The Masters: The Looper's Jumpsuit

Look at it. Crisp white cotton-poly, pressed clean every single morning of tournament week. Green cap with the Masters emblem stitched above the brim. Player's name in green block letters across the back, attached by Velcro. A numbered badge on the left breast. Deep pockets for a yardage book, a spare glove, a small white towel. That is the entire outfit. No branding. No sponsors. No athletic performance fabric announcing itself in four colors. Just white, against the most immaculate green landscape in American sport.

The Augusta National caddie jumpsuit has been worn, in essentially this form, since 1946. Nearly eighty years. Every major fashion house in the world has cycled through hundreds of collections in that time. Silhouettes have risen and fallen. Colors that were once modern now read as period pieces. Entire aesthetic movements have arrived, peaked, and been forgotten. The white jumpsuit at Augusta has not changed.

That is not stubbornness. That is the definition of timeless style.

At San Martini, we believe the finest things in a curated life share one quality: they were designed so well, for their exact purpose, that they have nothing to apologize for and no reason to evolve. The white jumpsuit at Augusta is that principle made into clothing. And behind it sits a story that is far larger, far more human, and far more complex than the garment itself suggests.

The Man Who Demanded White

The white caddie uniform at Augusta National traces directly to Clifford Roberts, the club's iron-willed co-founder and chairman from 1934 until his death in 1977. In 1940, Roberts penned a letter, now held in the club's archives, noting that caddies were not easily spotted in the sea of patrons and needed to contrast against the vibrant green fairways of the course. That letter was the first documented push for a standardized caddie uniform at Augusta.

The original uniforms were not white. Through the early 1940s, Augusta caddies wore bluish denim coveralls with a green cap featuring a yellow button. The shift came after World War II forced a three-year break in the tournament (1943 through 1945). When the Masters returned in 1946, white jumpsuits appeared on the caddies for the first time. The official Masters website cites the origin as "the late 1940s," but most reporting points to 1946 as the inaugural year. Either way, the uniform has now been essentially unchanged for roughly eight decades.

Roberts's reasoning was direct: white against green provided the sharpest possible visual contrast on the fairways. But there was something else operating too. Roberts wanted everything at Augusta National to project a certain quality of appearance: the course, the players, and the people who worked the course alongside them. Carl Jackson, the legendary Augusta caddie with a record 54 Masters appearances across six decades, put it plainly: "Mr. Roberts wanted everything to look the best that it could, the golf course, the players, and that included the caddies. We wore those uniforms to look uniform."

The design Roberts settled on modeled what Masters.com describes as garments "traditionally worn by painters or for jobs in clean environments." The effect was exactly what he intended. White coveralls, green cap, numbered badge. Clean. Purposeful. Visible from the other side of a fairway, which was the whole point.

What The Uniform Is

The full Masters caddie kit today consists of white coveralls in a lightweight polyester-cotton blend, a green cap with the Masters emblem, the player's name in green block lettering across the back on a Velcro patch, a numbered badge on the left breast also attached by Velcro, and the Masters emblem on the front right breast. The player's number is assigned in the order they officially register for tournament week, with one historic exception: the defending champion's caddie always receives number one, regardless of registration order.

At the 2025 Masters, Ted Scott wore number one as caddie for defending champion Scottie Scheffler. Scott told Arccos Golf: "That's a cool honor and I'm going to remind Scottie of it each day that he's done it before."

Every jumpsuit is washed nightly during the tournament. The winning caddie may write a letter to Augusta National requesting to keep theirs as a memento.

Former ESPN analyst and professional caddie Michael Collins captured what the uniform means to the people who wear it: "It's the only outfit that you will complain about and still want to wear more than anything else in the entire world. You might complain about putting it on, but you really complain the year you don't get to put it on." An anonymous caddie told Collins for ESPN's "Caddie Confidential" series: "Just how cool it is to wear that white jumpsuit. Everybody complains about it but everyone wants to wear that thing. I got one at my house."

The Masters is the only event on the PGA Tour that mandates a specific caddie uniform. At every other tournament, caddies wear whatever they like, with a tournament-branded bib worn over the top. Augusta requires the white jumpsuit. No exceptions. When the rule changed in 1983 and players were allowed to bring their own tour caddies, Augusta National still required every outside caddie to put on the white coverall. The tradition arrived with you, regardless of where you came from.

The Men In White

The story of the jumpsuit cannot be told honestly without telling who first wore it.

From the inaugural Masters in 1934 through 1982, every caddie at the tournament was a Black man from the local Augusta, Georgia community, primarily from the Sand Hills neighborhood, a historically Black district located just three miles from the club. About 90 percent of the original caddie corps grew up in Sand Hills. Augusta National was an all-white, all-male private club, operating in the American South during the era of formal segregation. Within that context, the Black caddies of Augusta National occupied an unusual position: essential, expert, and invisible in the ways that mattered most.

