Check out what your favorite players will be wearing at Augusta this weekend.
Every golfer’s favorite week is here. The week that inspires all of us around the world to practice more and step up our style game.
The Masters is steeped in history, but professional golfers are keeping up with the times in new and stylish ways. Golf’s favorite apparel brands such as Adidas, FootJoy, Bonobos, TravisMathew and more have dropped the details on what their star players will be sporting.
Players will be wearing a variety of blues, corals and muted colors on Sunday to pair well with the green jacket.
Golfweek has put together a list of the top looks that will be showcased during 2023 Masters week.
View photos of Masters champion Sandy Lyle throughout his career.
A two-time major champion, Sandy Lyle is one of the best players to emerge from the home of golf.
The Scot called it a career following the 2023 Galleri Classic, a Champions Tour event. The 1988 Masters winner will have one last hoorah at Augusta National before exiting stage left.
He leaves professional golf after more than 50 years competing across the globe, tallying 30 professional wins and touted as one of the best golfers from Britain throughout the 1980s.
A five-time Ryder Cup member, Lyle’s other career highlights include winning the 1985 Open Championship and the 1988 Masters.
Inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2012, Lyle has undoubtedly left a positive impact on the game and will continue to be a fantastic ambassador for the game throughout his retirement.
Max Homa, Cameron Young and Will Zalatoris are expected to wear the Premiere Series Field Pastel as they play Augusta National.
Before the start of last month’s Players Championship, FootJoy teamed up with West Coast style maven John Buscemi to drop a limited version of the Premiere Series Field and Wilcox shoes. Those stylish, limited-edition shoes are long gone, but for the 2023 Masters, FootJoy is dropping more limited-edition shoes, but the Premiere “Pastel Pack” is an homage to the coming of spring.
This week at the Masters, FootJoy staffers Max Homa, Cameron Young and Will Zalatoris are expected to wear the Premiere Series Field Pastel as they play Augusta National. Get a closer look at the shoes below.
Check out some of the best (and worst) Champions Dinner menus.
Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters are both steeped in history.
One of the best traditions of the annual meeting down Magnolia Lane is the Champions Dinner held each Tuesday night of tournament week. Over the years, some of the best players to ever swing a club have gathered to share a meal of the defending champion’s choice.
This year, Scottie Scheffler is offering up a Texas-sized menu for his fellow champions to feast on. But how does the world No. 1’s menu stack up with previous dinners?
Fair warning, readers, this list of Masters Champions Dinner menus over the last 30 years is sure to make you hungry.
This instructor developed his philosophy while watching Ben Hogan and he has strong opinions on Tiger’s swing since the accident.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – After enduring a horrific car crash in February 2021, Tiger Woods returned to the Masters 508 days later and made the cut. What will he do for his next act?
That is to be determined but one legendary golf instructor thinks the accident actually was a positive for Tiger’s golf swing.
Carl Lohren turned 85 last week and more than 50 years after pupils Deane Beman, Marty Fleckman and Babe Hiskey were on the PGA Tour, he’s got another up-and-comer in the name of Ryan Gerard, who earned Special Temporary Membership on the Tour on Sunday.
Lohren, author of the cult-classic instructional book “One Move to Better Golf,” has forgotten more about the golf swing than most instructors know. He developed his philosophy on the swing while watching Ben Hogan and he has strong opinions on Tiger’s latest swing since the accident, arguing that Tiger’s swing, which was most recently on display at the Genesis Invitational in February, is vastly improved, in part, because of the accident.
“The accident helped Tiger because his right leg and right hip aren’t jumping anymore,” Lohren said. “He doesn’t block it as much. When Tiger hit it hard, he had a strong tendency to have his right leg and hip overpower his left leg and hip and that causes an early spin out.”
For several years Tiger feared the driver, according to Hank Haney, his former instructor of six years, who tabbed Tiger’s Big Miss, what tour pros call the shot that can bring a big number into play, as a block to the right.
