How Do You Become A Member Of Augusta National?

It's famed for its exclusivity, so how do you become a member of Augusta National?

Augusta National Golf Club members only sign
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Well, there is no easy way to break it to you, you almost certainly won’t. If you are hoping to read this piece because it will have a link to the membership application form later on… well probably best to stop reading now. Perhaps swap over to the article where we explain how non-members can play at Augusta National?

The club is very secretive in all it does, and this applies to all things to do with membership matters.

In face, one of the rules for membership of the club is that members don’t talk publicly about the club. Only the club chairman can do that. And he doesn’t. Well, only very rarely anyway.

Augusta National is owned by a private company that publishes no accounts. So the outside world cannot even suss out how much the club receives in annual membership fees, or joining fees. Nor even how much it makes from hosting The Masters.

The latter is ‘a lot’. For this reason, Augusta National is not as expensive as many of the very high-end, exclusive golf clubs. But these things are comparative. No exact figures are known, but it is believed the joining fee is around $40,000 and annual dues are “in the low thousands”. If you want to put a figure to this, about $4,000 has been suggested.

This is a club for the rich and well connected. But the emphasis is more on the latter. It is just that that the former tends to lead to the latter. (In 2015 Bloomberg listed 118 members of the club, and classed five of them as billionaires.)

So who gets invited?

Well members can suggest people they think would make good members. Then, when there is a vacancy in the roughly 300-strong membership, the club decides who to invite to become a member of Augusta National.

Augusta National has many famous members. Many are from the worlds of business, politics and golf. However golfing ability is not a prerequisite. It is estimated that the average golf handicap of an Augusta member is around 14.

But then the membership is not young. When USA Today published a leaked list of Augusta National’s membership of 2002, there were only four members listed as being under 50.

Roderick Easdale

Contributing Writer Golf courses and travel are Roderick’s particular interests and he was contributing editor for the first few years of the Golf Monthly Travel Supplement. He writes travel articles and general features for the magazine, travel supplement and website. He also compiles the magazine's crossword. He is a member of Trevose Golf & Country Club and has played golf in around two dozen countries. Cricket is his other main sporting love. He is the author of five books, four of which are still in print: The Novel Life of PG Wodehouse; The Don: Beyond Boundaries; Wally Hammond: Gentleman & Player and England’s Greatest Post-War All Rounder.