It is impossible to spend a few hours at Augusta National during Masters week without noticing how different it feels from any other tournament on the schedule. Some of the difference is the course. Some of it is the patrons, the pimento cheese sandwiches, and the immaculate flower beds that bloom on cue every April. But a real part of what makes Masters week feel like its own kind of event is the small set of rituals that the membership has built up over more than ninety years. They are deliberate, unhurried, and oddly moving when you encounter them in person.
Here is a quick tour of the Augusta traditions that bookend the first round on Thursday morning.
The Wednesday Par-3 Contest
The Par-3 Contest, played on Augusta National’s nine-hole DeSmet Drive course on Wednesday afternoon, is one of the most charming events in golf. The pros bring their families. Children carry the bags. Wives and girlfriends caddie. The greens are receptive, the holes are short, the patrons cheer for everyone, and the whole thing has the relaxed, slightly chaotic energy of a member-guest at a happy club.
There is also a famous superstition. No player who has ever won the Par-3 Contest has gone on to win that year’s Masters in the same week. The hex has held for decades, and it has produced some uncomfortable moments — players reaching the 9th tee on Wednesday afternoon, glancing at the leaderboard, and then very deliberately three-putting the closing green to avoid the curse. It’s the kind of thing that would feel ridiculous at any other event. At Augusta in April, it feels exactly right.
The contest has been won this year by a previous champion — we’ll keep the name out of this preview — which means the field will be hoping the curse holds true once again.
The Honorary Starters
Thursday morning at Augusta begins not with an anonymous club professional and a polite ripple of applause but with a small ceremony that has been part of the tournament since 1963. The honorary starters — currently Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, and Gary Player — hit the ceremonial first tee shots from the first tee at sunrise, in front of a small but utterly devoted gallery.
Watching the three of them stand together on the tee, joke quietly with each other, and then hit their drives down the first fairway is one of the great quiet pleasures of Masters week. None of them needs to be there. None of them owes the membership anything. They show up because the tradition matters, and because it is one of the few moments in golf when the past and the present share a tee box for sixty seconds.
The Champions Dinner
On Tuesday night, every previous Masters champion who is in town gathers in the upstairs dining room at the Augusta National clubhouse for the Champions Dinner. The defending champion picks the menu. McIlroy, this year, has reportedly chosen a mix of traditional Northern Irish dishes alongside Augusta favourites — though as always, the actual menu remains a closely guarded secret until the dinner is over.
The dinner is closed to the press and to anyone who has not won the tournament. What happens inside stays inside. The little we know about it comes from old champions who occasionally let slip a story about Sam Snead telling jokes, or Arnold Palmer holding court, or a young first-time champion sitting quietly and listening to the legends around him. The dinner is one of golf’s most exclusive rooms, and one of the very few places where the meaning of a green jacket is fully visible.
The Green Jacket
The presentation ceremony on Sunday afternoon is the moment everyone watches at home. The previous year’s champion drapes the jacket over the new champion’s shoulders in the Butler Cabin. The new champion gives a short speech. The chairman of Augusta National adds a few words. And then everyone goes back outside for the public ceremony, where the trophy is presented in front of the patrons on the practice putting green.
The jacket itself stays at Augusta after the year of personal use. New champions take their jacket home for twelve months and then return it to the club, where it lives in their private locker for the rest of their lives. A few champions over the years have worn theirs in unusual places — Phil Mickelson famously took his everywhere — but the rule has held for nearly seventy years.
The patrons
The crowd at the Masters is famously called patrons rather than fans, and the reason isn’t just snobbery. There is a culture at Augusta that no other major has been quite able to replicate. The patrons stay quiet when players are over the ball. They applaud politely after every shot. They walk between holes rather than running. They put down their lawn chairs in the morning and trust that nobody will touch them all day. The whole experience feels older and slower than any modern sporting event.
It is, in the very best way, a place that has decided exactly what kind of week it wants to be and has refused to change. That is increasingly rare in modern professional sport, and it is one of the things that makes Masters week feel like the start of the golf year every April.
Two days now until the first round. The wait is almost over.