Who Are the Members of Augusta National Golf Club?
Augusta National Golf Club doesn’t publish a membership list. It never has. The club that hosts the Masters Tournament each April — one of the most watched sporting events on the planet — operates with a deliberate, institutional secrecy about who holds the most coveted green jacket in American private club culture.
What we know comes from journalism, corporate disclosures, public appearances during Masters week, and occasional leaks over the decades. The picture that emerges is of roughly 300 members drawn from the highest levels of American business, finance, sports, media, and public life — with a deliberate geographic and industry diversity that looks less like a golf club and more like a carefully curated gathering of institutional power.
How Augusta National Membership Works
You don’t apply to Augusta National. You’re invited — and only by existing members. The process is entirely internal, entirely opaque, and entirely at the discretion of the club’s leadership and current membership.
The membership is believed to sit at around 300 active members, with a waiting list of a similar number, all nominated by existing members. The average age of members skews considerably older — typically into the 70s — reflecting both the seniority of the people being invited and the patience required to move through whatever informal queue exists.
There is no publicly stated membership fee, though estimates based on available reporting have placed initiation costs in the range of $40,000 with annual dues well below what comparably exclusive clubs charge. The financial barrier, in other words, is not the point. The barrier is access to the people who do the inviting.
What the club is clearly looking for — based on who has been confirmed as a member over the decades — is leadership at the top of major institutions: Fortune 500 CEOs, former heads of state, elite financiers, media executives, sports figures of national prominence, and, increasingly, international business leaders. Individual members are chosen to represent a cross-section of industries: finance, medicine, government, education, communications, media, energy, food and beverage, transportation, and sports.
The 2025 Additions: The Most Recent Known Members
The most recent confirmed new members, announced in 2025 according to Sports Business Journal, were four figures whose profiles fit the Augusta template precisely:
Eli Manning — two-time Super Bowl champion and former New York Giants quarterback. His brother Peyton Manning is also reportedly a member, making them one of the few sibling pairs in the membership.
Andy Jassy — CEO of Amazon and one of the most powerful executives in global technology. His predecessor at Amazon, Jeff Bezos, was already a member.
Ed Bastian — CEO of Delta Air Lines, one of the largest carriers in the world.
Sean McManus — former chairman of CBS Sports, who oversaw the network’s Masters broadcast relationship for decades before stepping back from the role.
The selection reflects Augusta’s consistent formula: invite the people who run the institutions that shape American commerce, culture, and sport.
Known Members Across Business and Finance
The business and finance contingent at Augusta National reads like a roll call of American corporate leadership across generations.
Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the most recognised investors in history, has been confirmed as a member. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is also on the known list. Pete Coors, former chairman of Coors Brewing Company, has been confirmed, as has James Robinson, former CEO of American Express.
Hugh L. McColl Jr., who transformed NationsBank into Bank of America through a series of landmark acquisitions, is a member — fitting for a club with deep roots in the Southeastern business establishment. Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil and later U.S. Secretary of State under President Trump, is also confirmed.
Ana Botín, executive chairman of Santander Group and one of the most powerful figures in global banking, represents the international dimension of the membership.
Darla Moore, the South Carolina financier and philanthropist, became one of the club’s first female members in 2012 alongside former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — a moment the club publicly acknowledged as “a proud moment in our club’s history” after years of controversy over its all-male policy.
Ginni Rometty, former chair, president, and CEO of IBM, has also joined in subsequent years, bringing the confirmed female membership to at least four.
Known Members From Sports and Media
Augusta’s membership extends well beyond the business world into sports and media — industries that generate the kind of national cultural prominence the club appears to value alongside corporate achievement.
Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL and the most powerful figure in American professional sports administration, is a confirmed member. Pat Haden, the former NFL quarterback who later served as Athletic Director at USC, is also on the known list.
Jimmy Dunne, president of Seminole Golf Club and a prominent figure in both Wall Street finance and PGA Tour governance, holds membership — a rare example of someone who bridges the golf world professionally and the Augusta membership.
In media, the club has drawn executives and personalities across networks and print journalism, though most confirmed media-world members have been confirmed through secondary reporting rather than direct disclosure.
The Women Members: A Delayed but Significant Shift
Until 2012, Augusta National was an all-male club — a fact that generated sustained public criticism, most visibly during the 2002 and 2003 Masters when the then-CEO of IBM, a tournament sponsor, was a woman and the club’s exclusion policy created an awkward corporate situation that played out in the national press.
In August 2012, then-chairman Billy Payne announced the admission of Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore — the first women in the club’s 80-year history. The decision ended the public controversy, though the number of female members has remained small relative to the overall membership in the years since.
What Makes Augusta Membership Different
Most private golf clubs, even the most exclusive, are primarily about golf. Augusta National is different. It’s about access to a network — the ability to play 18 holes at the most famous golf course in the world matters far less than the conversation that happens during those 18 holes.
The club’s annual tournament, the Masters, generates global attention that amplifies the significance of membership beyond anything the golf itself could produce. Being a member of Augusta National signals something specific about where you sit in the American institutional hierarchy — a signal that no amount of money can simply purchase.
That dynamic is part of why the membership list matters to people who have no interest in golf. It’s a partial map of American power, updated annually by an institution that has been constructing that map since Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts founded the club in 1933.
For comprehensive historical coverage of Augusta National’s membership, founding, and evolution as an institution, Sports Business Journal has consistently produced the most detailed and reliable reporting on Augusta membership additions and club governance — making it the most credible ongoing source for anyone tracking how the membership changes over time.
The Enduring Mystique
Augusta National will almost certainly never publish a full membership list. The secrecy isn’t incidental to the club’s identity — it’s central to it. The partial picture that emerges from journalism and disclosure is enough to confirm what the institution represents: a gathering of people at the top of their respective fields, convened around one of the most beautiful golf courses ever built, for reasons that have as much to do with relationships and influence as they do with the game itself.
The green jacket awarded to Masters champions is the most recognized symbol in professional golf. The green jacket worn by Augusta members — awarded not for winning a tournament but for being deemed worthy of membership carries a different but arguably more exclusive meaning.
