The First Green Jacket That Wasn't (Yet)

The Masters Archives
Written By Christian Griffith

Before it was a global spectacle, the Masters started small.

In March 1934, the inaugural Augusta National Invitation Tournament teed off with 72 golfers competing for a modest $5,000 purse.

Horton Smith, a 25-year-old from Springfield, Missouri, sank a 20-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole (today's 8th) to edge runner-up Craig Wood by a single stroke, finishing at 284.

There was no green jacket waiting for him -- that tradition wouldn't begin for another 15 years -- just a check for $1,500 and a place in history as the tournament's first champion.

Smith would go on to win again in 1936, becoming the event's first two-time winner.

Fittingly, the 1934 field also marked the competitive return of amateur legend Bobby Jones, who had co-founded the club and course just a few years earlier after completing his own Grand Slam.

What began as a low-key invitational among friends on a former Augusta plant nursery would, within a generation, become one of golf's four major championships and the only one played on the same course every year.

Christian Griffith

Christian Griffith lives, eats, sleeps, and drinks artificial intelligence [AI], digital marketing, brand advertising, and communications strategy on a daily basis.

His career has been deeply entrenched in branding, web development, internet marketing, online advertising, and creative strategy since 1997, but believes AI and big data to be the biggest advancements to hit business in a lifetime.

After 25 years in executive leadership, Christian Griffith left his last gig as SVP of Digital Strategy at Atlanta ad agency, Freebairn and Company, to start his own shop in 2015 called Live for a Living. A wildly successful 10-year run with Live for a Living opened the doors to an additional venture focused squarely on the advantages that AI brings to business. Now, with the 2025 launch of Kai Daddy Digital, he's helping clients get a serious edge by using cutting-edge AI and big data digital strategies on the marketing platforms that have proven to work for over a decade.

Christian loves being daddy to daughter, Kai, first and foremost, leaning into challenging fitness-type events and extreme sports for fun after that. In 2018, Christian ran 3,142 miles across the USA, New York to San Francisco, in an effort to raise $1 million for the prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse.

In 2025, Christian launched 5-Minute Fitness, a program as he calls it, “to eliminate all barriers to fitness training success,” targeting at-risk individuals such as the sedentary or over-40 crowd. As of this writing, he has over 600 members.

https://liveforaliving.com
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