Where to sit at the Masters Champions Dinner? Scottie Scheffler talks about ‘protocol’
If you’re worried about where to sit at Thanksgiving, imagine how you might feel as the new Masters winner approaching the table at the Fabled Champions Dinner and deciding where to pull up a seat. There are no place cards or seating charts – just legends mixed with multiple top winners looking over vodka-sodas and dinner rolls and saying with their eyes, “Sure, kid, you’re going to sit. here?”
“There’s no assigned seating, but a lot of people are sitting in the same seats,” said Adam Scott, 2013 champion, 2023. “I love that, the absolute honesty. I love the fact that you feel like that’s your place.”
Yes, once you do established that place.
The first year is easy, because as the defending champion and the host, he automatically sits at the head of the table, investigated by the host of the dinner, two-time champion Ben Crenshaw, and Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley. Year 2 gets tough. Scott rounded off his second dinner appearance by walking briskly to an open space next to his childhood golf buddy Trevor Immelman, a table pocket where Nick Faldo is also a regular.
Other players have built their own collections at the table: Zach Johnson is joined by Jordan Spieth, with players such as Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed and seniors Larry Mize and Bernhard Langer also in the region. Three legends – Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Tom Watson – pull into the seats to the left of the head. The late Fuzzy Zoeller loved the end of the table, which is like sitting in the back of the school bus. And so it is. Call them comfort zones.
It may sound like Scottie Scheffler has been winning blue jackets (and a lot of other things) for decades, but he, in fact, didn’t attend his first Champions Dinner until 2023. “Your first time in that room, you don’t really know what to expect,” Scheffler said Wednesday from Bay Hill. The only thing I really knew was where I was going to live.” Basically that’s all I knew, sitting next to Mr.
Scheffler said he arrived early and “sneaked” his wife, Meredith, into the room to watch her from the meal he helped prepare (among the menu items: cheeseburger sliders and tortilla soup).
A year later, at a dinner hosted by 2023 winner Jon Rahm, Scheffler was uncertain about his move. “There’s a little bit of a process,” he said of where players tend to sit, or, for that matter, not stay. “I’m not going to sit where Tiger and Jack sit. Like, there’s the kind of places where you feel like you’re going to flow naturally.”
Teaming up with his Texas friend Spieth would have been a logical move for Scheffler, but Scheffler knew better than to try that, saying with a laugh, “I didn’t ask Jordan to sit next to him, because he would have done something to make sure I didn’t have a place to stay.” Instead, Scheffler turned to Zach Johnson and said, “Hey, where are you sitting this year? And he told me, and he was nice and he let me join him.”
