The Masters: Masonic vibes and an £8.5k tab? Not for me, thanks

If I ever found myself standing over the eighteenth hole at Augusta in the evening’s lengthening shadows, with a simple tap-in to win the Masters, I know exactly what I would do.

I would settle over the ball, take the deepest of breaths and, while waiting for that famous hush to fall, close my eyes and briefly reflect on the journey which had brought me here.

Then I would open my eyes again, draw back the head of my putter and carefully but firmly knock the ball off the green and into the long grass.

Simple calculation by me. Because otherwise, as winner, you have to design, pay for and attend the following year’s champion’s dinner.

And, honestly, as golfing forfeits go, I can’t imagine anything much worse.

Yes, you’ve just won the Masters, but next year it’s dinner on the Tuesday night with Gary Player and Phil Mickelson (among others), and you’re paying. Yikes.

OK, designing the dinner would be quite entertaining.

Rory McIlroy certainly seems to have had fun doing his for this year, nodding variously to his childhood (Irish champ), his mum’s cooking (bacon-wrapped dates) and
his favourite New York restaurant (tuna carpaccio).

From the peach and ricotta flatbreads to the wagyu filet mignon, McIlroy’s menu was a cheerful tour of the modern culinary horizon, not to mention an education for those of us who, until last week, would have guessed that “elk sliders” were some kind of leisure shoe.

And paying for it? Well, fair enough, I suppose. Not that it come cheap. None of the wines on McIlroy’s list seem to have been under £750 a bottle, and it’s reported that his dinner came in at about £250 per head. I count 34 heads in the official photograph from the occasion, so that’s a tab of £8,500, service not included.

Then again, you get $4.2m (£3.1m) for winning the Masters, so I suppose it’s a negligible toll in the context, no matter how high Jack Nicklaus piles his plate with elk sliders on the night. Plus I guess it’s always nice to give something back.

So, completely happy to do the menu, and more or less happy to pay for it. But actually attending… it’s here that I start to feel uneasy.

It’s well understood that the three most depressing words in the English language are “replacement bus service”. But I would argue that some acknowledgement is also due for the hard work being done in this area by the two words “gala dinner”.

And this is surely a gala dinner and then some, with everyone in those green blazers that Augusta dishes out. I haven’t worn a blazer since school. Now I can’t witness all-male gatherings in uniform without getting strong masonic vibes and wondering whether there’s a special handshake that I don’t know about.

And obviously one doesn’t wish to generalise crudely about professional golfers, but I reckon it’s safe to assume there would be a good number of people in this room who take a largely positive view of Donald Trump, and quite a fair sprinkling who actually voted for him, possibly twice.

Each to their own, of course. But I have an inkling that, when this peculiar era of ours eventually plays out, history will not reflect well on Trump’s enablers, and I’d be anxious that it might not reflect well on me, either, for having bought them dinner, especially at £250 per head.

Tough crowd, too. Nick Faldo witheringly compared Bubba Watson’s 2015 menu with a trip to Chuck E Cheese – “a little hamburger, and a little corn, and a little ice cream… I think we had a milkshake as well.”

Imagine the mortification of having Faldo look up from his plate with
an expression of gleeful contempt on his face and say, “Seriously? Sausages?”

Look, I believe McIlroy when he says this is “the most exclusive dinner club in all of sport” and that he was “incredibly grateful” to be a part of it.

But no. Not for me. One shot for glory out there, and it’s going in the rough.

Photograph by Getty Images