AUGUSTA — Just typing that dateline brings a calm in the midst of chaos.
We’re used to it now, and the division in men’s professional certainly won’t impact things this week at Augusta National. That might have been the fear last year, and certainly was among the talking points two years ago.
The Masters is here, with all the uncertainty that still remains, the new normal that is now simply part of the landscape.
Players have come to terms with the idea that U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and defending Masters champion Scottie Scheffler are in the same tournament for the first time since July at Royal Troon.
Truth is, we figured this might be resolved by now. Not necessarily put in place, but at least with some semblance of what it might look like maybe next year? The year after?
Instead the wait continues, with more doubt cast about this week when new LIV CEO Scott O’Neil said the league is content to move along without a deal and after The Guardian report that said the PGA Tour rejected a proposal that would see LIV Golf exist in its current format while Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, would get a place on the PGA Tour Policy Board.
Al-Rumayyan, who is said to be stubborn about keeping LIV Golf as a 14-event team-based league, has long sought to get a seat at golf’s big table. He’s played golf with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and former R&A CEO Martin Slumbers and can get President Trump on the phone.
While there are some signs of thawing—O’Neil has been invited by Augusta National to attend the Masters this week—there remains a large divide, one that shows no signs of coming together anytime soon.
Will that have impact on this week?
Very unlikely.
Some of the talking points that existed a few years ago have subsided. For the most part, PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV players get along. If nothing else, PGA Tour players recognize that the launch of LIV Golf and the PGA Tour’s reaction to it has done nothing but enrich them in the form of bigger purses, more FedEx Cup money and player equity.
And it has hardly hurt the major championships.
While golf fans might like to see Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy together a bit more often than four times per year, that is the current situation, and now is the time to embrace it.
A good number of players began arriving for practice on Sunday and even Saturday, knowing that Monday could be a washout with a dire weather forecast in place.
The course is expected to get soaked, with temperatures in the 80s dropping into the 60s by Tuesday. If they can dry the place out—which is possible but not a given—then Augusta National should offer a stern test in some cooler conditions.
While the issue of golf’s ongoing strife can perhaps be put in the background to some degree, it is almost assuredly going to come at times with players and with Masters chairman Fred Ridley during his annual Wednesday news conference.
Ridley undoubtedly will be asked if the Masters will next year give LIV players direct access to the tournament via its point list or some other qualifying avenue.
So far, the Masters has resisted. In each of the past two years, it has granted a special exemption to Chile’s Joaquin Niemann, who in 2018 won the Latin America Amateur Championship, which the Masters underwrites. In doing so, the Masters made no mention of Niemann’s LIV results, which this year saw him win two of the first five tournaments.
Next month’s PGA Championship has also not granted LIV direct access but the tournament has a lot of latitude in giving invites and will undoubtedly use them, especially if a player is among the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking. So far, Niemann and Sergio Garcia have announced that they’ve received invites.
For the first time, both the U.S. Open and British Open have given direct access to LIV golfers via its season-long points list, with the top points earner in a point in the season earning a spot in the field. For the U.S. Open, it’s the top player not exempt among the leading three; it’s the top player not exempt among the top five for the Open.
While it is a nod toward LIV Golf’s acceptance, it is hardly satisfying to the upstart league.
All of which makes the Masters and the other majors that much more important.
Niemann, for example, has never finished among the top 10 in a major and knows it is important for him to show some form. A top-10 finish also gets him in the Masters field next year.
“I still haven't had any pretty good results in majors,” Niemann said last week in Miami where he was competing in LIV’s event. “I’m still trying to figure it out, trying to do some new stuff, trying to work harder and trying to just become a better golfer and try to handle those situations better.
“I feel like I’ve improved a lot. I’ve still got to test myself on those stages. Yeah, I’m still figuring it out.”
For those who wish to see the leaders of all the golf organizations figure out the ongoing issues, perhaps no better result could occur than to have all of the top players in the mix, giving us a taste of what we are missing on a more regular basis.
McIlroy will undoubtedly be one of the biggest story lines of the week. Aside from Niemann on LIV Golf, he is the only player with two victories in 2025 heading into the Masters, having won at Pebble Beach and the Players Championship.
This will be McIlroy’s 11th attempt at winning the Masters since he first had a chance to complete the career Grand Slam in 2015. At a place where you’d think his game is well-suited to dominate, he’s actually been surprisingly out of contention more often than not.
Scheffler attempts to become just the fourth player to defend at Augusta, Xander Schauffele looks to regain the form that saw him win two major championships last year, DeChambeau hopes to build on his tie for sixth at the Masters last year, Koepka wants to reestablish his five-major credentials and Jon Rahm expects to be a factor in them again.
The PGA Tour has had a nice mix of winners this year and an uptick in television ratings with former Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama and last year’s runner-up, Ludvig Åberg, among the tournament winners along with Viktor Hovland ending a year-long slump.
Getting them all into the mix this week would do wonders to put some of the angst aside. The Masters, regardless, has a way of doing that anyway. Perhaps it will be a week that the stars shine.
The Golf 100
Putting Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods atop a list of the greatest golfers of all time seems an easy task, even if there might be disagreement as to who holds the top spot.
But what about ranking golfers through 100 spots? And including women? And players from decades ago and recent vintage?
Author Michael Arkush has attempted to do that with his recently released book The Golf 100: A Spirited Ranking of the Greatest Players Of All Time.
Starting at No. 100 with John McDermott, who was the first U.S.-born golfer to win the U.S. Open, and working all the way to No. 1, Arkush includes 13 women. There are also eight players who are in this week’s Masters: Bernhard Langer, Fred Couples, Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Vijay Singh, Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson.
Deciding how to rank Dustin Johnson, who won the Masters in 2020, ahead of Horton Smith, who won the first Masters in 1934, took some elaborate number-crunching.
Arkush put together his own system to rank players based on their performances in major championships, those deemed major at the time, and various PGA Tour and European Tour events. To slot the women, he only rated them against each other, then used his intuition to figure out where to slot them.
“I’m under no illusion that the list is perfect,” Arkush wrote.
Although he should not feel bad, either. This is a fun exercise open to debate but with a solid system behind Arkush’s ratings. You might not agree with them all, but that’s part of the beauty of this exercise.
For each player ranked, Arkush offers a nice, tidy recap of the player’s career, with tidbits you might not have known. His top 10 is interesting, and it might not be in the order for which you expect, leading to plenty of good conjecture.
The Masters field
The last way into the Masters field was not taken Sunday when Brian Harman won the Valero Texas Open, meaning the field is at 96 players. Harman, who won the 2023 Open, was already exempt. The field size is the largest at the Masters since 97 players started in both 2014 and 2015.
One debate every year is whether the fall PGA Tour events deserve the win-and-you’re-in exemption. When the PGA Tour reverted to its calendar-year schedule last year and went away from the wrap-around schedule it had employed for 11 years, the fall events took a hit in field strength. It has caused some to wonder if the Masters pulls that automatic invitation, although it remains a compelling aspect to those tournaments.
If the Masters is to make any changes, they would most likely be announced at chairman Fred Ridley’s Wednesday news conference. That is also where he could announce if LIV Golf is getting any direct access to the tournament for 2026.
More Masters on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Masters Has Returned, the Calm Amidst the Chaos That Is Pro Golf Today.
