More interesting Masters ceremony would be the Losers Dinner

Apr 4, 2024, 1:49 PM

You can take all your azaleas and your green jackets and stuff them in your peach cobbler. The best Masters tradition is the annual Tuesday Night Losers Dinner.

Held every year at Tammy’s Diner & Nail Emporium off I-20 in Augusta, the Tuesday Night Losers Dinner looks like a convention of men whose dogs just got run over. All of these guys had their Masters won, had the size 42L practically halfway off the hanger and then … blew it, never to recover.

Everybody who was almost somebody shows up.

Sitting at the corner table with a bottle of Pepto Bismol and a spoon will be Ed Sneed, who, in 1979, had a three-shot lead Sunday with three to play and somehow lost to a guy named Fuzzy. Sneed gave up the game six years later.

At the Sad Supper head table will be Scott Hoch. In 1989, in a playoff with Nick Faldo, he missed a two-foot par putt — that’s shorter than some spaghetti noodles Tammy dishes up — that would’ve given him the green jacket. It’s because of Hoch that all the meat at the annual Losers Dinner is cut into tiny pieces, to prevent choking.

Tammy goes all-out for the Losers Dinner. She got it sponsored by Avis, serves only Pepsi (no Coke) and hangs portraits of Al Gore on all the walls.

This is the night we honor all the great players who checked in to Augusta’s Heartbreak Hotel and never left: Johnny Miller, Lee Trevino and the late Tom Weiskopf, who finished second a record four times without eventually winning one. That’s why, every year, toward the end of the meal, Tammy comes out of the kitchen in her greasy apron and yells, “Who wants seconds?” And everybody yells “Weiskopf!”

The only humor is gallows humor at the Losers Dinner. For instance, Jeff Maggert is always there. He’s the American who, in 2003, had the Masters lead until he hit a fairway bunker shot that caught the lip, ricocheted back and hit him in the chest, on his way to a triple bogey 7. At the dinner the following year, every player at Maggert’s table quietly sat down wearing a baseball catcher’s chest protector. and a mask.

No Tuesday Night Losers Dinner would be complete without Greg Norman, who came into Augusta every year like a shark and got swallowed like a goldfish. Four times, Norman had a chance to win and lost them all: Once, by swiping his 72nd hole 4-iron into the crowd to give Jack Nicklaus the greatest victory of his life; once, to Larry Mize’s preposterous playoff chip-in on a double-diamond slope at the 11th hole; once by performing his bogey-the-72nd-hole trick to hand the win to Faldo; and once, by blowing a six-shot Saturday night lead.

On that awful Sunday in 1996 — April 14, the 84th anniversary of the Titanic hitting the iceberg — Norman hit into a creek on 12 and a pond on 16, which is why there’s a standing tradition with the busboys at Losers Night. Norman gets no more water.

It’s never lost on the downturn diners that golf legends such as Rory McIlroy, Tom Kite and Davis Love III (64 PGA Tour wins among them) will be eating Tammy’s Runner-Up Rabbit Stew on Tuesday, while people like Mize, Danny Willett and Tommy Aaron (six PGAs among them) will be enjoying a champions dinner of tapas y pintxos from a menu selected by Spaniard Jon Rahm, the 2023 Masters winner. It’s in the Augusta National dining room, no charge.

Tell it to Ernie Els, who had plenty of chances ripped up right in front of him. In 2004, he was on the practice green getting ready for the playoff when Phil Mickelson sunk his 18-footer to win. Suffice it to say, Els did not jump for joy.

Tell it to David Duval who finished in the top six four times but never closed the sale. In 1998, he was sitting pretty in Jones Cabin with a snappy 67, getting ready for the playoff with Mark O’Meara, who was staring at a tricky 20-footer. Augusta National Chairman Jack Stephens leaned over to Duval and said, “Don’t worry, David. Nobody ever makes this putt.” O’Meara made the putt.

And definitely tell it to Brooks Koepka, who will host Tammy’s Losers this year as the player who coughed up the title the year before. He had a four-stroke lead Saturday night and a migraine Sunday night after shooting a 75 and falling to Rahm. Koepka has picked a menu honoring how he played that day — pork shanks and fried eggs, followed by a dessert of bitter melon slices.

I can already predict somebody will go up to Koepka, slap him on the back and say, “Brooksie, do you realize that if the LIV Tour had caught on, you’d be Masters champion right now?”

And Koepka will turn and say, “Whaddya mean?”

“Because,” the guy will say, “they play only 54 holes.”

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More interesting Masters ceremony would be the Losers Dinner

Ya know, a guy named Roberto De Vicenzo won the Masters in 1968

Re: Ya know, a guy named Roberto De Vicenzo won the Masters in 1968

Hole 15, greenside grandstands as they come over bridge

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