At Masters Champions Dinner, Rory McIlroy found his future seat

The Masters Champions Dinner is a nerve-wracking experience for first-time hosts. You want to hit everything out of the park, from the appetizers to the dessert and the drinks. But one of the biggest Champions Dinner questions doesn’t get answered until the year after you first sit at the head of the table.

Where do I sit?

The defending champion and dinner host always sits between Ben Crenshaw, the unofficial emcee, and chairman Fred Ridley, at the head. The next year, it’s up to newcomers to find their future spot. Over the years, different cliques have formed at the table. Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Tom Watson sit to the left of the head. Zach Johnson and Jordan Spieth rub shoulders, along with Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson. Adam Scott and Trevor Immelman sit at the far corner. And so it goes.

“It’s not assigned seating, but a lot people sit in the same chairs,” Scott said in 2023. “I like that, to be perfectly honest. I like the fact that you kind of feel like that’s your spot.”

After Scottie Scheffler hosted the dinner in 2023, he had to pick a spot to sit that would become his.

“There’s a little protocol,” Scheffler said at this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational about the seating arrangements at the fabled dinner. “I’m definitely not going to go sit in the area where Tiger and Jack sit. Like, there’s kind of spots where you kind of feel you’ll naturally flow into.”

Scheffler normally would cozy up next to his Dallas buddy Spieth, but he didn’t want to give the 2015 champion an opportunity to prank him in front of everyone. “I definitely didn’t ask Jordan to sit by him, because he would have done something to make sure that I didn’t have a place to sit,” Scheffler said, laughing. He ended up asking Johnson and is now a part of that table cohort.

At this past year’s Champions Dinner, Rory McIlroy wowed with a menu that included wagyu steak, which players raved about, yellowfin tuna carpaccio and a brilliant selection of wines from Augusta National’s famed cellar. As McIlroy sat between Crenshaw and Ridley, he surveyed the layout of the table and noticed something.

“It’s a big, long table. Like a U-shape,” McIlroy said on the New Heights podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce. “And at the bottom-left corner, you’ve got Trevor Immelman and Adam Scott. And they just look like they’re having the best time. They are just having the night of their lives. And I said to Adam and Trevor, If I don’t win this year, just save me a seat down by you guys.”

Although McIlroy’s journey down to Scott and Immelman’s corner will have to wait for at least another year, after he became just the fourth player in history to successfully defend his title at Augusta National.

That historic achievement now leaves McIlroy with a different Champions Dinner query: What’s on next year’s menu?

“I think everyone enjoyed the dinner. I tried to do enough dishes that would please everyone. And I’m a big wine guy. I collect wine and I have done that for the last 10 years, so the wine selection was something that was pretty important to me,” McIlroy said. “I went pretty fancy this year. It’s always on the Tuesday night, so I was thinking that I could just do a Taco Tuesday or something. We’ll see.”

McIlroy’s 2026 Masters win was a different kind of victory than his cathartic 2025 triumph. In 2025, McIlroy crumpled to the ground overcome with relief that he had finally accomplished a lifelong dream. This time, McIlroy tapped in his winning putt and felt only joy.

“Nothing will ever top the euphoria of it all last year,” McIlroy said. “But this year was validation. Like, I proved last year that I could do it at this place and then I go back without my best stuff — I built a really big lead over two days. But to get it done in the manner in which I did — lost the lead on Sunday, came back and played really solid to get it done — just validaiton on my part that this is where I should be. This is the level that I should be operating at.”

McIlroy did that, and now, he’s got another dinner to plan before, maybe, taking his place next to Scott and Immelman.