Masters Tournament Traditions: Augusta's Rituals Explained

Soon after sunrise on a Thursday in April, a small group of past champions, the youngest now in his seventies, walks to the 1st tee at Augusta National Golf Club, each wearing a green jacket. One by one they hit a single drive down the fairway and wave. Nobody keeps score. Then the first competitive group of the Masters tees off. That ceremony, the honorary start, is the opening act of a week built on rituals the club itself writes and enforces.

Masters tournament traditions are, put simply, the customs Augusta National insists on: honorary starters on Thursday morning, every caddie dressed in white coveralls, spectators addressed as patrons, no phones on the grounds, cheap sandwiches in green wrappers, and a winner's ceremony staged in Butler Cabin before a second one outdoors. Some date to the first tournaments of the 1930s. Some began in the last decade. Each exists because the club, in Augusta, Georgia, has wanted it, and this guide takes them one at a time with where they came from.

Masters tournament traditions in one place

A tradition at Augusta National is not something that grew up spontaneously among spectators. Almost every one began with a decision by the club, usually by its co-founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts or by a later chairman, and survived because the club kept enforcing it. That makes the Masters unusual among American sporting events, where customs are typically owned by fans.

The table below sets out the main ones by the day they appear.

Tradition	When it happens	Began
Champions Dinner	Tuesday evening of Masters week	1952
Par 3 Contest	Wednesday afternoon	1960
Honorary starters	Thursday morning, first round	1963
Butler Cabin presentation	Sunday evening, on television	1960s
Drive, Chip and Putt finals	Sunday before Masters week	2014
Augusta National Women's Amateur final round	Saturday before Masters week	2019

That is the calendar. The rest of this page looks at what each ritual involves, who keeps it and why.

• 1952Champions Dinner first held
• 1960Par 3 Contest first played
• 1963Honorary starters began
• 1983Outside caddies first allowed

The year each custom was first held at Augusta National. These are fixed historical dates from the club's own record.

The honorary starters: from Hutchison and McLeod to Watson

Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod were not obvious headliners. Both were Scottish-born professionals who had won major championships, McLeod before the First World War and Hutchison just after it: McLeod the U.S. Open in 1908, Hutchison the PGA Championship in 1920 and The Open in 1921. Both were past their competitive peak by the time they started appearing at Augusta. In 1963 the club asked them to open the tournament on Thursday morning with a ceremonial tee shot, and they returned to do it for years afterward. The custom was born.

It was not continuous. After the two Scots stopped, the role went unfilled for some years before Byron Nelson and Gene Sarazen took it up in 1981. Sam Snead joined them in 1984. The trio represented something more than celebrity: Sarazen had won the Masters in 1935, with his double eagle at the 15th, Nelson in 1937 and 1942, and Snead three times. Sarazen died in 1999, Nelson stepped down after 2001, and Snead's last appearance was in 2002. The tee went quiet again.

Palmer, Nicklaus and Player

Arnold Palmer returned the role to life in 2007, hitting alone at first. Jack Nicklaus joined him in 2010 and Gary Player in 2012, giving the Masters the Big Three of the 1960s on the 1st tee together. Between them they had won the Masters 13 times: Nicklaus six, Palmer four, Player three. Palmer's last appearance at the ceremony was in 2016. He died that September, and at the next year's start his green jacket was draped over an empty chair beside the tee.

1. 11963Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod hit the first ceremonial tee shots and return to the role for years afterward.
2. 21981Byron Nelson and Gene Sarazen revive the role after a gap of several years.
3. 31984Sam Snead joins Nelson and Sarazen; the three continue until Snead's last appearance in 2002.
4. 42007Arnold Palmer becomes the sole honorary starter after another gap.
5. 52010 to 2012Jack Nicklaus joins in 2010 and Gary Player in 2012, completing the Big Three.
6. 62021Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to play in the Masters, is honored on the tee.
7. 72022Tom Watson, a two-time champion, joins Nicklaus and Player.

The order in which past champions and honored figures have opened the tournament on Thursday morning, from the club's published history.

Lee Elder and what the ceremony now means

In 2021 Lee Elder stood on the 1st tee alongside Nicklaus and Player. Elder had become the first Black golfer to play in the Masters, in 1975, and his invitation as an honorary starter was a public acknowledgment by the club of its own history; Augusta National had admitted its first Black member only in 1990. Elder did not hit a ball that morning. He raised his driver to the crowd and sat while the other two hit. Tom Watson, champion in 1977 and 1981, joined the group the following year.