Clifford Roberts is widely reported to have said that as long as he was alive, all the golfers would be white and all the caddies would be Black. The historical record supports the reality of that arrangement, if not the exact words.

Players were assigned Augusta's local caddies. They could not bring their own. This was not a minor logistical detail. It meant that the knowledge these men carried, accumulated across decades of watching the course through every season, was the only knowledge available. Players had no alternative but to trust the man in the white jumpsuit beside them.

And those men earned that trust.

The Caddie Yard's Knowledge

The legendary Willie "Pappy" Stokes was born on the Fruitland Nurseries property that would eventually become Augusta National. He watched the course being constructed. He noticed that all putts at Augusta break toward Rae's Creek, a discovery he made by watching rainwater drain across the greens during construction, and he taught this to younger caddies at Saturday morning sessions in the caddie yard. Carl Jackson called him "the very best caddy here. He was the king." Stokes carried the bags of four different players to five Masters victories, including Ben Hogan in 1951 and 1953.

The caddie yard was populated by men with names the gallery never heard but that the course knew well. Stovepipe. Fireball. Skillet. Burnt Biscuits. Marble Eye. Iron Man. And one man called Cemetery, though the story behind that name is not what some accounts suggest.

Cemetery was the nickname of Willie Perteet (sometimes spelled Poteat), President Eisenhower's personal caddie at Augusta. The name came from a violent incident: Perteet was attacked, given too much medication in the hospital, and woke up in a mortuary refrigerator. Eisenhower, who reportedly objected to the name the other caddies had already given him ("Dead Man"), proposed Cemetery instead. It was, under the circumstances, a lighter touch.

Young boys, typically ages 10 to 12, began their careers caddying at nearby Augusta Country Club and earned their way to Augusta National. A week on the bag during the Masters paid around $25, more than most of their parents made in the cotton mills.

The Partnerships

Nathaniel "Iron Man" Avery caddied for all four of Arnold Palmer's Masters victories: 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1964. The relationship between Avery and Palmer was as close as any in golf. During the 1960 Masters, when Palmer threw a club in frustration after a poor shot, Avery reportedly looked at him and said: "Are we chokin', Mr. Palmer?" Palmer came in with two final birdies and won the tournament.

When Avery died in 1985, he was buried in an unmarked grave at Southview Cemetery in Augusta. His headstone was not installed until 2017, thirty-two years after his death, through the efforts of author Ward Clayton, with Arnold Palmer's estate involved. A man who helped produce four green jackets lay in an unmarked grave for more than three decades.

Willie Peterson caddied for five of Jack Nicklaus's six Masters victories: 1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, and 1975. (Nicklaus's son Jackie caddied for his father's sixth and final win in 1986, after the 1983 rule change allowed players to bring their own caddies.) Peterson was a showman, known for dancing on the fairways, reading the galleries, and keeping Nicklaus loose. His most celebrated moment came on the par-3 16th hole in the final round of 1975. Nicklaus holed a 40-foot birdie putt with Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller watching from the tee. Peterson leaped into the air. The crowd erupted. The shot is still shown every Masters.

Peterson died in 1999 at age 61, buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Augusta in an unmarked grave. A headstone was eventually installed around 2020, with Nicklaus's involvement.

Carl Jackson began caddying at Augusta National in 1958 at age 13 and was paired with Ben Crenshaw beginning in 1976. He caddied for both of Crenshaw's Masters victories, in 1984 and in 1995. He holds the record for the most Masters appearances by a caddie: 54, spanning from 1961 to 2015. He is the last Augusta club caddie to have been on the winning bag at the Masters.

Leon McCladdie caddied for Tom Watson's two Masters victories, in 1977 and in 1981, carrying two green jackets for his player across a span of four years.

1983: The Changing of the Guard

In November 1982, Augusta National chairman Hord Hardin issued a press release. Beginning with the 1983 Masters, players could bring their own caddies.

Clifford Roberts had died in 1977. The change had been held at bay as long as he was alive. Caddie Jariah Beard later said: "I was genuinely surprised, but I knew it wasn't gonna happen as long as Clifford Roberts was the chairman."

The impact was immediate and decisive. In 1983, 63 of the 81 competing players arrived with their own outside caddies, leaving just 18 local men with tournament bags. Jariah "Bubba" Beard is the emblematic story. He had been on Fuzzy Zoeller's bag in 1979 when Zoeller became the last player to win the Masters on his first appearance. Zoeller told Beard publicly that he would keep him. When 1983 arrived, Zoeller brought his tour caddie instead. Beard never worked a Masters tournament again.

"We just got erased," Beard said, "like we never existed."

