AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy’s first trip back to Augusta National as Masters champion came without his golf clubs but with childlike excitement.
The night after finally capturing the green jacket last April, McIlroy climbed the 13 spiral stairs to the second floor of the clubhouse and walked through a door marked “Masters Club Room. Private.”
Champions only.
His nameplate wasn’t up that April night, so his December return to work on a Prime Video documentary had him eager to discover whose names would share his locker.
It felt like Christmas morning the way he talked about it.
Ben Hogan 1953. Raymond Floyd 1976. Rory McIlroy 2025.
“I was wondering who they were going to put me with,” McIlroy said. “Were they going to put me with another European? I didn’t really know. But having Hogan’s locker? That’s pretty cool, another guy who did 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.”
“Incredible,” he said. “It never gets old.”
The champions’ exclusive room was created in 1978 and later renovated, but never expanded. That’s why lockers are shared (though not by active players).
The locker room in the new Players Services Building offers more space and grandeur. Masters champions have lockers there too, mainly for convenience when using the fitness and recovery areas downstairs.
But they’ll still gather upstairs in their own room, simply because they can.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Hideki Matsuyama said through his interpreter about returning as Masters champion after his 2021 win. “When I went back for the first time, I knew I could go in, but it just didn’t feel right. It was like, ‘Really? I can go in?’ It’s not that I was nervous or my English. It was just, ‘Wow.'”
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.
Jordan Spieth was stunned 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’re sharing your locker with.’ I didn’t know they shared lockers.”
Spieth was defending champion at the Masters Club dinner in 2016, the last one Palmer attended. Now he wants to get an old pair of Palmer’s shoes to put in the locker, just to give the King a presence. “That would be cool,” Spieth said.
Scottie Scheffler had seen the room during Texas team trips to Augusta National, but his curiosity still ran high when he returned as champion. He got a Texas theme – his name alongside Charles Coody and Byron Nelson.
“Charles for sure, because I see him in there using it,” Scheffler said. “I mean, we truly 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 up.”
Adam Scott shares a locker with Gary Player, whom he called “probably the greatest international player ever.” The 5-foot-6 “Black Knight” is 90 and still hits the ceremonial tee shot.
“I was curious and pleasantly surprised to be sharing with Gary, although I didn’t know he’d use all my stuff,” Scott said with a laugh.
Once Scott needed his green jacket for a function during Masters week, and the sleeves came halfway up his forearm. “Looks like Gary took the wrong jacket again,” Scott said.
Few had a more memorable locker-sharing discovery than Mark O’Meara.
He’d seen the room before when he stayed in the Crow’s Nest as U.S. Amateur champion and snuck down one night. He walked in the front door as Masters champion with two sets of shoes, knowing his name would be on a shared locker but unsure with whom.
“There’s three small tables, four chairs at each one, 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 came in.”
Two lockers down he saw the nameplates — Gene Sarazen 1935, Mark O’Meara 1998.
“So I’m sharing a locker with Gene Sarazen, who is actually sitting with his back turned to the locker,” O’Meara said. “I put my hands on the back of his shoulders and said, ‘Mr. Sarazen, I hate to inform you, I’m your locker mate.'”
They had met before because O’Meara used to play 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 of extra dozen golf balls when you leave?'” O’Meara said.
O’Meara promised to mail as many as the Squire wanted. Sarazen died a month later.
The centerpiece of this intimate room is a glass case honoring the current champion. It includes a mannequin with the green jacket draped over the shirt the champion wore in the final round, along with a club used for a meaningful shot in the win. There’s also the original letter Hogan wrote in 1952 suggesting a “stag dinner” for Masters champions.
Twenty-six of the lockers were empty when McIlroy returned in December — green jackets are kept in a separate room. His contained a surprise.
“There was a note in there from Jack,” McIlroy said. “He’d been there one or two weeks previous and it just said, ‘Welcome to the club.'”
“It’s a wonderful perk.”
