The Masters, “a tradition unlike any other” is the crown jewel of the golf world. Each year, the best golfers in the world compete in Augusta, Georgia for a chance at the green jacket. The Master’s logo, is one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable logos in sports. It is both the logo for Augusta as well as the logo for the Masters. Yet though the logo is easily recognizable, upon further evaluation the proportions of the U.S. map in the logo are way out of scale. The logo is believed to date back to 1934, when the Masters were first played at Augusta National Golf Club. In the logo, the coasts are squeezed together, Florida is a sliver extending down from Georgia, among other proportional mistakes. It is theorized that the reason the logo isn’t a direct replication of the U.S. map is due to limitations in printing abilities in the 1930s that made recreating thousands of precise logos difficult – thus many believe that the logo was simply an artist’s hand-drawing. What’s interesting is that over the course of the Masters’s history, the logo has barely been adapted – most likely an ode to the tournament’s emphasis for tradition.
