Marvin Leonard had spent a decade building the Colonial Country Club in 1936, and within five years, it hosted the U.S. Open. The Colonial National Invitational teed off in May 1946, and for 80 years, the course has become an unskippable stop on the PGA Tour. The annual tournament is now known as the Charles Schwab Challenge. And back in the day, Colonial started a tradition of its own to honor the winners with jackets much like Augusta’s iconic green jacket; only they were navy blue.

That jacket, however, just lasted six editions. What replaced it in 1952 became one of the most recognizable traditions in professional golf. Leonard swapped the navy-blue jacket with a Scottish plaid design because it reminded him of his time playing golf in Scotland. As a self-taught golf enthusiast, Leonard studied every aspect of the sport, particularly the course architecture, and traveled often in pursuit of that knowledge.

The design introduced in 1952 was woven with seventeen colors, and the wool for each jacket is imported from Scotland every year to date. But the jacket today carries nine to ten colors. The jacket’s bright red color became instantly recognizable and stands apart from every other tradition in professional golf.

Interestingly, both the Charles Schwab Challenge and the RBC Heritage award a plaid jacket to their champions, and to a casual eye, the two look similar. Both are red and woven from Scottish tartan wool, but both represent entirely different histories.

In 1976, the RBC Heritage started awarding its iconic jacket, and the design was based on the Royal Stewart tartan. Previously, the winners wore canary-yellow jackets. The new plaid design is what organizers call the “Heritage Plaid”. The design represented a 1790 golf print showing Sir William Innes playing in Scotland while wearing a tartan jacket.

But coming back to the Charles Schwab Challenge, talking about the players who donned the jackets for the first time is an interesting story in itself. Ben Hogan claimed the first navy blue jacket, actually two navy blue jackets, in 1946 and 1947. The only other players to receive the blue jacket were Clayton Heafner in 1948, Sam Snead in 1950, and Cary Middlecoff in 1951. And then came the switch.

Interestingly, in 1952, Hogan again became the first person to receive the tartan as he stood on the 18th green. He was seen as the most eligible one to first wear it, given that he won the tournament five times in total, more than any player in the tournament’s history.

When a golfer wins the Charles Schwab Challenge, they receive the Leonard Trophy along with the iconic tartan jacket. The jacket is placed on the champion’s shoulder at the trophy ceremony. After the jackets are made, they are kept at the club and placed in the lockers of past winners each year when they arrive for the tournament.

There was only one time when there was a deliberate exception to the tartan’s tradition. The club returned to its original navy blue for a single year to mark the tournament’s 30th anniversary. And for every other year since 1952, plaid has been the price.

Behind the tradition, there is also a detailed process and an iconic figure responsible for crafting the jackets.

What goes into making the jacket and the champions who have donned it

Barry Smith is the person responsible for making these jackets. He has been a colonial member since 1977 and has served on the tournament committee for over three decades. However, he was not entrusted with making the champion’s jacket until 1989. His shop, William Barry Distinctive Apparel, sits five minutes from the club, and every champion since has been personally fitted by him.

“As a true golf fan, I couldn’t think of anything better than having the chance to measure and manufacture the famous plaid jacket for the Colonial champion,” Smith said back in the day.

The process to tailor the jackets is also more detailed than the ceremony suggests. Winners wear a model jacket for the trophy presentation, and Smith estimates the size by eye. He then roughly takes 20 measurements, including digital photographs of the winner’s shoulder, alignment, and posture, before building a custom-fitted jacket that is presented the following year. Just as champions cannot keep the jacket for any year, they can also not purchase it either. Speaking to CW33 reporter Brian Sandler in 2018, Smith estimated the value of each jacket at around $1,500.

Over the course of decades, the tartan jacket has gone onto the shoulders of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Crenshaw, and a long list of the game’s most decorated players.

In fact, only nine players in history have won both the Colonial plaid jacket and the Augusta green jacket: Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Billy Casper, Fuzzy Zoeller, Ben Crenshaw, Phil Mickelson, and Zach Johnson.

Phil Mickelson won here twice, in 2000 and 2008. Jordan Spieth, a Dallas native, took the title in 2016 and has described Colonial as one of the tournaments he values most on the calendar.

“I love Colonial,” Spieth said in 2021. “I’ve had a lot of success here. I love this golf course.”

And adding to this long list of traditions, more recently, Sam Burns (2022), Emiliano Grillo (2023), Davis Riley (2024), and Ben Griffin (2025) have each added their names to the list, continuing a tradition that stretches back to the very first champion in 1946.