Who Started the Champions Dinner?
Who Started the Champions Dinner?
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In 1952 Ben Hogan arranged a dinner for all previous Masters champions. The following year they enjoyed dinner now known as the Champions Dinner.
This famous dinner takes place on Tuesday night of tournament week. As most of you know, the previous year's champion selects the menu and serves as host for dinner.
The variety of food requested is amazing!
Brett Kelley from about sports gives us interesting menus.
The Champions Dinner has been an annual tradition at The Masters since 1952, when Ben Hogan suggested and hosted the first dinner.
The idea is simple: Winners of The Masters are members of an exclusive club, so they get together each year on the Tuesday night of tournament week to welcome the previous year's winner to the club. That club is officially known as the Masters Club, but unofficially the gathering is called the Champions Dinner.
The previous year's winner gets to select the menu
He also has to pay for producing that menu. Over the years, the dinner fare has ranged from cheeseburgers to sushi to haggis*.
The former champs can eat off the regular menu if they do not like what the defending champion selects.
If the reigning champ's taste isn't to the taste of other Masters' winners in the room, they can order off Augusta National's regular menu (which includes steaks, chicken, and fish dishes).
Our favorite Champions Dinner menu
Tiger Woods offered it in 1998: cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, french fries, and milkshakes. But, hey, Tiger was only 22 at the time.
It's difficult to find info on Champions Dinner menus from the early days of the event, but more recent menus are reported in the media in the weeks leading up to The Masters.
Here is a sampling of Champions Dinner fare
(the source for most of the pre-2000 menus listed below is a 1999 article in The Augusta
Adam Scott, 2014.
Surf-and-turf on the grill, including Moreton Bay 'bugs' (lobster). We started with an appetizer of artichoke and arugula salad with calamari. Next, the Australian Wagyu beef New York Strip steak served with Moreton Bay lobster, sauteed spinach, onion cream mashed potatoes. Desserts of strawberry and passion fruit pavlova, Anzac biscuit, and vanilla sundae.
Bubba Watson, 2013.
Traditional caesar salad to start. Then, an entree of grilled chicken breast with sides of green beans, mashed potatoes, corn, macaroni, and cheese, served with cornbread—dessert of confetti cake and vanilla ice cream.
Charl Schwartzel, 2012.
An opening course consisting of a chilled seafood bar includes shrimp, lobster, crabmeat, crab legs, and oysters. The main course is a "braai," a South African barbecue, which includes lamb chops, steaks, and South African sausages—a dessert of vanilla ice cream sundae. Also in the mix are salads, cheeses, plus sides such as sauteed sweet corn, green beans, and Dauphinoise potatoes.
Source: Brett Kelley aboutsports Mel Sole Golf School.
Pictures: David Cannon/Getty Images Keith Allison
Thanks for reading - Who Started the Champions Dinner? Thank you, Mr. Ben Hoogan!
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