Before Christmas, Augusta National Golf Club sent a notice explaining the obvious: All players qualified for the 2023 Masters based on its already firmly established qualifying criteria would be invited and eligible to play in April’s major championship. That put an end to all the baseless speculation that Augusta was going to ban players who joined the Saudi-funded LIV Golf series.
Masters chairman Fred Ridley’s official statement, however, said so much more than the obvious, that the 16 LIV Golf players would be welcome, however warmly, at Augusta National this spring. For some of them, it may very well be for the last time unless they step up and win it.
Let’s deal first with the immediate. It was somewhat ridiculous to believe that Augusta was going to diminish its field to intervene in the game’s ongoing civil war by banishing past champions and qualified players just because they’ve broken with the established tours and embarked on a different golf journey with LIV. Six of those players have green jackets, including 2020 winner Dustin Johnson. Cameron Smith is still the reigning British Open and Players champ. Brooks Koepka still won four recent majors. Bryson DeChambeau still won the 2020 U.S. Open. These are players who belong at Augusta regardless of who currently signs their paychecks. The Masters would be a lesser event without them.
So with Ridley’s acknowledgement that Augusta wouldn’t be changing the rules midstream, that means 16 LIV Golf players will be teeing it up at Augusta in April. They gained entry via different avenues as past Masters champs, winners of all three other majors, the Players, high finishers in the 2022 Masters, Tour Championship qualifiers and the Official World Golf Ranking top 50.
The Masters followed the letter of its rules. Words matter at Augusta, so when it says “those qualifying for the previous year’s season-ending Tour Championship,” it meant qualifiers and not substitutes. That’s why it credited Talor Gooch for qualifying via the Tour Championship on points while not crediting Aaron Wise, who competed at East Lake instead of Gooch off the tour’s secondary list that excluded LIV defectors. (Wise got into Augusta via the top 50 anyway, avoiding a very awkward controversy.)
The value of those words brings us to the second key element of Ridley’s Dec. 20 statement: Change is coming. The chairman’s disapproving tone regarding the direction LIV is taking elite golf rang out. It will be harder for LIV players who don’t already have major pedigrees to get into Augusta in 2024 and beyond.
“Regrettably, recent actions have divided men’s professional golf by diminishing the virtues of the game and the meaningful legacies of those who built it,” Ridley said without any hiding of the implied tsk-tsking. “Although we are disappointed in these developments, our focus is to honor the tradition of bringing together a preeminent field of golfers this coming April.”
This coming April. It’s hard to miss that specificity.
“Therefore, as invitations are sent this week, we will invite those eligible under our current criteria to compete in the 2023 Masters Tournament. As we have said in the past, we look at every aspect of the Tournament each year, and any modifications or changes to invitation criteria for future Tournaments will be announced in April.”
The Masters doesn’t need to explicitly ban LIV golfers to make it harder for them to find a place on future tee sheets. The top 50 will take care of itself, but Augusta can do more to strengthen the value of regular membership in golf’s merit-based ecosystem and encourage players to remain loyal to the game’s primary tours.
See the words such as “current criteria.” As Tiger Woods likes to say, it’s all right there in front of you. Ridley all but promises that an announcement regarding “modifications or changes” to future invitation criteria is coming when he sits down April 5 for his annual press conference on the eve of the Masters. It may be as simple as tinkering with the semantics by including a word such as “eligible” to eliminate suspended players such as Gooch from slipping through the cracks. Or it may be more expansive, using tour-centric criteria that surgically carves away avenues for LIV golfers to get through while incentivizing membership on golf’s merit-based tours.
It’s a convenient opportunity to make changes to the invitation criteria. The PGA Tour is undergoing some sweeping changes itself, returning to a calendar-year schedule and elevating a dozen events to attract the world’s best players more often. Its special arrangement with its DP World Tour partner is trying to gird golf’s ecosystem against the rogue invaders siphoning its talent.
Whether or not LIV Golf is invited to earn points in the Official World Golf Ranking will not do much to prevent its players from continuing to free-fall out of the all-important top 50 or help them climb back in. Players such as Louis Oosthuizen, Harold Varner III, Kevin Na, Jason Kokrak and Gooch already are barely clinging to top-50 status and soon enough will join the likes of Koepka, DeChambeau and Patrick Reed already on the outside looking in. LIV’s short fields are never going to be worth enough to outstrip PGA Tour players in the points race.
The Masters doesn’t need to explicitly ban LIV golfers to make it harder for them to find a place on future tee sheets. The top 50 will take care of itself, but Augusta can do more to strengthen the value of regular membership in golf’s merit-based ecosystem and encourage players to remain loyal to the game’s primary tours.
How do you incentivize loyalty? By offering the value of a Masters invitation that requires it.
Augusta could offer invitations to top finishers on other qualifying-based tours including the European, Japan, Australasian, Sunshine and Asian circuits. It could offer an exemption to the DP World’s flagship BMW Championship winner as it does the Players champion. It could restore old standards such as inviting the previous year’s participants in the Ryder and Presidents cups. It could offer spots for reigning NCAA champions or PGA Tour University winners, provided they enter golf’s long-established ecosystem and don’t take the guaranteed shortcut into LIV’s exhibition series.
Whether Ridley opts for minor tweaks or a major overhaul in its criteria, one thing is clear: The only guarantee for some of those LIV golfers to ever return to the Masters will be to win a green jacket. They’ll know where their future at Augusta stands before they tee off on April 6.