AUGUSTA, Ga. — The lush confines of Augusta National Golf Club, a sanctuary of sport, power and privilege, are showing a harsh economic truth: Inflation can be as invasive as kudzu weeds.
There may be no athletic event in the United States that has been more defiantly immune to the outside forces of economics, politics and modernity than the Masters Tournament. But two aggravations of the present — inflation and supply-chain pressures — are encroaching at concession stands that have long sold sandwiches and sweets to the well-heeled for rock-bottom prices.
Measured merely in dollars and cents, the changes are hardly seismic, especially for spectators who routinely pay thousands for tickets on the secondary market.