
Joaquín Niemann holed a birdie putt in the dark to end a four-hole sudden-death playoff with Sergio García and earn his first $4 million LIV Golf winner’s check at Mayakoba on Sunday. The 25-year-old Chilean had a lot to be happy about on Mexico’s Riviera Maya.
But foremost on Niemann’s mind was someplace else, somewhere he desperately wants to be in two months’ time: Augusta, Georgia. Playing some of the best golf of anyone in the world right now, Niemann hopes to get the chance to compete at the Masters.
“Oh, I hope so. I mean, I’m just ready,” Niemann said when asked whether his victory in LIV Golf’s season opener might have drawn the attention of the folks in charge of the season’s first major. “I want to win majors, but I’ve got to get in first.”
Getting in is Niemann’s biggest hurdle. Without Official World Golf Ranking points available on LIV Golf, his world ranking has fallen from a career-high 15th in 2022 on the PGA Tour to 74th. He actually fell eight places Monday after winning in Mayakoba.
There is no competitive path for Niemann to Augusta in the next two months. But that doesn’t mean Niemann can’t get into the Masters. There is one option that should be very much on the table for him to tee it up at Augusta National for the fifth time: a special exemption. The Masters Committee, at its discretion, also invites international players not otherwise qualified. Niemann is a prime candidate for just such an invitation. He fits all the criteria to warrant consideration.
Aside from his exemplary golf – which counts two victories plus two more top-five global finishes in his four worldwide starts since the end of November – Niemann has two big factors in his favor to draw the attention of the Masters Committee.

First: Niemann won the 2018 Latin America Amateur Championship, an event in which Augusta National was one of the principal stakeholders in launching a decade ago to identify and create a pathway to stardom for players like Niemann. Dating to club co-founder Bobby Jones, the Masters reveres its amateur heroes, and Niemann is high on the roster of identified stars.
Second: The Masters has only 81 players currently qualified for 2024, and Bernhard Langer likely will make it one fewer as he’s recovering from surgery for a torn Achilles tendon and would be considered doubtful to make his announced final start in April. The Masters has not had a field smaller than 87 starting players since 1997 before the OWGR top 50 was used as a qualifying metric, and this year is on pace to be the shallowest in decades.
In short, there’s room for a special international invitee, and nobody fits the description for one better than Niemann. He has a better case than fellow unqualified international LIV-sters Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester, each of whom won twice in his native Africa in DP World-sanctioned events in November and December. His résumé is even better than that of American Talor Gooch, last year’s leading individual on LIV but with little to show for it outside of the Saudi circuit in the last year.
Niemann, for what it’s worth, ranks 20th in the independent Data Golf Rankings, the highest of any player not already qualified for the Masters. Burmester ranks 40th, Gooch 52nd and Oosthuizen 54th in Data Golf but 94th, 394th and 133rd, respectively, in the OWGR.
Niemann has been eying the Masters since he won the Australian Open in December – a result that earned him an automatic spot in July’s Open Championship at Royal Troon. It should be noted that twice Aaron Baddeley received a special exemption into the Masters after winning Australian Opens in 1999 (as an amateur) and 2000.
He took a similar mentality to the Hero Dubai Desert Classic last month and contended again, tying for fourth. His stated goal: “I’m trying to get into the Masters.”
On the heels of a fifth-place finish the week before in the DP World Tour-sanctioned Australian PGA, Niemann climbed nearly 30 places to No. 59 in the OWGR after lifting the Stonehaven Cup.
“Not even winning both tournaments would have been enough to get into the top 50 and the majors,” Niemann said in December. “But the Australian Open is such a good tournament, so it was easy to make my decision to come here and play some golf. This means a lot.
“I took this challenge [of joining LIV] knowing that I was not going to be in the majors, so I was going to go out there and try to earn my spot. That was my mentality of coming to Australia.”
He took a similar mentality to the Hero Dubai Desert Classic last month and contended again, tying for fourth. His stated goal: “I’m trying to get into the Masters.”

Niemann, a two-time PGA Tour winner including the 2022 Genesis Invitational at Riviera, isn’t whining about his status. He knows why he’s in the situation he’s in. But he also knows he has developed well enough to win a major and just wants the opportunity to prove it.
“It’s not frustrating for me,” Niemann said in Dubai. “I obviously took the decision to join LIV, and I knew it was going to happen. There was going to be no ranking [points]. I think I deserve to be in the majors. Obviously, world ranking does not show that, but I think if I had to play every week with world rankings, I am going to be in the majors. But it is what it is, and that’s why I’m here.
“I want to play in those four events and I know if I play there, I have a chance to win.”
Niemann’s best finish in 19 career major starts is a tie for 16th in the Masters last year. If not for a tough-to-swallow triple bogey on the 11th hole on Sunday, he would have finished top 12 and booked a return in April.
Instead, Niemann can only keep trying to excel on his chosen tour and hope performances like last week’s – when he shot 59 in the opening round and beat two former Masters champions down the stretch – are enough.
“I think I have a different mindset for this year,” he said Sunday. “It kind of hurt me a little bit not being in the majors, and I think also helped me to get motivation to kind of earn my spot back into the majors, into the elite players. I think it helped me a little bit to get focused back, to start working harder, to start working with a purpose.
“I think it’s paying off, and I just want to keep telling myself that I’m capable of doing this, of winning tournaments, and this is a good way to prove that. And I don’t want to stop working the way I’m doing it. I just want to keep going.”
His OWGR ranking could remain high enough to get into the PGA Championship in May at Valhalla. And he can always go through qualifying to get in the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.
But with the Masters first on tap, Niemann can only let his results speak for him since his world ranking can’t. And he has to hope Augusta National is listening.