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The Champions Dinner is a time-honoured Masters tradition and this year Spaniard Jon Rahm has devised the menu.
On the Tuesday evening before the tournament, past winners of the Masters gather in Augusta National’s clubhouse for a celebratory meal.
It falls to the defending champion to decide what food will be served which, given the international flavour of the Masters roll of honour, has brought cuisine from far and wide.
The event is always a cause of curiosity among golf fans, and has even been the source of political intrigue since the launch of Saudi-backed LIV Golf which fractured the sport.
Rahm joins Phil Mickelson, Charl Schwartzel, Patrick Reed and Sergio Garcia as past champions at Augusta who have defected to LIV.
What is the Champions Dinner?
All of the surviving Masters champions who can attend sit down over dinner in their green jackets two nights before the tournament proper.
The tradition was started by Ben Hogan in 1952 and is officially known as the Masters Club Dinner.
The previous year’s winner chooses the food, while the quality and breadth of Augusta’s wine cellar is legendary.
What is Jon Rahm serving this year?
Rahm’s accent has a distinctly American twang now, but he could barely speak English when he arrived at Arizona State University on a golf scholarship.
He hails from a town called Barrika, just north of Bilbao in the Basque country, and his Champions Dinner menu reflects the food of the region as well as his grandmother’s cooking.
A selection of pintxos will be served to start, a form of tapas so named because of the skewer or cocktail stick that usually holds the dish together, as well as chicken croquetas, tortilla and his grandmother’s classic lentil stew.
Guests will then choose between Basque ribeye steak or turbot, before a puff pastry cake called milhojas is served for dessert.
What have previous winners served?
Scottie Scheffler 2023
‘Scottie style’ cheeseburger sliders and firecracker shrimp were appetisers, but what made them Scottie style? Fries inside the burger bun it turns out. Then came tortilla soup, before a choice of Texan ribeye steak or redfish and chocolate-chip cookie and ice cream for afters. Pleasantly varied.
Hideki Matsuyama 2022
Matsuyama paid homage to Japanese cuisine with a selection of sushi and sashimi to start before Wagyu beef (which means the cow benefited from massages and exposure to classical music before coming to rest on Ben Crenshaw’s plate), mixed vegetables and ponzu dressing. Japanese strawberry cheesecake or fluffy sponge cake with strawberries and cream for pudding.
Dustin Johnson 2021
A choice of garden or Caesar salad to start was an uninspired choice. Fillet mignon a surprisingly delicate cut of steak for DJ to choose, perhaps he was calorie counting. Peach cobbler for dessert was a clever nod to Georgia’s most famous fruit and there was also the choice of apple pie.
Tiger Woods 2020
Sushi to start before a taste of Woods’ southern Californian roots with steak and chicken fajitas, refried beans and Mexican rice. Desserts also had a Hispanic touch with classic flan, churros with chocolate sauce and sopapillas. Well-balanced selections, but it was Woods’ fifth go at it.
Patrick Reed 2019
More Caesar salad to start. Then prime bone-in cowboy ribeye with mac and cheese, creamed spinach, corn and steamed broccoli as the main event. The presence of tiramisu as a dessert confirms Reed has ventured out of his hotel room on trips to Italy, with vanilla bean creme brulee, chocolate crunch and praline cheesecake also on the menu. Evidently, Reed has a sweet tooth.