Tiger Woods hits from the No. 13 fairway during a practice round ahead of the 2023 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Michael Madrid-USA TODAY Network)
“He hit it too early with his lower right side. When he’d get to the top of the backswing, he’d spin the right hip real early, which is what caused his knee problem,” Lohren said. “Instead of moving laterally first and then turning, he turned right away and when he did that then the left hip never got over the left foot. The left hip was behind the left foot and it put a lot of strain on his knee. If his left hip would have gone laterally in the beginning, his left hip would’ve gotten over his left foot so when he made that violent turn it would be all stacked up over the foot and the knee wouldn’t have taken the brunt of it.
“But because he spun early from the right hip, not only did he get stuck behind that right hip, so his hands were going out to the right, but his left hip didn’t get over his left foot, lack of lateral motion in the beginning, and therefore the left knee absorbed the problem. That’s why he hit it sideways with the driver.”
Augusta National is typically thought of as a second-shot course, but driving the ball has become increasingly important in recent years. If Tiger can avoid his ‘Big Miss’ and find more fairways, it could go a long way to upping his chances of winning a 16th major and sixth career Green Jacket. Lohren isn’t saying that the crash was a good thing overall – Tiger’s stamina and ability to play 72 holes will forever be in question due to the injuries to his leg and ankle – but it isn’t all bad at least when it comes to his swing.
“Now, with his right leg and right hip no longer able to be so active, he swings the driver more like he did an iron,” Lohren said.
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It will be dispiriting if a victorious LIV player sees his triumph conscripted in service of Norman’s grievances.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Among the many life lessons one might expect Greg Norman to have absorbed by age 68, the danger of prematurely planning victory parties at Augusta National ranks high. And yet the Great White Pilot Fish is eagerly anticipating celebrations this week at the Masters. Since any prospective festivities aren’t dependent on Norman closing, there’s a chance they might happen, though he won’t be joining since in these precincts he’s about as welcome as diarrhea in a space suit.
The 88-man field at the 87th Masters numbers 18 players from LIV Golf, Norman’s Saudi-funded breakaway tour. Six of them are past champions. Most of the remaining 12 — and some of the six — would deem a win this week to be the crowning achievement of their career. One wonders if it gives any of them pause to know that their CEO intends to cheapen their accomplishment by weaponizing it in his ongoing battle with the PGA Tour and golf’s establishment.
In an interview with NewsCorp, Norman said that if a LIV player wins then all 17 of his fellow travelers will be waiting behind the final green to make a statement.
“No matter who it is, they are all going to be there on the 18th green, they are all going to be there, and that just gives me goosebumps to think about,” he said, exhibiting commendable faith that all of his foot soldiers will still be in town then. “To have those 17 other guys there, that’s the spirit we want.”
Setting aside Norman’s unimpeachable authority on the power of goosebumps on Sunday at the Masters, the “spirit” he presents as camaraderie could also be seen as churlish grandstanding, diminishing the peak of a man’s career in order to score points that his product can’t deliver on its merits. And it could happen.
This is the first Masters held in the freshly cleaved world of professional golf and the 18 LIV competitors comprise a fifth of the field. The odds are reasonably high that at least one of them will have a good week and play their way into contention, perhaps even into a green jacket. Someone like Dustin Johnson, who won the pandemic-delayed edition in November 2020.
“If I’m playing the way I should, I’ll be right there at the end,” he said Monday.
Johnson’s preparation was finishing 7th in a LIV stop at Orange County National’s Crooked Cat course in Orlando, widely considered among the worst layouts in a town that doesn’t have any great ones. Brooks Koepka won that 54-hole event. He’s performed well previously at Augusta National himself and is a legitimate threat to do so again. Same for Cameron Smith, the reigning Open champion, who has a pair of top-three finishes here. Or perhaps we’ll have a bulletin week from Joaquin Niemann, who said “hate” from anti-LIV players is driving his cohorts to prove a point, which in his case would be logging any finish better than his career-best tie for 23rd in a major.
