AUGUSTA - The Masters qualification criteria, the ever-adjusting table for one of golf’s most prized invitations, was widened again Wednesday when Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley announced the reigning NCAA individual champion would qualify for the championship beginning next year.
Ridley, who played in three Masters while on the University of Florida team in the mid-1970s, said, “As it relates to the NCAA champion, as I have stated, that is a major amateur championship. And I thought it was time that we acknowledged it.”
Coincidentally or not, Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent, who won the NCAA title last year as a freshman, is playing here this week by special invitation, the first once issued since Aaron Baddeley was included in 2000.
Ridley also announced that the NCAA women’s champion would qualify for the Augusta National women’s amateur, held the week before the Masters.
While the door to the men’s field was cracked a bit wider, it was simultaneously made more difficult by a decision this week by the Official World Golf Rankings to not include results for the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Golf events in their weekly listings, severely diminishing LIV players’ chances for qualifying for the annual schedule’s first major championship. The Masters kept its two qualifications that the 50 leaders in the final world rankings the previous calendar year and the 50 leaders the week prior to the current tournament will receive invitations.
These decisions may well give pause to the top college players as they consider their professional futures. While the 2024 NCAA champion gets into one of the game’s most prestigious events, the 2021 NCAA champion, Clemson’s Turk Pettit signed up with LIV after playing just three PGA Tour events and may never get here.
While this week’s field includes 18 LIV contestants, only six of them -- Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokak, Kevin Na, Louis Oosthuizen, Thomas Pieters and Harold Varner -- qualified by making the OWGR top 50. Under the revised qualifying policy, none of them would have made the field this week.
Asked if he was fearful this might be the last of his four Masters appearances, Pieters was stoic.
“Not really. I took my parents here because it could be my last one,” said Pieters, a Belgian who qualified on his No. 44 ranking. “That’s just being realistic.”
The tournament begins following a week of detente in the first event since LIV players were suspended by the PGA Tour last summer. While lawsuits are still pending and Fred Couples declined to back down from calling fellow Masters champion PhIl Mickelson a “nutbag” for his premiere role in leading the LIV defection, there was a sense of cordiality within the field, although Mickelson was reportedly silent throughout Tuesday night’s Champions Dinner.
When asked about LIV CEO Greg Norman’s remark last week that he doubted he’d ever be welcomed back at Augusta National, Ridley preached hope.
“I’ve noticed the tone ... has been really good here this week,” he said. “I’ve noticed the players are interacting. Last night at the Champions Dinner, I would not have known that anything was going on in the world of professional golf other than the norm.
“So I think and I’m hopeful that this week might get people thinking in a little bit different direction and things will change. So I would never say never (to Norman), no.”
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