The ceremony now does more than honor longevity. It is where the club shows what it considers important about its own story.

The caddie uniform and the rule that lasted until 1983

The white coveralls tell a story of their own, and it is not an entirely comfortable one.

For most of the tournament's first half-century, players in the Masters had to use Augusta National's own caddies. These were local men, almost all of them Black, who worked the club through its winter season and the tournament week. The club dressed them in white jumpsuits, and the coveralls became part of the look of the tournament on black-and-white and then color television. The rule meant that a player arriving from the PGA Tour, where he had his own caddie every other week, worked with a stranger who knew the greens.

In 1983 the club changed the rule and allowed players to bring their own caddies. Most did, and the era of the club caddie at the Masters effectively ended within a few years.

The change is easiest to see in a single image. When Jack Nicklaus won his sixth green jacket in 1986, at 46, the man in the white coveralls carrying his bag was his son Jackie. Under the old rule that pairing could not have happened. Before 1983, Nicklaus had won his earlier titles with a club caddie, as every champion had, and the relationship between a touring star and a local man who read Augusta's greens better than anyone in the field was part of the tournament's lore.

What the old rule meant for the caddies

The club caddies were not salaried tour professionals. For many of them the Masters was the best-paid week of the year. Several were known by nickname to the golf press, and a few became, informally, part of the champions' stories. When the rule ended, their week shrank to almost nothing. Most of them lost the most lucrative work they had, and the shift is one of the less discussed consequences of a decision that was framed, reasonably enough, as giving players the same freedom they had at every other event.

It is fair to say the old system was a product of its time and place, the segregated South of the 1930s, and that its ending was overdue. It is also fair to say that a group of men who had built the tournament's reputation for local knowledge lost their most valuable week of work in a single offseason, and that the coveralls they wore are now worn by touring caddies who never knew them.

What the uniform looks like now

The coveralls survived the rule change. Every caddie who works in the Masters, local or touring, wears the club's outfit:

• White coveralls over the caddie's own clothes.
• A green Masters cap.
• The player's surname across the back of the coveralls.
• A number on the front.

The numbers have their own convention. The caddie for the defending champion wears number 1. The rest are allocated in the order players register on arrival at the club, so the numbers carry no ranking beyond that first one.

Why the club keeps it

The uniform serves the club's view of how a golf course should look on television. Every caddie looks alike, there is no logo for an equipment company or a sponsor, and attention stays on the player and the course. It also carries memory, of the men who once did the job exclusively, though the club tends to present that memory selectively.

Patrons, the second cut and the language of Augusta

Spectators at the Masters are patrons. The rough is the second cut. The strip of grass between fairway and second cut is the first cut. Broadcasts carry few commercial interruptions, and announcers keep their talk of money brief.

None of this is accidental. Augusta National has always cared how its tournament is described, and it has been unusually willing to enforce that through its control of the television contract. CBS has broadcast the Masters since 1956 on a series of short-term agreements, renewed at the club's discretion, which keeps the network attentive to the club's expectations.

Where the vocabulary comes from

Clifford Roberts, who ran the club and the tournament from the 1930s until 1976, regarded the people who came to watch as guests. He did not like the word "fans." He did not like "crowd" either, and certainly not "mob." Bobby Jones, the club's co-founder and the most admired amateur golfer of his era, shared the view that spectators should be treated as people who appreciated the game. The word "patron" captured what both wanted: a person with standing at the club for a week, owed courtesy and expected to give it.

What happened when announcers ignored it

Two episodes are cited every time this comes up. In 1966 the CBS announcer Jack Whitaker described the crowd around the 18th green as a mob, and he was removed from Masters coverage for several years. In 1994 Gary McCord made remarks about the speed of the greens and about body bags behind the 17th, and he did not return to the broadcast. Both cases have been retold so often that their details blur, but the point of both is clear: the club decides what can be said on its tournament broadcast, and announcers who misjudge the line pay for it.