Whoever slips into the Green Jacket on Sunday will be a deserving winner. But a popular one? That’s not as certain.
The presence of LIV players undeniably adds frisson to this Masters, but that’s not much welcomed by Augusta National’s members who don’t consider unseemly sniping and palpable tension as enhancing their tournament. Many a contender has had a sleepless night before the final round of the Masters, but if Patrick Reed is within reach of a second title at the close of Saturday’s play then some green jackets will have an equally restless time clutching rosary beads or karmic charms.
It will be dispiriting if a victorious LIV player sees his triumph conscripted in service of Norman’s grievances, reduced to a prop in his flailing sideshow. But it wouldn’t be the first time a Masters champion saw his moment devalued because of the flaxen-haired finger puppet’s shortcomings—Larry Mize and Nick Faldo were given less than their due because Norman snatched defeat when victory seemed ordained.
That Greg Norman openly hopes to fashion a hollow victory for LIV from another man attaining his lifelong dream, that he is hating vicariously through others, is reason enough to hope that he experiences one last, gutting Masters disappointment.
“I don’t think you could have those in the same sentence, other than I played there last week and I’m playing here this week,” Johnson said.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Dustin Johnson didn’t bother to sugarcoat the difference between Orange Country National’s Crooked Cat Course, the site of last week’s LIV Orlando event, and Augusta National Golf Club, site of this week’s 87th Masters.
“I don’t think you could have those in the same sentence, other than I played there last week and I’m playing here this week,” Johnson said.
They do both have National in their name but that’s about where the similarities end. Orange County National, a 36-hole public facility in Winter Garden, Florida, ranks No. 20 in Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in Florida, which is two spots behind the second course at TPC Sawgrass. Augusta National ranks third in the Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list. To make matters worse for LIV golfers, Crooked Cat, which has hosted PGA Tour Q-School in the past, was looking pretty scruffy last weekend for the likes of Johnson, Phil Mickelson and 54-hole tournament winner Brooks Koepka.
“A golf course that potentially wasn’t ready for us,” is how Graeme McDowell delicately put it. “Aesthetically not very pleasing.”
Crooked Cat, one of the courses at Orange County National in Florida, hosted a LIV Golf event.
Sources tell Golfweek that Isleworth Golf Club, in the Orlando town of Windermere and where Tiger Woods once lived and LIV member Charles Howell III is a longtime resident, had agreed to host the Orlando LIV stop but pulled the plug and Crooked Cat stepped in as a late replacement. (Isleworth was never officially announced as a tournament site by LIV. It is a sister property with Lake Nona, where LIV golfers McDowell, Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson all call home.)
“Some places don’t want us,” Harold Varner III. “This is a great place, great layout, it’s just not in the best of shape right now. That’s going to take time to get courses that accept LIV. Some people are gun shy about sponsoring it because you don’t want to mess up relationships that existed before.”
But Johnson, the 2020 Masters winner, isn’t too worried about the quality of the course he played last weekend ahead of playing arguably the best-manicured course with some of the fastest greens in the country. He was just happy to get some reps before he tries to win a second Green Jacket.
“I still play golf for a living. I’m here at the Masters and enjoying this week,” Johnson said. “It’s still golf. So it doesn’t matter where you play at.”
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Harrison likely won’t be hitting any trick shots onto Augusta National property from the Waffle House this week.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Harrison Crowe might be best known for hitting a shot off the concrete sidewalk near the famous Dunvegan pub onto the 18th green at the Old Course. Harrison likely won’t be hitting any trick shots onto Augusta National property from the Waffle House this week, but the 21-year-old amateur would like to get another crack at skipping the ball on the par-3 16thafter plopping one in the middle of the lake.
