International players lose free meal

Traditions die hard at Augusta National Golf Club, but this year a decades-old Masters fixture succumbed to -- of all things -- the growth of golf around the world.

For the first time since the early 1960s, when Bobby Jones was still running the famed tournament he founded in 1934, there will be no special dinner for the international players before the Masters.

Back in Jones's day, there were only a smattering of outstanding golfers around the world and Jones, one of the greatest golfers in history, would host a special dinner for the international players he invited to his tournament, which was called the Augusta Invitational until 1939.

These days, however, there are scores of top-notch players from all parts of the globe -- 29 at this week's Masters, five of them ranked in the world top 10 -- and what was once an intimate gathering had become an unwieldy affair that lost its original meaning.

Jones, who founded Augusta National as well as the Masters, saw the annual dinner as an opportunity for golfers from different nations to get to know each other better in a social setting.

"Now there are so many foreign players on the (U.S.) PGA Tour, and so many Americans play overseas now, they all know each other already," a tournament spokesman said. "The real purpose of the dinner has been lost."

The growing number of overseas players in the Masters -- from Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and the Pacific -- had also become a logistical headache for Augusta National, whose tiny clubhouse could hardly accommodate the number of those attending.

Gary Player of South Africa, who became the first non-American to win the Masters in 1961, when he won the first of his three titles, lamented the demise of the international dinner.

"It was always an enjoyable occasion for the international players at Augusta," he told the Augusta Chronicle newspaper. "Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts (Jones's long-time lieutenant) came up with it, so I thought a lot of it."

But Player, who also won the 1974 and 1978 Masters, can still look forward to one free meal at Augusta -- the annual Champions dinner on Tuesday night, to which all past Masters winners are invited.

And he will not be alone in a roomful of Americans. Seve Ballesteros and José Maria Olazábal of Spain, Bernhard Langer of Germany and Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam of Britain also will be there.