What the words reveal

Read the list together and a pattern appears. "Patron" makes the spectator a guest. "Second cut" refuses the harsh word "rough" for the longer grass, which suits a course presented as immaculate. The reluctance to dwell on prize money keeps the focus on the green jacket, which has no cash value, rather than on the purse. Even the restraint in commercial breaks fits the scheme: the Masters broadcast is famous for running fewer advertisements than any comparable event, under terms the club negotiates, so that viewers see more of the course and less of anyone's product.

Everything points the same way. The club wants the Masters to look like a private invitation that happens to be televised, rather than a commercial sporting event that happens to be held at a private club.

That is the honest picture of the vocabulary. It reflects a sincere view about how a guest should be treated. It is also the instrument by which a private club shapes how it is seen, and the two are hard to separate.

No phones and no running at Augusta National

The ban on electronic devices is the most famous of Augusta's spectator rules, and it predates the smartphone by decades. For most of the tournament's history the restriction applied to cameras on competition days and to the general noise and clutter the club did not want. Cell phones were added as they arrived. Now the ban covers phones, tablets, laptops and other devices on all seven days of Masters week, practice rounds included.

How the club makes it work

The club compensates with free courtesy telephones, in banks at several locations on the grounds. A patron who needs to make a call can walk to one and use it without charge. The arrangement is old-fashioned and practical, and many visitors describe the absence of phones as the most striking thing about the week. Galleries watch the golf. They do not watch it through a screen.

Enforcement is real. Security screens patrons at the entrances, and those found with a phone on the course are escorted off. Their credential is taken, and the account that issued it can be cancelled.

Bobby Jones on the pairing sheet

On the back of every pairing sheet handed to patrons is a short statement on etiquette attributed to Bobby Jones. Its message is that the customs and decorum of golf matter as much as its rules, and that patrons are expected to behave accordingly: to be quiet when players are about to hit, to stay out of the way, to treat the course with care. It is a characteristic Augusta touch. Rather than a list of prohibitions, the club offers a principle and attributes it to its founder.

Running is forbidden as well. Patrons walk, and marshals and other spectators remind anyone who forgets. The rule exists for safety on hills that are much steeper in person than on television, and it adds to the sense of a sporting event conducted at a deliberate pace.

The folding chairs and the honor system

Very early on a tournament morning, patrons walk briskly to the greens they intend to watch and set down a folding chair. Green, usually, often bearing the Masters logo, and without arms, because the club allows no others. Then they walk away. The chair stays, unattended, for hours, and nobody touches it.

This is the honor system at the Masters, and outsiders struggle to believe it works. It does. A chair left beside the 16th green at dawn is still there in the afternoon when its owner returns. Taking someone else's spot is regarded as a serious breach, and other patrons enforce the custom as firmly as any official.

The tradition grows out of the patron culture. Many series badge holders have attended for decades and have favorite spots they return to every year. The chair is how they reserve them. Single-day visitors learn the custom quickly, and many buy a chair on the grounds to take part.

Why it survives

Two conditions keep the system intact: a crowd that largely shares the same expectations, and a club that removes people who break its rules. Remove either and the chairs would vanish. The custom is a small demonstration of the larger Augusta idea, that a crowd of a size the club controls, chosen in part for its familiarity with the rules, behaves differently from an open-ticketed public event.

The concession stands and the pimento cheese sandwich

Augusta National's concession stands sell a short menu of simple food at prices that have stayed low for decades, and the club regards those prices as a matter of principle rather than an oversight.

The pimento cheese sandwich is the famous one. It is a Southern spread of cheese, mayonnaise and pimientos on white bread, wrapped in green paper. The egg salad sandwich sits beside it, with the same wrapping. The color is deliberate: a discarded wrapper on green grass is hard to see, both for patrons and for the television cameras. There are other items, including barbecue and chicken sandwiches, snacks and sweets, and in recent years a Georgia peach ice cream sandwich that has become a favorite.

The cups people take home

Drinks are served in green plastic cups bearing the Masters logo, and patrons routinely carry them home. They stack on shelves in houses across the United States, a souvenir that cost nothing extra. The club knows this and designs the cups with it in mind.

The low-price policy

The prices themselves are widely reported each year and have been compared, unfavorably, with every other sports venue in the country. They are not quoted here, because they change, but the principle has not. The club holds prices down as a matter of hospitality. Roberts's idea of a patron included the notion that a guest should not be gouged, and the concession stands are where that idea is most visible. The club makes up for it elsewhere: merchandise sales during Masters week are substantial, and the hospitality program, opened in 2012 with Berckmans Place, sells high-end access to companies.

