MAESTRI ’26: Exclusive changing room, shared company

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Rory McIlroy returned to Augusta National for the first time as a Masters champion without his golf clubs and with great anticipation.

The night after he finally won the green jacket last April, McIlroy climbed the 13 spiral stairs to the second floor of the clubhouse and walked through a door that read: “Masters Club Room. Private.”

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Samples only.

He couldn’t wait to see golf’s most exclusive locker room, intimate and understated, just 27 lockers. His nametag was missing that April night, so his return in December to work on a Prime Video documentary made him anxious to find out what names would be on his locker.

It felt like Christmas morning the way he talked about finding out.

Ben Hogan 1953. Raymond Floyd 1976. Rory McIlroy 2025.

“I was wondering who they were going to put me with,” McIlroy said. “Would they have put me with another European? I didn’t really know. But to have Hogan’s locker? How nice, another guy who made 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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“Amazing,” he said. “It never gets old.”

The exclusive champions’ lounge was created in 1978 and has since been renovated, but not expanded, which is why the lockers are shared (not by active players).

The locker room in the new Players Services Building is more spacious and larger. Masters champions will also have a locker there, for convenience when using the fitness and recovery area in the basement.

But they’ll still stay upstairs in their room, mostly because they can.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Hideki Matsuyama said through his interpreter of returning as Masters champion after his 2021 victory. “When I first came back, I knew I could get in, but it just didn’t feel right. It was like, ‘Really? Can I get 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 Masters winner. Trevor Immelman has Nick Faldo.

Imagine how Jordan Spieth felt when he saw his name next to Arnold Palmer on a locker.

“It never crossed my mind until I got there,” Spieth said. “They said, ‘Here’s who you share 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 old pair of shoes belonging to Palmer to put in the locker, just to give the King a presence. “That would be nice,” Spieth said.

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Scottie Scheffler had seen the room when his Texas team went on a trip to Augusta National, so his curiosity was sky-high when he returned as champion for the first time. It was a Texas theme, his name alongside Charles Coody and Byron Nelson.

“Charles for sure, because I see him there using it,” Scheffler said. “I mean, we actually 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 back on.”

Adam Scott shares a locker with Gary Player, who he called “probably the greatest international player ever.” The 5-foot-6 “Black Knight” is 90 years old and still hits the ceremonial tee shot.

“I was curious and pleasantly surprised to share with Gary, even though I didn’t know he would use all my things,” Scott said, laughing.

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Scott once needed to wear his green jacket to a function during the Masters, and the sleeves reached halfway up his forearm. “Looks like Gary got the wrong jacket again,” Scott said.

Few others have had a more memorable discovery than Mark O’Meara in sharing a locker.

He had seen the room before because he had stayed upstairs in the Crow’s Nest when he played as the American amateur champion and had snuck down one night to see it. He walked in the front door like a Masters champion with two pairs of shoes, knowing his name would be on someone else’s locker, not sure who it would be.

“There are three small tables, four chairs each 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 entered.

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Two cabinets down he saw the tags: Gene Sarazen 1935, Mark O’Meara 1998.

“So I’m sharing a locker with Gene Sarazen, who’s actually sitting with his back to the locker,” O’Meara said. “I put my hands behind his shoulders and said, ‘Mr. Sarazen, I hate to inform you, I’m your locker mate.'”

They had met before because O’Meara was playing 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 dozen more golf balls when you leave?'” O’Meara said.

O’Meara said he would send 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 honoring the current champion, including a mannequin with the green jacket draped over the shirt the champion wore in the final round, along with a club used for a significant shot in the victory. There is also the original letter Hogan wrote in 1952 in which he suggested a “stag dinner” for the Masters champions.

Twenty-six lockers were empty when McIlroy returned in December — the green jackets are kept in a separate room. His contained a surprise.

“There was a message from Jack in there,” McIlroy said. “He had been there a week or two before and just said: ‘Welcome to the club.’

“It’s a wonderful benefit.”

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