The field for the Masters grew by four on Monday.
Jason Day, Harris English, Keith Mitchell and Min Woo Lee punched their tickets to the season’s first major, which begins April 6, by being in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking on March 27 and having not previously qualified for the tournament to be held at Augusta National.
Day, 35, reached the quarterfinals of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play on Saturday before losing to Scottie Scheffler. It continued an impressive run of good form for Day, who started the year 112th in the OWGR. But since the calendar flipped, Day has recorded five top-10 finishes and jumped to No. 33. Day missed last year’s Masters, snapping a string of 11 straight appearances. He has notched four top-10s at Augusta National, including T-2 in 2011 and third in 2013.
English, No. 44, sat out last year’s Masters after opting to have surgery on a torn labrum in his right hip in February 2022. Ranked 14th at the time, he missed five months and then struggled to pick up where he left off. The 33-year-old English plummeted to 90th after a missed cut at the WM Phoenix Open this February, but on the back of a T-2 finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational earlier this month, the Valdosta, Georgia, native will make his fourth trip down Magnolia Lane.
Mitchell, No. 46, who like English played his college golf down the road in Athens for the Georgia Bulldogs, is returning to the Masters for the first time since 2019, when he notched his lone PGA Tour win at the Honda Classic. Two top-5 finishes in February – T-4 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and fifth at the Genesis Invitational – lifted Mitchell, 31, who is on a run of six straight made cuts, inside the top 50.
Min Woo Lee, No. 47, is set to make his second Masters appearances after finishing T-14 in his debut last year. He has recorded nine top-15 finishes worldwide in his last 11 stroke-play starts since a third at the Spanish Open late last year. The 24-year-old Aussie shared the lead early in the final round of the Players Championship in March before tumbling to a 76 and T-6 finish.
Another Aussie was the hard-luck loser in the OWGR.
Someone had to be No. 51 and it’s Lucas Herbert. He started the year at No. 60 and had a pair of third-place finishes in the Middle East to improve to 45th but then backed up to No. 56 and even getting to the quarterfinals at the WGC-Match Play wasn’t enough to get him on the right side of the OWGR before the cut off.
That leaves just one more avenue to qualify for the Masters. The winner of this week’s Valero Texas Open, if he hasn’t otherwise qualified, is exempt into the field, which currently is at 89. Last year, J.J. Spaun took advantage of this route by winning at TPC San Antonio.
