The 41-year-old food and beverage manager at Victoria Golf Club managed MacKenzie’s Scottish Pub in a hospitality venue near the fifth green.
“It was an amazing experience that not too many people will ever get,” Wilde said of the chance. “Imagine to be given the opportunity to supervise the brand new opening of a Scottish pub at Augusta National? Very surreal.”
The venue was accessed by invitation only and housed four restaurants — The Pavilion, Ike’s (as in Dwight D. Ike Eisenhower, the 34th president of the U.S., and former member of Augusta), Calamity Janes, and MacKenzie’s.
The opportunity all came about when Wilde attended the Canadian Society of Club Managers conference in 2012 in Richmond in which one of the speakers was Jim James, a senior director at Augusta National.
“After he spoke to the crowd of chefs and managers, everybody went for lunch. I waited at the stage for a chance to speak with him and to express my interest in working at Augusta National Golf Course,” Wilde said of James.
James eventually forwarded Wilde’s information on to the clubhouse manager, which led to contact with John Johnstone.
“This man is the epitome of Augusta National’s standards,” said Wilde. “He called me one day and we chatted for 20 to 30 minutes. It was essentially my final interview. Mr. Johnstone is a Master Chef and he has run kitchens in many of the Ritz Carltons.
“He is now the director of club operations at Augusta National. To make a long story short, he gave me the job, and I flew down to Augusta, Georgia, on April 4,” said Wilde, one of just three Canadians involved in the project. “I had never done anything like this before.”
He arrived to find Augusta National in all its majesty.
“I will tell you the property is both huge and unreal. Honestly, you can’t describe it,” said Wilde. “It’s immaculate, every inch of it. No word of a lie, we had a meeting one night with chefs and managers on the patio of a restaurant and a guy in the backdrop was trimming the lawn with scissors.
“He would look sideways at the grass, and grab the blade of grass from the top then snip it. It was unreal. All of the Magnolias are in bloom and the grass, honestly, looks fake. It is so pristine.”
That customer service was expected to carry through to clients at MacKenzie’s.
“I wouldn’t say that I rubbed shoulders, so to speak, but I did see a few famous people. The clientele was fabulous, however,” said Wilde, who was asked to keep identities of the patrons confidential.
The venues each sat between 200 to 300 patrons and were completely different in decor and feel, said Wilde, who worked between 12-14 hours a day for the 10 days. Three smaller, exact replica greens of holes No. 7, 14 and 16 were also nearby for patrons to use.
“To be honest, I watched about five minutes of live golf,” he said. “We were very busy, and because we were pioneers in this venue, we really didn’t know what to expect, so I was always on hand in the pub just in case. But it was worth every minute.
“It was a brand new venue so we had brand new staff and we really were not too sure how busy we would be. But every person that walked through the doors was blown away,” said Wilde, who met many Canadians during the stay — no Victorians, but one visitor from Courtenay.
“The facility is brand new, but it looks like and operates as though it could have been there for years.”
Wilde has been invited back in 2014.