One player made a different choice. Ben Crenshaw called Carl Jackson and told him he would see him in Augusta. Jackson recalled it this way: "Ben made his decision and he stood by it. He said, 'Carl has too much experience around here. I can't let him go.'"

That loyalty returned two green jackets.

April 1995: the Embrace

The most famous image of a Masters caddie is not a shot on the leaderboard. It is a photograph.

Harvey Penick, Ben Crenshaw's teacher since childhood, died on April 2, 1995, the Sunday before Masters week. Crenshaw served as a pallbearer at the Wednesday funeral in Austin, flew back to Augusta that evening, and arrived having barely touched a club. During practice, Carl Jackson quietly corrected Crenshaw's swing: "Slow down, slow down, you look like you're trying to kill a snake."

Crenshaw shot 70-67-69-68 and won the 1995 Masters by one stroke.

When the final putt dropped, Crenshaw put his face in his hands. Jackson rushed to him. The image of the two men, one in a green jacket and one in a white jumpsuit, holding each other on the 18th green while Crenshaw wept, is one of the most human photographs in the history of sport. Crenshaw said afterward: "I had a 15th club in my bag this week. And that was Harvey Penick."

The Garment Itself: A Century of The Jumpsuit

The white coverall at Augusta carries meaning far beyond golf, because the jumpsuit itself carries one of fashion's most interesting origin stories.

The jumpsuit was first designed in 1919 as a practical garment for parachutists. The name is literal: a suit for jumping out of planes. It was designed to insulate the body at altitude, to minimize the risk of catching on handles and rigging. That same year, the Italian futurist artist Thayaht, born Ernesto Michahelles, created the "TuTa," a unisex jumpsuit designed as an anti-bourgeois garment for the working class. It promptly became fashionable among Florentine high society, which is one of fashion's oldest ironies.

Elsa Schiaparelli created the first high-fashion jumpsuit in the late 1930s: a women's piece cut from green silk with large front pockets, part of a war-inspired collection. The 1940s brought it to the factory floor. Rosie the Riveter made the coverall a symbol of women's labor and capability. The garment had fully crossed from aviation to industry.

The 1960s gave it to the space age. André Courrèges, the designer known as the godfather of space-age fashion, introduced his 1964 "Moon Girl" collection. Pierre Cardin's Cosmocorps collections featured belted jumpsuits cut for both men and women, pioneering unisex dressing years before the term was common. The jumpsuit appeared in Vogue for the first time in September 1964, a brown jersey design by Guy Laroche photographed by Irving Penn.

The 1970s made it glamorous. Halston dominated the Studio 54 era with flowing silk jersey jumpsuits worn by Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, and Elizabeth Taylor. Geoffrey Beene declared the jumpsuit "the ballgown of the next century." He was not wrong.

Elvis Presley made the male jumpsuit an American icon. Costume designer Bill Belew, who dressed Elvis from 1968 until his death in 1977, explained the choice of white for the Las Vegas shows: "The lighting in Las Vegas was still in its early stages. The color that worked the best was white. It allowed them to change the colors on him." The elaborate embroidered jumpsuits of Elvis's final years, featuring high collars inspired by Napoleonic-era clothing, rhinestones, sequins, and capes, became some of the most recognized garments in the history of performance. His Peacock suit sold at auction for $300,000 in 2008.

After the jumpsuit fell from fashion in the late 1980s and 1990s, Nicolas Ghesquière revived it at Balenciaga in 2002. Since then, nearly every major designer has sent jumpsuits down the runway. Cate Blanchett has become perhaps its most consistent modern champion, wearing jumpsuits to every type of public appearance for over fifteen years. The garment has moved from parachute gear to industrial workwear to red carpet staple, yet its essential quality has never changed: a single piece, complete in itself, requiring nothing else.

The white jumpsuit at Augusta fits that tradition exactly.

The Jumpsuit Today: Still White, Still Pressed, Still the Same

The white jumpsuit survived 1983 intact. When outside caddies arrived, Augusta National simply handed them their suits. Nothing about the garment changed. The uniform was larger than any individual who wore it.

The tradition extends beautifully to the Wednesday Par 3 Contest, where players' wives, children, and friends who carry the bag for the day also don white jumpsuits and green caps. This has produced some of the most cherished images of tournament week, including Tiger Woods's children Sam and Charlie in their little white coveralls in 2015, and countless other family moments that remind everyone watching that Augusta, for one week in April, belongs to something much larger than a leaderboard.

At the 2025 Masters, Rory McIlroy's caddie Harry Diamond, who has been McIlroy's bag man since 2017 and his childhood friend since age seven, wore the white jumpsuit as McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam, becoming just the sixth player in history to win all four majors. After one of the most turbulent final rounds in Masters history, including a double bogey on the 13th and a missed five-foot par putt on the 72nd hole that sent the tournament to sudden death, McIlroy sank a four-foot birdie on the first playoff hole against Justin Rose and fell to his knees on the 18th green in tears.

