If you’re worried about where you’ll sit at Thanksgiving, imagine what it feels like to be a rookie Masters winner as you approach the table at the legendary Dinner of Champions and decide where to pull your chair. There are no place cards or seating charts, just various legends and multiple major winners looking up from their vodka sodas and dinner rolls and saying with their eyes, here? ”
2013 Champion Adam Scott said in 2023: “There are no assigned seats, but a lot of people are sitting in the same chair. I like that, to be honest. I like that it feels like it’s my seat.”
Well, once you do it Establishment That place.
The first year is easy. Because as the defending champion and host, you sit at the head of the table by default, flanked by the dinner’s permanent hosts, two-time champion Ben Crenshaw and Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley. The second year is even more complicated. At the sophomore dinner, Scott trotted into an empty spot next to junior golf buddy Trevor Immelman, a pocket at a table where Nick Faldo was also a regular.
Other players have also formed their own table cliques. Zach Johnson will join Jordan Spieth, and Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and veterans Larry Mize and Bernhard Langer are also in the area. Three legends, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Tom Watson, are drawn to the seats just to the left of my head. The late Fuzzy Zoller preferred a seat at the end of the table, which is a bit like the back seat of a school bus. And it will be. We call them comfort zones.
It may feel like Scottie Scheffler has been winning the Green Jacket (and many other awards) for decades, but in fact, he didn’t attend his first Champion’s Dinner until 2023. “It’s my first time walking into that room. I really don’t know what to expect,” Scheffler said Wednesday from Bay Hill. “The only thing I really knew was where I was going to sit. Sitting next to Mr. Crenshaw and the chairman was basically the only thing I knew.”
Scheffler said he arrived early and “sneaked” his wife, Meredith, into the room to peek at the dinner she helped arrange, which included cheeseburger sliders and tortilla soup on the menu.
A year later, at a banquet hosted by 2023 winner Jon Rahm, Scheffler was less sure about his move. “There’s a little bit of a routine,” he said of where players tend to sit. do not have sit. “I would never sit where Tiger and Jack are sitting. It feels like a place that just flows naturally.”
It would have been a natural move for Scheffler to lean into his friend Spieth in Texas, but Scheffler said with a laugh that he was smarter than to try. “I never asked Jordan to sit next to him because he would do anything to make sure there was no place for me to sit.” Instead, Scheffler turned to Zach Johnson and said, “Hey, where are you sitting this year? And he said to me, and he was kind enough to let me join him.”