’s storied history, along with that of Bobby Jones (the most successful amateur golfer of all time) is told in the Hollywood production Stroke of Genius. It only got 26 percent on Rotten Tomatoes but those critics are idiots—the movie is awesome.
There are some unflattering elements to Augusta’s past, mostly tied to elitist scandals, but at the tournament it’s easier to focus on the fun. The course used to be President Dwight Eisenhower’s favorite, and the club still houses some of his wine in the famous cellar there. Until 2014 a giant pine stood near the 17th hole, which Eisenhower himself had asked to be taken down because it interfered with his game. The club refused, and “The Eisenhower Tree” became one of the most famous landmarks in the sport. A storm felled the tree two years ago, and now the club showcases a huge table made from a crosscut of its wood.
3. The Golf Course
Bobby Jones put his famous course on a former nursery, so the flora are amazing. If an early spring sets in, the groundskeepers put ice under the azaleas to slow down their blossoming so that everything comes out in full color for the tournament.
Of course, no other club or municipality can match the resources of Augusta, which is said to take in $115 million from the tournament. (Its members don’t need that money.) The underground irrigation and ventilation system is so advanced that the club can dry the greens if the course is too wet, thereby speeding up the putting surface and making it more difficult.
4. The Concessions
The members didn’t get rich by paying $8 every time they wanted a beer at a sporting event, and they won’t charge you that much either. It costs only $4 for a cold one and only $1.50 for the famous pimento cheese sandwiches the club serves to all comers. (You have to like pimento cheese.)
The club does, however, rake in a ton of money from the souvenirs it sells exclusively on the course. Golf Digest estimates that Augusta pulls in $47.5 million from selling patrons bragging gear.
5. Berckmans Place and the Hospitality Houses
If you have an extra $6,000 for the week, you can luxuriate in Berckmans Place on the course, a 100,000 square-foot entertainment, dining, and drinking complex, next to the fifth fairway, that opened in 2013. I don't, so I checked into some of the countless corporate hospitality houses surrounding the club that are there for the business-networking hoi polloi.
The Masters is a fantastic place to wine and dine clients and impress friends and family if you’re a corporate bigwig, but you can’t actually go into the clubhouse. So to entertain their guests, many companies rent out local houses and install a slew of tents, flat screen TVs, and a rotisserie pig. (For what it’s worth, security is lax.)
6. The Parties
The parties in these hospitality houses, and at other restaurants and bars in town, combine to make the whole long weekend feel like spring break for preppy, middle-class adults. Former PGA madman John Daly, for example, comes in an RV and hangs out by the Hooters, where he sells his trademark Loudmouth golf pants and drinks spiked Arnold Palmers with all the sunburned patrons in the parking lot.
7. The Traditions
You probably won’t be bringing those Loudmouth “trousers” on the course. The caddies still wear traditional white jumpsuits and the patrons are usually well-dressed and always wearing belts. They don’t use cell phones on the course, so there are no selfie sticks. Children are seen but not heard. You cannot wear your baseball cap backward, and there is no running.
There also are a host of unwritten rules that everyone just follows, regardless of how many $4 beers they’ve had. It’s a wonderful experience to be surrounded by American adults that are well-behaved without being required to be so by law. People don’t even fight for seats—the earliest attendees scout out a spot for their lawn chairs and leave them there all day without problems.
8. Augusta, the Town
It turns out Flyover Country is amazingly well-organized. Most sporting events are a catastrophe of infrastructure collapse, but Augusta is so relaxed and leisurely, even when the size of the city's population randomly doubles once a year for a week.
From the instant you arrive at the small municipal airport, you’re serenaded by Jimmy Buffett and Alison Krauss (in the persons of one or two nonthreatening buskers) and offered a rum and coke at the bar. Everyone is there for the same purpose, and it’s almost as if everyone knows each other already.
The taxis are not plentiful but somehow always present, people don’t get lost, and there is no unspeakable traffic that makes you want to take advantage of the assumedly lax local gun laws. It puts a Super Bowl in New York or a Grand Prix in Indy to shame, and the weather is nicer.
9. The Golf
If you’ve never played golf before, you can’t know how difficult it is, and if you’ve never seen golf played by professionals, it is impossible to explain how skilled these athletes are. But if you understand what you’re looking at, it is an absolute astonishment that forces you to forget about everything else.
It leaves you with an amazing amount of respect for the sport, a sense of humility that you were allowed to witness it. And regardless of your skill or your physical condition, it makes you want to pick up a club and just play. Or at least come back next year.