When filmmaker Erik Anders Lang went into the Dunvegan in search of someone who could recreate the shot he’d heard Ernie Els once hit in the wee hours of the morning, Crowe answered the call.
After his first shot off a tee went long, Crowe opted to hit another bright red ball directly off the paving stone, aiming over a chimney at the end of the block. His second shot found the green, and Crowe’s St. Andrews stunt now has nearly 300,000 views on YouTube.
The reaction since then, he said, has been mostly positive.
“A lot of people have really come to me, especially when I played the Australian Open at the end of last year,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the crowd support I had amongst playing with Cameron Davis and Adam Scott.”
Crowe, one of seven amateurs in the field at the 87th Masters, played his way into the field at Augusta National by winning the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship last fall by one shot over Bo Jin at Amata Spring Country Club in Thailand. Crowe trailed Jin by three at the turn but made four birdies in a five-hole span starting on No. 11 to turn the tide.
The victory also gave Crowe a start in the 151st British Open at Royal Liverpool.
Crowe spent Monday playing alongside fellow Aussies Jason Day and Min Woo Lee and was grateful for the advice. On Tuesday, he’ll tee it up with Adam Scott, Cameron Smith and Lee. It’s been 10 years since Scott became the first Aussie to win the Masters.
Day looks at the technology that’s now available to young players and finds the process of getting better to be much more efficient than his era.
“I think through just the accessibility of like social media and other forms of that,” said Day, “you’re able to view professionals and hit golf shots on the range and seeing what they are doing, how they are good, and then obviously that actually helps with the coaching as well, and that coaching aspect as well.
Caddie Andrew Tschudin watches as Harrison Crowe hits from the fairway on no. 15 during a practice round for the 2023 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Michael Madrid-USA TODAY Network)
“Back in the day, when I was growing up, you couldn’t FaceTime your coach. It was non-existent. We had, like, handheld camcorders that would take videos or cameras that would take videos. These days you can take a video on your phone and send it to your coach and jump on FaceTime.”
Crowe comes into this week not simply looking to make the cut, but to make serious noise, telling the Australian Associated Press that it’s setting the bar too low “if you don’t believe you can win.”
He’s certainly not afraid to put on a show, as demonstrated on the streets of St. Andrews.
“I think hitting that shot just kind of shows the person that I am,” said Crowe. “That I’m not really afraid to give everything a shot, and kind of shows a little bit more of the Aussie culture a little bit, as well; that we are pretty laid back and we are ready to do things.”
The Season Opener collection includes balls that have a special azalea pattern, plus headcovers and bags.
The azaleas and dogwoods are in bloom in Georgia, there is a warm breeze blowing and Jim Nantz’s voice is primed. It’s Masters time once again.
To celebrate the arrival of the season’s first major championship, TaylorMade is making commemorative golf balls and accessories available to its staff players like Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood, as well as golfers at home who are in the Masters spirit.
The Season Opener collection includes TP5 and TP5x Pix golf balls that have been given a special azalea pattern instead of the normal triangles, along with headcovers for your driver, fairway woods, hybrids and putter. There are also commemorative staff bags too.
All of the Season Opener products, which you can preview below, are available while supplies last, on taylormadegolf.com.
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Check out the best photos of Tiger Woods as he returns to Augusta National.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods has officially begun his preparation for a sixth green jacket.
The 15-time major champion made the trip down Magnolia Lane on Sunday afternoon to practice on the range at Augusta National Golf Club ahead of the 2023 Masters Tournament this week. He was joined by caddie Joe LaCava and greeted by Chairman Fred Ridley and fellow players like Jason Day and Billy Horschel.
On Monday morning Woods was back on the range and shared pleasantries with Jose Maria Olazabal, Fred Couples and good friend Rory McIlroy. He then played a second-nine practice round with Couples, McIlroy and Tom Kim.
Last year Woods made the cut in his return to Augusta National following his single-car accident that nearly cost him his leg.
