Payne retires as Masters, Augusta chairman

AUGUSTA, GA. » Billy Payne ruled more with an open mind than an iron fist.

As the sixth chairman of Augusta National Golf Club — and the first with no direct link to cofounders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts — he held fast to the heritage and traditions of the club, while looking beyond Magnolia Lane at how the Masters could wield influence around the world for more than one week of the year.

Women joined Augusta National for the first time. Juniors were allowed to attend the Masters for free with an adult. Amateurs from the Asia Pacific region and throughout Latin America

could dream about competing for a green jacket.

Payne announced Wednesday that he is retiring after 11 years of change that made the Augusta National logo more powerful than ever.

“There are two people that matter here — Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones,” Payne said. “The rest of us are custodians. We do our best to first embrace, and thereafter hopefully to advance their philosophies for this club and for the game of golf — their obsession for detail, their passion to be the best. And I’ve done that now for a considerable number of years.”

He officially retires on Oct. 16 when the club, which is closed during the summer, opens for a new season.

Payne will be succeeded by Fred Ridley, a former U.S. Amateur champion and USGA president who is chairman of the Masters competition committee. Ridley will be the seventh chairman, and the first to have played in the Masters.

Payne stays on as chairman emeritus.

Augusta National speaks with one voice, and in that respect, Payne was no different from the other chairmen. With his Southern, homespun style, the 69-year-old Georgia native was more about collaboration than calling all the shots.

Payne ends a remarkable career marked by two sporting events in which he had little previous experience.

He had never been to the Olympics when Payne, a little-known real estate lawyer, led a long-shot bid to bring the Summer Games to Atlanta in 1996. He relied heavily on corporate support, and he showed early signs of his commitment to diversity and inclusion.

He chose two women among the first five volunteers he selected for the Atlanta organizing committee.

Payne did not take up golf until his adult years. He was invited to join Augusta National in 1997, a year after he concluded his work with the Atlanta Games. Nine years later, Hootie Johnson selected him as his successor as chairman.

“I committed my entire life to both at those respective times,” he said of his work on the Olympics and at Augusta National.

Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore became the first women to join Augusta National in 2012, no doubt an influence when the Royal & Ancient at St. Andrews, and later Muirfield and Royal Troon, added women to its membership rolls.

That was but a small part of Payne’s influence over the club and the Masters.