Magnolia Lane, the Crow's Nest and the amateurs

Magnolia Lane is the driveway that runs from Washington Road to the clubhouse, lined on both sides by magnolias planted well before the club existed, when the property was a plant nursery. Players in the field are driven down it on arrival. For most, it is a once-a-year experience, and players describe the first drive down it in their careers as a moment they remember. The gate is closed to the public.

The oak tree behind the clubhouse

Walk out of the clubhouse on the course side and the first thing in view is a huge live oak, its limbs spread wide over the lawn. During Masters week the ground under it is the most crowded patch of grass in golf, though not with patrons. Agents, equipment executives, writers, former players, television producers and club officials gather there to talk business and gossip, because everybody passes it sooner or later. The tree predates the club, as Magnolia Lane does, and the club protects it carefully.

No rule makes the oak a meeting place. It became one because it is the hinge between the clubhouse and the course, and because the shade is welcome in an April that can turn warm. For a reporter it is the place to wait for a quote. For the trade it is a week's worth of meetings compressed into a few hours. It is the one Masters tradition that the club did not design, which may be why it is the one patrons notice least.

The Crow's Nest

At the top of the clubhouse, in a dormer room under the roof, is the Crow's Nest. It is set aside during tournament week as accommodation for amateurs in the field. The room is simple: beds or cots, a sitting area, a bathroom and a view out over the course. Only a handful of amateurs can be housed in it at a time, and not every amateur chooses to stay. Many of those who do describe it as one of the most memorable parts of their week.

Why amateurs matter at Augusta

Bobby Jones was an amateur all his competitive life. He won the Grand Slam of 1930 as an amateur and retired at 28 without ever turning professional. When he and Roberts founded the Masters, he wanted amateurs to have a real place in it, and that wish still shapes the event. Amateurs receive invitations through categories tied to the leading amateur championships, including the U.S. Amateur, the Amateur Championship and the Asia-Pacific and Latin America Amateurs, and the club hosts an amateur dinner during the week. The low amateur is honored at the closing ceremony. Our explainer on how players qualify for the Masters sets out those amateur categories alongside the professional ones.

Amateur custom	What it involves
Crow's Nest	Accommodation for amateurs in the clubhouse attic during tournament week
Amateur dinner	A club dinner held for the amateurs in the field
Silver Cup	Awarded to the low amateur who completes 72 holes
Silver Medal	Awarded to the runner-up among amateurs who complete 72 holes
Butler Cabin seat	The low amateur joins the champion for the televised presentation

The prizes nobody sees on Sunday

The green jacket gets the attention. Behind it is a whole system of smaller awards that Augusta National presents for achievements across the week.

The crystal

Crystal is the club's currency for the day's best performances. The awards are:

Achievement	Award
Low score of the day	Crystal vase
Hole-in-one	Large crystal bowl
Double eagle	Large crystal bowl
Eagle	Pair of crystal goblets

So a player who makes an eagle at the 13th on Thursday, then a hole-in-one at the 16th on Sunday, collects goblets and a bowl. These are presented privately and rarely appear on television. Players who have accumulated a long Masters career sometimes have a sizable collection of Augusta crystal, and several have spoken of it as the most personal memento of their visits.

The champion's gold medal and the runner-up's silver

The winner receives the green jacket, the right to wear it on club property, and a gold medal. The runner-up receives a silver medal and a silver salver. The low amateur receives the Silver Cup, and the second-placed amateur the Silver Medal. None of these is especially visible to viewers. For the rules governing the most famous prize, including when a champion may take it off the property, see our guide to the rules attached to the green jacket.

Butler Cabin and the two Sunday ceremonies

Butler Cabin is a white cottage near the clubhouse. It was built in the 1960s and named for Thomas Butler, a member of the club. On Sunday evening of Masters week, its basement den becomes a television studio.

Here the club stages the first of two ceremonies. The chairman of Augusta National hosts the presentation, CBS broadcasts it, and the previous year's champion helps the new one into the green jacket. The low amateur is present and receives the Silver Cup. If the winner is also the defending champion, there is no previous champion to do it. When Jack Nicklaus became the first to win back-to-back titles, in 1966, he put the jacket on himself; when Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods later repeated, the chairman helped them into it.

