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FollowThis is the night we honor all the great players who checked in to Augusta’s Heartbreak Hotel and never left: Johnny Miller, Lee Trevino and the late Tom Weiskopf, who finished second a record four times without eventually winning one. That’s why, every year, toward the end of the meal, Tammy comes out of the kitchen in her greasy apron and yells, “Who wants seconds?” And everybody yells “Weiskopf!”
The only humor is gallows humor at the Losers Dinner. For instance, Jeff Maggert is always there. He’s the American who, in 2003, had the Masters lead until he hit a fairway bunker shot that caught the lip, ricocheted back and hit him in the chest, on his way to a triple bogey 7. At the dinner the following year, every player at Maggert’s table quietly sat down wearing a baseball catcher’s chest protector. And mask.
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No Tuesday Night Losers Dinner would be complete without Greg Norman, who came into Augusta every year like a shark and got swallowed like a goldfish. Four times, Norman had a chance to win and lost them all: Once, by swiping his 72nd hole 4-iron into the crowd to give Jack Nicklaus the greatest victory of his life; once, to Larry Mize’s preposterous playoff chip-in on a double-diamond slope at the 11th hole; once by performing his bogey-the-72nd-hole trick to hand the win to Faldo; and once, by blowing a six-shot Saturday night lead.
On that awful Sunday in 1996 — April 14, the 84th anniversary of the Titanic hitting the iceberg — Norman hit into a creek on 12 and a pond on 16, which is why there’s a standing tradition with the busboys at Losers Night. Norman gets no more water.
It’s never lost on the downturn diners that golf legends such as Rory McIlroy, Tom Kite and Davis Love III (64 PGA Tour wins among them) will be eating Tammy’s Runner-Up Rabbit Stew on Tuesday, while people like Mize, Danny Willett and Tommy Aaron (six PGAs among them) will be enjoying a champions dinner of tapas y pintxos from a menu selected by Spaniard Jon Rahm, the 2023 Masters winner. It’s in the Augusta National dining room, no........