Less than three weeks and counting. That’s how much longer golf fans have to wait until the start of the 2025 Masters and the beginning of the men’s major golf season. Everyone got an early taste here in March, watching Rory McIlroy pull out a playoff victory at the Players Championship two weeks ago and speculating as to whether this helps or hurts his chances of winning at Augusta National and (finally) closing out the career Grand Slam he’s been striving for since 2015. Plus the Valspar Championship had a dramatic finish between Viktor Hovland and Justin Thomas, two other popular players looking like they could be factors in Georgia.
Mind you, anticipation for the Masters has been bubbling ever since late December when Augusta National started sending out its first batch of invitation to players who had already claimed spots in the field.
Signs of the season. #themasters pic.twitter.com/iiYgmQlDcW
— The Masters (@TheMasters) December 20, 2024
To date, there are 92 people expected to play in the tournament, not including past champions who aren’t playing and two amateurs who qualified but turned pro and are no longer eligible. The number grew last month when Augusta National announced that Nicolai Hojgaard and Joaquin Niemann had accepted special invitations to compete, and most recently when Justin Hastings won the Latin America Amateur Championship and Joe Highsmith won the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches, the last tour pro to be added to the field with a victory.
There remains two qualification criteria still open for players to qualify to compete this April:
- Winners of upcoming PGA Tour events that award a full-point allocation (Houston Open and Valero Texas Open)
- The 50 leaders on the final Official World Golf Ranking published during the week prior to the tournament
This second critiera will become an interesting narative in the coming weeks. Players Championship runner-up J.J. Spaun, for instance, jump from 57th to 25th in the World Ranking and thus has essentially claimed a spot in the Masters now. And there are a few others that are projected to do so, or sit right near the bubble, according to social media’s resident OWGR expert, Nosferatu:
Top 50 projection for March 31st (#TheMasters qualification), as things stand before @ValsparChamp.
Remember those targets are the very minimum needed, so they should really aim for some better finishes than those… #OWGRgreen – already qualified for the Masters pic.twitter.com/xaDIVI9e39
— Nosferatu (@VC606) March 19, 2025
READ MORE: Here’s why Golf Twitter lost its damn mind over Team Langer’s PNC victory
Masters qualifying criteria
Main image: Ben Jared
READ MORE: The Happy Gilmore 2 Trailer just dropped! Let’s analyze his golf swing