AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | With Jon Rahm beginning defense of his 2023 Masters victory today, this seems to be a good time to reflect on his stellar showing in last year’s tournament and how he surged to victory on the final day of play.
It also is a moment to remember what an important role international golfers have long played in the Masters. In addition to being the fourth Spaniard to capture the year’s first major, Rahm also was the 17th competitor from outside the United States to do so. And his triumph marked the 24th time that a non-American has taken the tournament, with Gary Player, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and José María Olazábal having won multiple Masters in their careers.
The foreign flavor of the tournament goes well beyond those who have slipped on a green jacket at the conclusion of play. Consider, for example, that golfers from 40 countries as wide-ranging as Chile, Australia, Poland, India and Thailand have competed in the Masters since its debut in 1934 as the Augusta National Invitation Tournament. Add the fact that the 2024 edition will include 40 international professionals and three overseas amateurs. Together, they make up nearly half of this year’s field.
Bottom line: The Masters truly is a global event, which is exactly what tournament founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts hoped it would become.
The 72-person field for the inaugural Masters featured one Canadian and three Englishman, among them Harry “Lighthorse” Cooper, a World Golf Hall of Fame member and winner of 30 PGA Tour events. Two years later, the tournament included a pair of Japanese golfers, the lyrically named Chick Chin and Torchy Toda, who finished tied for 20th and 29th, respectively.
According to David Owen in his book The Making of the Masters, “the acceptance rate among international players was so dismally low [in the early years] that Roberts and Jones had to cast a wide net to be assured of securing even one or two entrants from abroad.” The obscurity of the event and the cost and time involved to travel to and from Augusta were obvious deterrents to potential contestants.
Another problem for the tournament founders, the author added, was that judging and comparing foreign players back then “involved guesswork, since tours in other countries were uneven in the extreme, and there were virtually no international events.”
The number of overseas contestants grew in the 1950s and ’60s, however. Several of them came from South America, largely because Jones and Roberts had partnered in a Coca-Cola operation there and knew the region’s best players through their travels. One such soul was Roberto De Vicenzo, the Argentine who competed in 15 Masters from 1950 to 1975 and missed getting into a playoff with Bob Goalby in the 1968 tournament after signing for a higher score.
Roberts and Jones also made a habit of soliciting suggestions on potential Masters invitees from top professionals and heeding their recommendations, such as the one received from South African Bobby Locke about a talented youngster named Gary Player. That prompted Roberts and Jones to invite Player to tee it in the 1957 Masters. Four years later, the South African won the green jacket, becoming the first golfer from outside the U.S. to do so. He ended up taking the tournament two other times, in 1974 and 1978, and remained after that last victory as the only foreign champion in Masters history.
International players began winning with some regularity in the 1980s, with Ballesteros emerging victorious twice that decade (in 1980 and 1983) and Langer, Sandy Lyle and Faldo coming out on top as well. The 1990s were just as fruitful for foreigners as Germany’s Langer took his second Masters and England’s Faldo prevailed in his second and third. Wales’ Ian Woosnam also triumphed during that time, in 1991. Olazábal procured green jackets in 1994 and 1999.
In his Masters book, Owen also wrote about how invitation guidelines for international players were for many decades more flexible than those for Americans, largely because Jones believed that “foreign players, in most cases, [did not] have the opportunity to prove themselves against U.S.A. players.”
But things had changed in that regard by the time British and other European players started winning Masters tournaments, with their invitations coming only after they “qualified.” One reason for that: golfers from those parts of the world were able to compete against Americans far more frequently than those from other areas.
“At that point, they had to be No. 1 in the previous year’s European Order of Merit, [known as the Harry Vardon Trophy] or win a major championship to get in,” said Ken Schofield, who served as executive director of the European Tour from 1975 to 2004. “Seve was invited to play in the 1980 Masters because he had won the Open Championship the previous year. Langer played in his first Masters in 1982 after winning the Harry Vardon Trophy in 1981.”
These days, the qualifications for a Masters invitation are myriad and quite strict. But the club continues the tradition of offering special exemptions to international players, and for much the same reasons that they did in the first years of the tournament.
The same thing happened to Sandy Lyle [who competed in his first Masters in 1980 after winning the European Order of Merit the previous year] and Ian Woosnam [who won the Vardon in 1987 and then teed it in his maiden Masters the following April].
In recent years, the Masters has opened two other avenues to the tournament for internationals by providing invitations to the winners of the annual Asia-Pacific and Latin America amateur championships, which the club helped create.
These days, the qualifications for a Masters invitation are myriad and quite strict. But the club continues the tradition of offering special exemptions to international players, and for much the same reasons that they did in the first years of the tournament.
“Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts established the Masters as a global sporting event, so throughout our history, special invitations for deserving international players has always been considered,” Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said when he announced in January 2019 that Shugo Imahira of Japan had secured a spot in that spring’s tournament.
Ridley’s predecessor, Billy Payne, offered a similar rationale for proffering an invitation in 2012 to another notable Japanese player, Ryo Ishikawa, saying: “Historically, the Masters has invited international players not otherwise qualified to expand the tournament’s global reach. [He] is an accomplished player on the Japan Golf Tour, and we believe his presence will help increase interest not only in his home country but also throughout Asia.”
In a move that seems unimaginable today given the divided state of affairs in golf, Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson extended a special invitation in 2002 to Greg Norman, a three-time runner-up. The Aussie accepted, and he ended up tying for 36th place in that year’s tournament and taking home a pair of crystal goblets that the club traditionally awards to anyone making an eagle. Norman eagled the 15th hole on the final day of play.
This year, the club meted out three invites, to Chile’s Joaquín Niemann, Japan’s Ryo Hisatsune and Denmark’s Thorbjørn Olesen.
Their presence, and that of Rahm and so many other non-Americans this week, demonstrates that the Masters is most definitely an international event – and one that continues to support and promote the overseas game.