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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Final yr, within the months after he received the Masters Match for the primary time, Scottie Scheffler heard a parcel was coming his approach from Georgia.
“I didn’t know precisely what it might be,” Scheffler recalled over the winter. “They’ve the trophy within the clubhouse, however it’s, like, actually large.”
That trophy, fabricated from about 900 items of sterling silver and weighing at the very least 100 kilos, didn’t depart Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership. A smaller, if equally exacting, sterling silver trophy did.
Engraved in Britain, packaged in a felt-lined field befitting a head of state, and so painstakingly customized that it contains the signatures of each participant in that yr’s Masters discipline, the trophy that includes Augusta Nationwide’s clubhouse is way much less famend than the inexperienced jacket the winner earns. However as a result of gamers historically take their blazers away from Augusta Nationwide solely in the course of the years by which they’re reigning winners, the trophy is the dazzling centerpiece {that a} Masters champion really will get to maintain.
“It’s an actual speaking level on the home, I have to say, as a result of persons are shocked to appreciate there’s a trophy,” mentioned Adam Scott, who received the match in 2013. “And you then get to have take a look at it and the element in it’s unbelievable — the clubhouse after which issues just like the signatures.”
This yr’s competitors, three many years after Bernhard Langer turned the primary winner to obtain a duplicate trophy, is scheduled to conclude Sunday, climate allowing. The method of getting ready one prize, although, has already begun: When gamers arrived for the match, organizers collected the signatures that may wind up on the trophy.
That Augusta Nationwide awards a trophy is just not distinctive in golf, a predominantly particular person sport with archives stuffed of pictures of champions rejoicing with their {hardware}. Ultimately summer time’s British Open, Cameron Smith estimated that two cans of beer would fill the claret jug he had earned and had his title engraved on minutes after the match’s finish.
However the claret jug is an emblem of the Open, a lot because the Wanamaker Trophy is an emblem of the P.G.A. Championship and the U.S. Open Championship Trophy stays the fixture it has been within the sport since 1895. On the Masters, although, the trophy is basically an afterthought to the inexperienced jacket — nonetheless mockingly, given the winner’s restricted time with the sartorial prize.
“As a child and as an grownup, you concentrate on one factor, and that’s the inexperienced jacket,” mentioned Bubba Watson, who received at Augusta in 2012 and 2014. “You don’t know in regards to the different stuff that comes with it. You don’t take into consideration the trophy. You don’t take into consideration the gold coin. You don’t take into consideration privileges of with the ability to play there. As a child, as a 10-year-old, as a 12-year-old after I was dreaming about making putts, it was all in regards to the inexperienced jacket.”
Phil Mickelson, who recorded the primary of his three Masters victories in 2004, mentioned he had “figured” there was a trophy for the victor however knew little about it earlier than he began receiving the clubhouse reproductions, which he concluded neatly captured the match’s heritage.
“It brings about emotions of Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts and them creating this occasion and creating this particular membership, so it really has a whole lot of very refined undertones to it,” Mickelson mentioned.
Along with cash — this yr’s purse is $18 million — Augusta Nationwide presents gamers a spread of prizes for assorted feats. In 2022, Rory McIlroy acquired a silver medal and a sterling silver tray for his runner-up end and a pair of crystal highball glasses for making an eagle; Sungjae Im received a crystal vase for taking pictures the primary spherical’s lowest rating; and Stewart Cink earned a crystal bowl for a gap in a single at No. 16.
“I’ve a whole lot of goblets from Augusta,” Mickelson mentioned, referring to the prize the membership used to current for eagles. (He additionally copped to having a bathrobe “that I put on very often” from a long-ago keep within the Crow’s Nest, an residence within the clubhouse’s attic that’s out there for beginner golfers.)
However the trophy, due to its shortage and comparably low profile, is very often a novelty. Watson recalled his first thought was “a whole lot of silver.”
“While you open that up and also you see the trophy, it hits you,” mentioned Patrick Reed, the 2018 winner. “After which it turns into, ‘The place do I put it the place everybody can see it but in addition everybody doesn’t contact it?’”
It’s a comparatively latest conundrum since, by the requirements of the mystique-laden Masters, an occasion first performed in 1934, the duplicate trophy is a comparatively new custom. Organizers have mailed printed invites from the beginning, a ritual that continues as we speak. The personal dinner for previous champions started in 1952, and the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth holes picked up the Amen Nook moniker from Sports activities Illustrated in 1958.
In between the dinner’s starting and the nook’s christening, in 1955, Augusta Nationwide started presenting winners with silver cigarette bins engraved with the autographs of gamers. Six years later, the membership debuted the everlasting trophy that stuns gamers for its enormity: a placing silver replica of the clubhouse, with its options rendered in such vivid element that there are 24 louvers per shutter. An engraver added the names of the champions and runners-up to the bottom’s bands every year, however winners themselves acquired a bas-relief duplicate and the cigarette field.
In 1993, although, Augusta Nationwide embraced the concept of a duplicate trophy and deserted the cigarette bins and bas-reliefs. Match organizers determined that the duplicate trophy would look very similar to the one on show within the clubhouse. Reflecting the cigarette field custom, although, additionally they determined its base would come with the signatures of the sector. Organizers accumulate the signatures when gamers arrive for the match.
“You’re at Augusta, so that you at all times be sure to do a pleasant signature, and I’m positive if it wasn’t good, they’d most likely have you ever redo it,” Dustin Johnson, the 2020 winner, mentioned with amusing. If solely, Scott steered: “Not all of them are legible, in fact, and a few it’s important to guess at, however it’s a good contact.”
Mickelson has his Masters trophies, together with the prizes from different main tournaments, collectively. Watson has put in his first trophy at his workplace, and his second is on the College of Georgia, his alma mater. When Scott is away from his Australia house, his dad and mom normally maintain his. Reed had his in a lounge earlier than shifting it to an workplace.
“That factor shines like no different,” he mentioned. “It’s a reminder of all of the onerous work, the way it’s paid off. However it’s additionally a reminder that you really want that feeling once more, so I really use it as motivation to attempt to observe tougher and attempt to get again to that time.”
And it seems that folks don’t attempt to contact it. He typically does, although.
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