Mark O’Meara, the 1998 Masters champion, competed at Augusta National for the last time in 2018, but every year, he still receives one of the most coveted invites in golf: a seat at the annual Tuesday night Masters Club Dinner, more commonly known as the Champions Dinner.
The first Champions dinner was hosted in 1952 by Ben Hogan, who won his first Masters in 1951. Per tradition, the previous year’s Masters champion chooses the menu. Recent menus have included some memorable selections, with champions often opting to honor their heritage by choosing traditional dishes from their home countries or states. This year, for his second dinner, Scottie Scheffler payed homage to his Texas roots with Texas-style chili. In 2023, he served a Texas Ribeye steak.
On this week’s episode of Subpar, O’Meara reminisced about his own Champions dinner menu — chicken and steak fajitas, sushi and tuna sashimi — and revealed which dinners were memorable as the best and worst.
“Mine wasn’t that good, to be fair, it really wasn’t,” O’Meara told Subpar hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “I was kind of disappointed.”
As for the worst dinner, O’Meara says he wasn’t there in person, but heard it was Sandy Lyle’s haggis — a traditional Scottish dish made from a sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver and combined with oatmeal, onions, and spices. The mixture is then cooked in a sheep stomach. Lyle chose to serve the haggis entree in 1989.
“I wasn’t there because I hadn’t won yet, but I’ve heard … Sandy Lyle’s, yeah,” O’Meara said. “I didn’t have to go to that dinner because I hadn’t won the Masters yet, but I would reckon that that might have been, that probably would go down as … If you’ve never had haggis in your life, you certainly would want to make sure you got a lot of hot sauce.”
As for the best dinners, O’Meara said he’s loved the recent offerings.
“I thought that that Scottie’s dinner was amazing, Hideki Matsuyama’s dinner was phenomenal,” O’Meara said. “Tiger, a couple years ago after he made that incredible run and won in 2019, the next year he served chicken and steak fajitas. I’m like, hey, what? That was my deal, bro. And his was actually better than mine, to be fair.
“So, I, I would say, I saw Scottie’s menu for this year. It’s pretty similar to what he had two years ago when he was up there,” O’Meara continued. “Jon Rahm’s meal was really good, but Scottie’s, yeah, I put Scottie’s right at the top of the list for sure.”
For more from O’Meara — including memories from his win in ’98 and other insights on Augusta National — check out the full episode below.
The post Masters champ dishes on best and worst Champions dinners appeared first on Golf.
