Please Take Your SEATS

The rules at Augusta National can be downright draconian. No electronics, no denim—and don't even think about running. So why are patrons permitted to populate the course with thousands of $30 folding chairs? Let's sit a spell on that.

- JOSHUA BERHOW

FRIDAY MORNING AT THE 2022 MASTERS. Patrons are moving— not running, because you can’t run here. More like power walking. Something brisk but restrained; a symphony of squeaking sneakers gliding across the dewy grounds.

At the WM Phoenix Open, as soon as the sun breaks, twentysomethings are allowed to sprint to the par-3 16th to snag coveted stadium seats. This isn’t that. But these patrons still have places to go, people.

You see, decorum is king at the Masters. There’s a lengthy list of rules, but there are also some incredibly sweet perks, like this one: You can arrive early, hustle (not conspicuously!) through the gates, find your two-by-two-foot parcel of prime viewing real estate and stake your claim to it with a chair. You’re then free to roam Augusta National. Buy a hat or ten in the enormous Golf Shop. See what all the pimento-cheese-sandwich fuss is about. Be a buttinsky at Butler Cabin. Do recon on the Par 3 Course. Then, hours later, with the tournament heating up, return to a spot that’s all yours.

Try pulling a stunt like this at even a low-rent resort—by, say, dropping your towel on a poolside chaise—and you’ll get run out of town by the Speedo police. Here at the Masters? It’s practically a right etched in stone; one of the greatest traditions of a tournament with many of them.

Like most things Augusta National, the origin of this ritual is shrouded in mystery. Most people you talk to about it think it happened organically. Others suspect that ANGC members and the tournament’s corporate sponsors helped usher in the honor system when, with folding chairs in tow, they were allowed early access to the course. Paying patrons eventually followed suit.