Masters champion Scottie Scheffler wasn’t the only one to have a lucrative weekend. Two auction houses gavelled golf-related lots with massive top bids – Golden Age with an Andy Warhol painting of Jack Nicklaus that went for $US1.1 million, and The Golf Auction with one of four known tickets to the first Masters that went for $US470,857.
The Warhol result crushed a previous sale of a similar painting he did of Nicklaus for his “Athletes” series that went for $400,000 in a 2020 Christie’s Auction. The one in the Golden Age sale was done in much more vibrant (and Masters adjacent greens and yellows), and clearly benefitted from being in a golf-specific sale.
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The 1934 Masters series badge is not only rare but also includes signatures from Bobby Jones, Horton Smith and a group of other contemporary players. The gavel price was just shy of the $600,000 another ticket from 1934 garnered in a 2022 private sale, but it was still a good weekend for Jones-related memorabilia.
One of the few authentic Jones winner’s trophies put up for auction – one he claimed for winning the 1916 Cherokee Country Club Invitational as a 14-year-old in 1916 – went for $109,650 in the same auction.
Golden Age sold two lots that went for an identical $27,864 – an autographed Jones ball mounted on a trophy given to a visiting Rotary Club member in 1934 and one of the original high-speed photographic prints of Jones’ swing done by Harold Edgerton in 1938.
Andy Warhol takes images of Jack Nicklaus ahead of painting the famed golfer for his “Athlete” series. [Image: AP1977]
Also of note? The shirt Tiger Woods wore while playing the third round of the 2010 Masters went for $23,028 – not far off the $39,000 Woods earned for finishing 60th this past weekend.
