The Masters Tournament is a golf competition that was established in 1934, with Horton Smith winning the inaugural tournament. The Masters is the first of four major championships to be played each year, with the final round of the Masters always being scheduled for the second Sunday in April. The Masters is the only one of the four majors to use the same course every year; the Augusta National Golf Club. Masters champions are automatically invited to play in the other three majors (the U.S. Open, the Open Championship (British Open), and the PGA Championship) for the next five years, and earn a lifetime invitation to the Masters. They also receive membership on the PGA Tour for the following five seasons and invitations to the Players Championship for the five years following their victory. The champion also receives the "Green Jacket", the first one being won by Sam Snead in 1949. The champion takes the jacket home for a year and returns it thereafter. A multiple-time champion will only have one jacket unless his size changes dramatically.
Jack Nicklaus holds the record for the most Masters victories, winning the tournament six times during his career. Nicklaus is also the oldest winner of the Masters: he was 46 years 82 days old when he won in 1986. Nicklaus, Nick Faldo, and Tiger Woods co-hold the record for most consecutive victories with two. Woods holds the distinction of being the youngest winner of the Masters, he was 21 years 104 days old when he won in 1997. Woods also set the record for the widest winning margin (12 strokes), and the lowest winning score, with 270, 18 below par (-18) in 1997. The highest winning score of 289 (+1) was originally set by Sam Snead in 1954, it was equalled by Jack Burke, Jr. in 1956, and Zach Johnson in 2007. Four golfers have won the Masters wire-to-wire; Craig Wood in 1941, Arnold Palmer in 1960, Nicklaus in 1972, and Raymond Floyd in 1976. Other players have led wire-to-wire if ties after a round are included, most recently Trevor Immelman in the 2008 Masters Tournament.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, masters and/or champions:
“Shea—they call him Scholar Jack—
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers—all.”
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (1846–1925)
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)