There’s a saying in golf that the Masters is the hardest golf tournament to get into but the easiest to win. That’s true because the Masters field is the smallest of all the Majors, and even still it extends a comparatively large number of those invitations to past-winners and amateurs.
Unlike in the U.S. and British Opens, there are no open qualifiers for players who don’t get in ordinarily. If you’re a pro you basically book your trip to Augusta in one of two ways: You either win a PGA Tour event in the year leading up to the tournament, or you’re ranked pretty highly in the world rankings.
The other spots go to former winners — Arnold Palmer could still tee it up at the Masters this year if he wanted to — and to amateurs who win or place in one of golf’s biggest Amateur events, like the U.S. Amateur. What happens when players withdraw? Again, unlike in other events, those spots aren’t filled by alternates, they simply disappear.
(AFP)
So when Fred Couples followed Tiger Woods’ lead and withdrew from the tournament because of a back injury on Monday, it left just 89 players in the Masters field — making it the smallest field since 2002.
But remember: not all those 89 players have a realistic (if any) chance to win.
Of the 16 past champions left in the field, it would be an unprecedented shock if the seven over 50-years-old (Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle, Larry Mize, Mark O’Meara, Vijay Singh, Tom Watson, Ian Woosnam) actually slipped on another Green Jacket. That means there’s only really 82 players in the field with a realistic chance to win.
(Getty)
And don’t forget about the amateurs. There are six of them playing this year (Derek Bard, Bryson DeChambeau, Romain Langasque, Jin Cheng, Paul Chaplet, Sammy Schmitz). Considering no amateur has ever won the Masters, it’s safe to assume they probably won’t this year, either.
What that all means is that a player only has to worry about beating 75 other golfers this year in order to win the Masters. That’s nothing in the golf world, so if there’s ever been a better time to take advantage of some favorable conditions, 2016 is the year.
[sigallery id=”3b7f4bce21eba9b0090c8ca1c13b50b6″ title=”2015 Masters” type=”sigallery”]
