Pageants, pomp, and parades: When they couldn’t give away US Masters tickets around Augusta

Masters week is a global event these days, but there was a time when pageants, pomp, and parades were necessary to promote the tournament. Bobby Jones was even paraded through the streets with beauty pageant queens wearing formal gowns on floats behind him. Scott Michaux explains

BACK IN THE DAY: Bobby Jones and Augusta mayor Hugh Hamilton during a parade ahead of the 1957 Masters; and Barbara Anne Harris (right) of Greenville, South Carolina, was a 20-year-old student at Columbia College when she won the Miss Columbia pageant and earned a chance to compete for Miss Golf before the 1966 Masters.

Sixty-four years of televised Masters tournaments has turned the annual first major of the season into a familiar global spectacle.

Now considered the coveted ticket in sports, a Masters badge commands a king’s ransom on the secondary market and just getting a hotel room in Augusta, Georgia, this week will set you back a couple months of mortgage payments.