AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Rory McIlroy returned to Augusta National for the first time as the Masters champion without his golf golf equipment and with high anticipation.
The night time after he finally won the inexperienced jacket last April, McIlroy climbed the 13 spiral stairs to the second flooring of the clubhouse and walked through a door that says, “Masters Club Room. Private.”
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Champions only.
He could not wait to see the most unique locker room in golf, intimate and understated, only 27 lockers. Missing that April night time was his nameplate, and so his return in December to work on a Prime Video documentary made him keen to discover out whose names would be on his locker.
It felt like Christmas morning the method he talked about discovering out.
Ben Hogan 1953. Raymond Floyd 1976. Rory McIlroy 2025.
“I was wondering who they were going to put me with,” McIlroy said. “Were they going to put me with another European? I didn’t really know. But having Hogan’s locker? That’s pretty cool, another guy who did the (Grand) Slam. And then Raymond, who I’ve known for a long time and has been a good friend to me in golf over the years.
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“Incredible,” he said. “It never gets old.”
The champions’ unique room was created in 1978 and since renovated, but not expanded, which is why lockers are shared (not by lively gamers).
The locker room in the new Players Services Building is more spacious and grander. Masters champions will have a locker there, too, for comfort when they use the fitness and restoration space on the basement degree.
But they’ll still be upstairs in their own room, primarily because they can.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Hideki Matsuyama said through his interpreter about returning as Masters champion after his 2021 win. “When I went back for the first time, I knew I could go in, but it just didn’t feel right. It was like, ‘Really? I can go in?’ It’s not that I was nervous or my English. It was just, ‘Wow.’”
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Tiger Woods shares a locker with Jack Burke Jr., who died in 2024. Jack Nicklaus shares with Horton Smith, the first winner of the Masters. Trevor Immelman has Nick Faldo.
Imagine how it felt for Jordan Spieth when he saw his title next to Arnold Palmer on a locker.
“It never crossed my mind until I got there,” Spieth said. “They said, ‘Here’s who you’re sharing your locker with. I didn’t know they shared lockers.”
Spieth was the defending champion at the Masters Club dinner in 2016, the last one Palmer attended. His mission now is to get an outdated pair of sneakers belonging to Palmer to put in the locker, just to give the King a presence. “That would be cool,” Spieth said.
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Scottie Scheffler had seen the room when his Texas staff took journeys to Augusta National, so his curiosity was working high when he returned as champion for the first time. It was a Texas theme, his title next to Charles Coody and Byron Nelson.
“Charles for sure, because I see him in there using it,” Scheffler said. “I mean, we truly share a locker. He changes his shoes. He has his green jacket. When he shows up he puts his jacket on, and when he leaves he puts his jacket up.”
Adam Scott shares a locker with Gary Player, whom he referred to as “probably the greatest international player ever.” The 5-foot-6 “Black Knight” is 90 and still hits the ceremonial tee shot.
“I was curious and pleasantly surprised to be sharing with Gary, although I didn’t know he’d use all my stuff,” Scott said with a chuckle.
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One time Scott needed to put on his inexperienced jacket for a perform during the Masters, and the sleeves came midway up his forearm. “Looks like Gary took the wrong jacket again,” Scott said.
Few others had a more memorable discovery of sharing a locker than Mark O’Meara.
He had seen the room before because he stayed upstairs in the Crow’s Nest when he performed as the U.S. Amateur champion and snuck down one night time to see it. He walked in the entrance door as a Masters champion with two units of sneakers, realizing his title would be on another’s locker, not sure whom it would be.
“There’s three small tables, four chairs at each one, and one person sitting there,” O’Meara said. “The locker room attendant says, ‘Let me show you where you are.’ I knew who was sitting in the chair. It was Gene Sarazen, sitting with his back to where we came in.”
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Two lockers down he saw the nameplates — Gene Sarazen 1935, Mark O’Meara 1998.
“So I’m sharing a locker with Gene Sarazen, who is actually sitting with his back turned to the locker,” O’Meara said. “I put my palms on the back of his shoulders and said, ‘Mr. Sarazen, I hate to inform you, I’m your locker mate.’”
They had met before because O’Meara used to play in the Sarazen World Open.
“He said, ‘Mark do me a favor. At this stage in my life, I don’t get a lot of free (stuff). Can you leave a couple of extra dozen golf balls when you leave?’” O’Meara said.
O’Meara said he would mail as many as the Squire wanted. Sarazen died a month later.
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The centerpiece of the intimate room is a glass case that honors the current champion, including a mannequin with the green jacket draped on the shirt the champion wore in the final round, along with a club used for a meaningful shot in the win. There’s also the original letter Hogan wrote in 1952 suggesting a “stag dinner” for Masters champions.
Twenty-six of the lockers were empty when McIlroy returned in December — green jackets are kept in a separate room. His contained a surprise.
“There was a note in there from Jack,” McIlroy said. “He’d been there one or two weeks previous and it just said, ‘Welcome to the club.’
“It’s a wonderful perk.”
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
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