Roll up, roll up! Inside the curious chaos of the Masters Golf Shop

“Too many people,” observed Will Rogers, “spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” 

It’s unlikely ‘Oklahoma’s Favourite Son’, one of the great vaudeville performers, ever attended the Masters. He died the year after the inaugural tournament. However, if he had been at Augusta National today, he would probably have observed the scenes in the golf shop with a percipient nod.

Whilst Kevin Na was withdrawing after nine holes of the opening round and as Tiger Woods was putting the finishing touches to his preparation, hundreds of patrons were emptying their wallets in return for a myriad of Masters mementoes.

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Slap an Augusta logo on it and, quicker than you can say Mastercard, things that nobody needs inexplicably become things nobody can do without.

Candles laced with the ‘Scent of Augusta? Need. Rucksacks? Need. Ties? Never wear one but, yes, need. A maple wooden chopping board? Absolutely need.

It is a bewildering spectacle of glorious, gluttonous bedlam.

My colleague, Bryce Ritchie, knows what I’m talking about, as does his bank manager. On his first trip to Augusta in 2016, Bryce came home with a thousand-dollar haul.  

“I just bought a dog bowl,” he told me during a phone call on the Wednesday that year.  

He doesn’t have a dog.  

This is an object example of what Masters memorabilia can do to a person. The left side of your brain knows you’re being unduly profligate, but the right side of your brain is screaming “LOOK AT THAT LOGO!” 

Throughout this week, the queue for the shop has routinely extended out of the doors and halfway up the driving range. Four-hundred yards, give or take. But the line moves quickly and, before common sense has a chance to prevail, you’re inside and beholden to the chaos.

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It’s a bit like being on the dodgems, except you’re the car. Everybody wields the same, plain, dark green shopping basket. Staff wearing identikit lilac uniforms try their best to field inquiries that are fired at them with scattergun precision.

“Do you have this in a triple XL?”

“Would this fit my ten-year-old?”

“Where are the gnomes?”

It’s a frantic experience.

Patrons roam the shop floor with all the restraint of Boris Johnson fielding party invites. Many of them clutch crumpled shopping lists. Green baseball cap for John. Cuddly toy for Emily. Everybody wants a keepsake, for Pete’s sake. 

One man was overheard to ask for 30 (thirty!) baseball caps. “Any 30,” he said. “I don’t mind. You choose.” 

Shelves are replenished as quickly as they are cleared. It’s a slick operation.  

At the checkouts, where a bounty of grabbable point-of-sale items are on display – beer cosies, ball markers, jigsaws, key-rings, balls, you name it – the tills ring like the BT switchboard. Cashiers are coy about the biggest single sale they’ve taken. Discretion by decree of the Green Jackets, presumably.  

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However, one tells me that somebody spent a five-figure sum “not long after sunrise” earlier in the week. No mean feat considering things are, for the most part, reasonably priced.  

Officially, nobody will tell you how much money the shop makes. One, it’s a bit crass. Two, it’s none of your business. Estimates range from $50million to $70million across the week.

Me? Well, I just contributed $225 to that total: $125 on a watch; and $95 on a wall clock. I don’t need either of them.  

But LOOK AT THAT LOGO! 

Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor