AUGUSTA, Ga. — Last yr, within the months after he gained the Masters Tournament for the primary time, Scottie Scheffler heard a parcel was coming his means from Georgia.
“I didn’t know exactly what it would be,” Scheffler recalled over the winter. “They have the trophy in the clubhouse, but it’s, like, really big.”
That trophy, fabricated from about 900 items of sterling silver and weighing a minimum of 100 kilos, didn’t go away Augusta National Golf Club. 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 personalised that it consists of the signatures of each participant in that yr’s Masters area, the trophy that includes Augusta National’s clubhouse is way much less famend than the inexperienced jacket the winner earns. But as a result of gamers historically take their blazers away from Augusta National 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 a real talking point at the house, I must say, because people are shocked to realize there is a trophy,” mentioned Adam Scott, who gained the event in 2013. “And then you get to have a good look at it and the detail in it is fantastic — the clubhouse and then things like the signatures.”
This yr’s competitors, three many years after Bernhard Langer turned the primary winner to obtain a reproduction trophy, is scheduled to conclude Sunday, climate allowing. The strategy of making ready one prize, although, has already begun: When gamers arrived for the event, organizers collected the signatures that may wind up on the trophy.
That Augusta National awards a trophy will not be distinctive in golf, a predominantly particular person sport with archives crammed of images of champions rejoicing with their {hardware}. At final summer season’s British Open, Cameron Smith estimated that two cans of beer would fill the claret jug he had earned and had his identify engraved on minutes after the event’s finish.
But 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 recreation since 1895. At the Masters, although, the trophy is basically an afterthought to the inexperienced jacket — nonetheless satirically, given the winner’s restricted time with the sartorial prize.
“As a kid and as an adult, you focus on one thing, and that’s the green jacket,” mentioned Bubba Watson, who gained at Augusta in 2012 and 2014. “You don’t know about the other stuff that comes with it. You don’t think about the trophy. You don’t think about the gold coin. You don’t think about privileges of being able to play there. As a kid, as a 10-year-old, as a 12-year-old when I was dreaming about making putts, it was all about the green 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 event’s heritage.
“It brings about feelings of Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts and them creating this event and creating this special club, so it actually has a lot of very subtle undertones to it,” Mickelson mentioned.
In addition to cash — final yr’s purse was $15 million — Augusta National provides 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 obtained 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 have a 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 wear quite often” from a long-ago keep within the Crow’s Nest, an condominium within the clubhouse’s attic that’s obtainable for novice golfers.)
But the trophy, due to its shortage and comparably low profile, is very often a novelty. Watson recalled his first thought was “a lot of silver.”
“When you open that up and you see the trophy, it hits you,” mentioned Patrick Reed, the 2018 winner. “And then it becomes, ‘Where do I put it where everyone can see it but also everyone doesn’t touch it?’”
It is 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 immediately. The personal dinner for previous champions started in 1952, and the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth holes picked up the Amen Corner moniker from Sports Illustrated in 1958.
In between the dinner’s starting and the nook’s christening, in 1955, Augusta National 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 hanging 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 National embraced the thought of a reproduction trophy and deserted the cigarette bins and bas-reliefs. Tournament organizers determined that the duplicate trophy would look very similar to the one on show within the clubhouse. Reflecting the cigarette field custom, although, in addition they determined its base would come with the signatures of the sector. Organizers accumulate the signatures when gamers arrive for the event.
“You’re at Augusta, so you always make sure you do a nice signature, and I’m sure if it wasn’t nice, they’d probably have you redo it,” Dustin Johnson, the 2020 winner, mentioned with amusing. If solely, Scott instructed: “Not all of them are legible, of course, and some you have to guess at, but it is a nice touch.”
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 University of Georgia, his alma mater. When Scott is away from his Australia residence, his mother and father often preserve his. Reed had his in a front room earlier than transferring it to an workplace.
“That thing shines like no other,” he mentioned. “It’s a reminder of all the hard work, how it’s paid off. But it’s also a reminder that you want that feeling again, so I actually use it as motivation to try to practice harder and try to get back to that point.”
And it seems that folks don’t attempt to contact it. He generally does, although.
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