Monday After the Masters: How It All Started

We’re a week out now from the silver anniversary edition of the Hootie & the Blowfish Monday After the Masters Celebrity Pro-Am, and the band’s Mark Bryan shares some thoughts with Charlie Rymer on how the concept for this event originally unfolded.

Charlie Rymer: Well, Mark, let’s talk about that a little bit. This will be the 25th year for Monday After the Masters, and it’s grown to be this amazing event that other artists are copying. It’s gotten to be the largest single-day fundraiser in South Carolina every year.

When it started, year one, did you have any idea that it would become what it’s become?

Mark Bryan: We didn’t, obviously, no. We just had what we thought was a great idea with South Carolina Junior Golf with Happ Lathrop and the gang, and they had this great idea of being able to bring pros in, after Augusta, after
The Masters and before Hilton Head, and have them come play in a pro-am.

And it started humbly, trying to raise money in Columbia and after coming to Myrtle Beach 17 years ago, we’ve been able to grow it into what you’re talking about.

And so, a lot of thanks to that goes to Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and Bill Golden, those folks, for just seeing the vision of how big we could turn this, what we’ve turned it into.

Nobody had any idea that we could do that, but it took more than just our vision to do that, so …