Berckmans Place Masters: Inside the Most Exclusive 90,000 Square Feet in All of Sports

Tucked away in the southwest corner of the world’s most famous golf club, behind the fifth fairway at Augusta National, is a 90,000-square-foot structure that most Masters players will pass without ever realizing what’s inside. There are no indicators pointing in its direction. The official course map only displays a circled “BP” and a tiny triangular area of greenery. That’s deliberate. Berckmans Place is deliberate in every way.

When the venue first opened in 2013, 400 badges were reportedly sold for about $4,000 apiece. Now, those numbers seem almost charming. Weekly badges have increased to somewhere in the low five figures, with some estimates reaching above $10,000, depending on who you ask (and very few people are willing to say on record). Food, drink, alcohol, and gratuity are all included in that price. The menus inside don’t have any prices. There is no cash on the wait staff. They will kindly inform you that there is no register to make change if you attempt to tip in cash. Apparently, a nice word is always appreciated.

It’s difficult to ignore the fact that this is a place where money can be made discreetly. Not in a transactional manner, but rather in the manner of the best private clubs, where the goal is to never feel as though you’re spending any money. You just show up, and the experience takes place all around you. Years ago, a visitor called it Xanadu, and that description has stuck, presumably because there hasn’t been anything better.

Key Information: Berckmans Place at Augusta National

Reference Links: Inside Berckmans Place — Sports Business Journal Berckmans Place, Augusta National’s High-End Hospitality Site — Los Angeles Times

Each of Berckmans’ five dining establishments has a backstory derived from Augusta National’s own mythology. Named after the legendary putter of Bobby Jones, Calamity Jane’s offers burgers, ice cream, and cold beer in the style of an American sports bar. Depending on your expectations, this may seem charming or a little out of place. Ike’s at the Pavilion is an outdoor restaurant honoring Dwight D. Eisenhower, who joined Augusta National in 1948 and reportedly loved Southern fried chicken and Mamie’s lemon meringue pie. A Scottish pub called MacKenzie’s honors course architect Alister MacKenzie, who passed away in early 1934, two months before the inaugural Masters. Perhaps MacKenzie himself would have enjoyed the scotch selection, the fish and chips, and the unique irony of having a pub named after him inside a club he never lived to see open.

The seafood and oyster bar Augusta’s, which serves blackened redfish and gumbo and opens every morning with a jazz brunch, is staffed by shuckers who are allegedly from New Orleans. Then there’s Isabella, which serves fresh pasta, wood-fired Neapolitan pizza, and homemade gelato. Isabella is named after the Isabella grape, which was brought to the American South by the Berckman family, whose nursery used to be located here in the late 1800s. A sense of purposeful reverence permeates Berckmans Place’s naming conventions, giving the impression that the place knows exactly what it is and wants you to know it too.

In addition to the dining area, there is a Signature Shop that sells items that aren’t found anywhere else in the world, not even in the main Masters store or online. Customers are gently dissuaded from making large purchases. Outside the venue, the putting experience mimics the greens at holes 7, 14, and 16. Augusta National caddies, dressed in their classic white jumpsuits, are available to provide line reads and break advice with the same seriousness they would on the real course. Throughout the tournament, the hole locations on those replica greens are changed every day to correspond with the real pin locations. The amount of work required to maintain the appearance—or possibly the reality—that this is not a corporate hospitality tent can be inferred from that single detail. This is a completely different matter.

Researching Berckmans Place gives the impression that it functions as a tangible representation of what Augusta National considers to be the ideal of first-rate hospitality. Major tournaments have always had corporate events, but most of them feel like what they are: branded tents with respectable food and open bars. Berckmans was intended to feel radically different from the start, and by most accounts, it does. When an ESPN executive visited his father years ago, he referred to it as “a nesting doll of secrets.” The description succeeds because the secrecy is structural rather than merely aesthetic.

For more than 20 years, Augusta National has been discreetly acquiring the land around the club, spending what analysts now estimate to be more than $280 million on real estate purchases, the majority of which were made through obscurely named LLCs that conceal the club’s involvement. This broader, long-term vision encompasses Berckmans Place, a club that is growing gradually and patiently rather than loudly. Augusta National has a fifty-year plan, a neighbor reportedly told a reporter. It doesn’t really matter if that is literal or metaphorical. The important thing to remember is that Berckmans Place is a long-term hospitality investment. It’s a one-time, silent statement that is kept up with the same accuracy as the greens right outside its doors.