1. 1ScoringThe winner signs his card in the scoring area beside the 18th green.
2. 2Butler CabinThe chairman hosts the televised presentation; the previous champion helps the winner into the green jacket and the low amateur receives the Silver Cup.
3. 3Practice greenA second, outdoor ceremony is held for patrons on the putting green near the clubhouse, with the full list of awards presented.
4. 4Press and dinnerThe champion meets the media and joins the club's members for a private dinner.

The order of events on Sunday evening as the club stages it; exact timings vary with when play ends.

The outdoor ceremony

The second presentation is for the patrons. It takes place outdoors on the putting green near the clubhouse, with the chairman, the champion, the low amateur and others present, and it covers the full set of awards. The champion again puts on the jacket. The event is broadcast only in part, but for the patrons who remain on the grounds it is the climax of the week.

This double ceremony reflects the club's dual audience. The first is staged for the cameras, the second for the people who were there.

The awkward moments the cabin has seen

Butler Cabin is small, the ceremony is unrehearsed, and live television has caught it in more than one difficult moment. The format puts a defeated defending champion in the position of handing his jacket to the man who just beat him, sometimes within an hour of losing a lead. It puts a young amateur on a sofa beside a major champion and a club chairman, on national television, with almost no preparation. The club has never changed the arrangement. Its view is that the ceremony is a courtesy among champions, and that the discomfort is part of the honor.

The setting has its own oddities. The den is decorated as a sitting room rather than a studio, with the chairman in a green jacket asking the winner a few questions about his round. Viewers used to the confetti and podiums of other American championships often find it strangely quiet. That is the point. A Masters win is presented as the admission of a new member to a small club of champions, and the room is chosen to say so.

Practice-day rituals: the 16th, the Par 3 Contest and the Champions Dinner

Three rituals shape the early days of Masters week, and two of them have pages of their own on this site.

Skipping balls at the 16th

During practice rounds, players on the 16th tee turn and skip a ball across the pond toward the green, at the request of the patrons gathered there. It began as a practice-day amusement and is now one of the most anticipated moments of the week, cheered loudly when a ball skims the water and reaches the green, groaned at when it sinks. Occasionally one finds the hole. The skip is a practice-day tradition only; nobody tries it once the tournament begins.

The Par 3 Contest

On Wednesday afternoon players compete in a nine-hole contest on the club's par-3 course, often with their children or partners as caddies. It began in 1960. No winner of the Par 3 Contest has gone on to win the Masters the same week, which gives the event its famous curse. The full story is in our guide to the Wednesday short-course contest.

The Champions Dinner

On Tuesday evening, the past champions gather for a dinner at the clubhouse hosted by the defending champion, who chooses the menu. Ben Hogan started it in 1952. The menus have ranged from the traditional to the deeply personal, and a guide to what past winners have served on Tuesday night covers them in more detail.

The newer traditions: Drive, Chip and Putt and the Women's Amateur

For a club often described as resistant to change, Augusta National has added two significant events to its calendar in little over a decade.

Drive, Chip and Putt

In 2014 the club, together with the USGA and the PGA of America, launched the Drive, Chip and Putt competition for boys and girls aged 7 to 15. Local and regional qualifiers are held across the United States, and the national finals take place at Augusta National on the Sunday before Masters week. Finalists compete in driving, chipping and putting, with the putting held on the 18th green. For many of the children involved, it is their first time on a famous golf course, and the event is broadcast nationally.

The Augusta National Women's Amateur

In 2019 the club held the first Augusta National Women's Amateur. The first two rounds are played at Champions Retreat Golf Club, near Augusta, and the final round is played on the main course at Augusta National on the Saturday before the Masters. Jennifer Kupcho won the first edition. The event was the club's first competition for women and quickly became one of the most important in women's amateur golf.

How the club chooses what to add

Both events share features that fit the club's character: they are amateur, they are about the future of the game, and they put Augusta National at the center of something new without changing the Masters itself. The club did not add a new event to the Masters week or alter the tournament's format. It added events to the days around it. That is how Augusta changes: slowly, on its own terms, and in ways that strengthen rather than dilute the identity of the main tournament.

For the wider golf calendar and how the Masters fits into it, the golf hub on this site gathers the rest. For anyone hoping to see these traditions in person, our guide to applying for tickets through Augusta's drawing covers the only public route in.