After the ceremony, McIlroy spoke about his caddie: "I've known Harry since I was seven years old. We've had so many good times together. To be able to share this with him after all the close calls... this one is just as much his as it is mine." Between the 72nd hole and the playoff tee, as McIlroy stood stunned having missed what should have been the winning putt, Diamond had told him: "Well, pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning." Six words. The right six words.

A man in a white jumpsuit beside a man in a green jacket. The greatest combination in golf, as the Masters website calls it. As present and as true as it has always been.

Timeless Style

The jumpsuit is one of those garments that rewards confidence. It works not in spite of its simplicity but because of it. One piece, nothing to match, nothing to overthink.

For women, the modern fashion jumpsuit arrives in linen, in silk crepe, in cotton twill: wide-leg or tailored, belted or unstructured. For spring and the Masters 2026 season, consider a wide-leg linen jumpsuit in cream or soft sage, with a simple leather belt and a low-heeled mule. A single bracelet, gold or tortoiseshell, is all the jewelry needed. The piece speaks for itself.

For men, the tailored jumpsuit in a neutral, dark navy, or stone colorway has moved firmly from avant-garde to wardrobe staple. Wear it with clean leather sneakers or loafers. A watch and nothing else. The proportions do the work.

The principle the Augusta caddie uniform teaches is the same principle San Martini has always believed in: a well-chosen, well-fitted single piece, worn with intention and without apology, is always more powerful than an outfit assembled from parts. The curated closet is not about more. It is about less, chosen better.

Buy less. Choose well. Wear it again.

It is Martini Time Somewhere.

References

• "Masters 101: The Caddie Jumpsuits." Masters.com, Augusta National Golf Club, 8 Apr. 2022, www.masters.com/en_US/news/articles/2022-04-08/masters_101_the_caddie_jumpsuit.html.

• Parker, Addie. "Why Do Caddies Have to Wear the White Jumpsuits at the Masters?" Golf Digest, www.golfdigest.com/story/masters-caddie-jumpsuit-style.

• Auclair, T.J. "The Masters: Why Do Caddies Wear White Jumpsuits?" The Caddie Network, Nov. 2020, www.thecaddienetwork.com/the-masters-why-do-caddies-wear-white-jumpsuits/.

• "Why Do Masters Caddies Wear White Jumpsuits?" Golf Monthly, www.golfmonthly.com/tour/us-masters/masters-history-records/why-do-the-caddies-wear-white-boiler-suits-at-the-masters-68415.

• "For Nearly 50 Years, Only Black Men Caddied The Masters. Then, One Day, They All But Vanished." CNN, 5 Apr. 2023, www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/sport/black-caddies-masters-augusta-national-spt-spc-intl.

• Sens, Josh. "Remember When: Why Augusta National Stopped Using Club Caddies at the Masters." Golf.com, golf.com/news/augusta-national-club-caddies-masters/.

• "Carl Jackson, Augusta National's Most Famous Caddie, Tells All." Golf.com, golf.com/news/carl-jackson-augusta-masters-caddie-tells-all/.

• Collins, Michael. "Caddie Confidential: The Allure of Augusta." ESPN, www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/15086826.

• Michaux, Scott. "The Storied History of Augusta National's Club Caddies." Global Golf Post, www.globalgolfpost.com/featured/the-storied-history-of-augusta-nationals-club-caddies/.

• "Willie Peterson." Caddie Hall of Fame, caddiehalloffame.org/all-hall-of-fame-inductees/205-willie-peterson.

• "Iron Man Avery Finally Has a Gravestone." The Caddie Network, www.thecaddienetwork.com/iron-man-avery-arnold-palmers-caddie-for-all-four-masters-wins-finally-has-a-grave-stone-some-3-decades-after-his-death/.

• "Rory McIlroy Pays Emotional Tribute to Caddie Harry Diamond After Masters Win." Golf Monthly, www.golfmonthly.com/news/rory-mcilroy-pays-tribute-harry-diamond-masters-2025.

• "The History of the Jumpsuit." Juliette C, www.juliettec.com/the-history-of-the-jumpsuit/. 

• "Fashion Archives: A Look at the History of the Jumpsuit." StartUp Fashion, startupfashion.com/fashion-archives-a-look-at-the-history-of-the-jumpsuit/. 

• "From Sky to Sidewalk: The Origins of the Jumpsuit." Tamarind Chutney, tamarindchutney.in/blogs/imli-diaries/from-sky-to-sidewalk-the-origins-of-the-jumpsuit.