Jason Day, Harris English, Keith Mitchell and Min Woo Lee came up short last week at the WGC Dell Match Play, but they left Austin, Texas, with perhaps the best consolation prize in golf: Masters invitations.
Australians Day and Lee will join Americans English and Mitchell, former teammates at the University of Georgia, in returning to Augusta National Golf Club because of their top-50 spots in the Official World Golf Ranking, which was updated late Sunday. Their additions bump the field size to 89, with one more potential bid to go out April 3 to the winner of the Valero Texas Open, if he is not already qualified.
Day, 35, the 2015 PGA champion, is enjoying a career resurgence this year. Though he lost in the Match Play quarterfinals to No. 1-ranked Scottie Scheffler, Day finished among the top 10 in four of his previous five starts on the PGA Tour. He owns four top-10 results in 11 Masters appearances, including a co-runner-up in his 2011 debut, but he missed the cut in 2020 and 2021 at Augusta and failed to qualify last year.
English, 33, a lifelong Georgia resident, will be making his fourth start at the Masters. Mitchell, 31, and Lee, 24, have played once at the Masters.
Eighteen LIV golfers have qualified for the Masters. Foremost among them are six past champions who hold lifetime exemptions and will be objects of curiosity at the pre-tournament Champions Dinner after bolting for the Saudi-funded tour last year: Sergio García, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson. Also, LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka will be at Augusta courtesy of U.S. Open victories in the past five years; Cameron Smith gets a spot because of his 2022 Open Championship title; Mito Pereira earns a ticket for his top-four finish at the 2022 PGA; Talor Gooch made it as one of the 30 qualifiers for the 2022 Tour Championship; and Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na, Joaquín Niemann, Louis Oosthuizen, Thomas Pieters and Harold Varner III earned invitations after being in the OWGR’s top 50 at the end of 2022.
For a look at the field plus how the invitees qualified, click here.
Augusta National Golf Club will host a celebrity video game challenge on April 2, the Sunday before the Masters, before a live audience in the club’s press building. “EA Sports PGA Tour: Road to the Masters” will start at 6 p.m. EDT, after the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals, and run for about two hours. It can be seen via livestream on Masters.com plus other platforms and channels. READ MORE
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The PGA Tour used illegal tactics to coerce a TV network to back out of a signed broadcasting deal with LIV Golf before LIV ultimately settled for a deal with a “secondary network,” the Saudi-funded tour claimed in a court filing in its federal antitrust lawsuit against the U.S. circuit, Joel Beall reported for Golf Digest.
Thierry Pascal, who manages the PGA Tour’s international media division, “used illegal means to dissuade numerous broadcasters in international markets from signing broadcast contracts with LIV and even from reporting about LIV events in their news content,” LIV’s attorneys claimed in the filing. LIV also alleges that a signed contract with an undisclosed media outlet was voided after Pascal’s intervention. Pascal was scheduled to be deposed today.
LIV Golf, which moved to a franchise model in its second season, has had its first two events televised to small audiences on the CW Network, which reportedly is not paying rights fees for its broadcasts, a customary practice with other live sports events. READ MORE
LIV Golf’s viewership ratings have gone from bad to worse, according to a report by Josh Carpenter in Sports Business Journal. LIV attracted 274,000 viewers to the CW Network for the final round of the Tucson event on March 19 after averaging 284,000 from one day earlier, SBJ reported. The audience does not include viewers via streaming. Those numbers were down slightly from LIV’s season-opening event in Mexico, which averaged 286,000 on Saturday and 291,000 on Sunday. A big part of LIV’s struggles to attract viewers, SBJ noted, is that many local affiliates of the CW Network did not broadcast the tournaments. READ MORE
LIV golfers pressed their organization for answers regarding the rival tour’s “accelerated timeline” during a players meeting last week before the tournament in Arizona, Alan Shipnuck reported on FirePitCollective.com. After LIV’s debut season last year, the Saudi-funded tour decided to “fast-track its business plan by a full year,” according to the report. However, some players are questioning how they and their contracts fit the tour’s goals, which emphasize the team concept. READ MORE
LIV Golf has shifted to a non-union production company and cut key employee benefits for many of its behind-the-scenes technicians, according to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees labor union. READ MORE
Scotland’s Catriona Matthew, who captained Europe to consecutive victories in the Solheim Cup, will lead Great Britain and Ireland’s top female amateurs against America in the 2024 Curtis Cup, the R&A announced. She will be the first professional player to captain a team in the biennial match.
Matthew, 53, a three-time Curtis Cup player, won four times on the LPGA, including the 2009 Women’s British Open, and five more titles on the LET. She played in nine Solheim Cups for Europe, compiling an 18-11-8 record in match play, and captained the victorious 2019 and 2021 teams against the Americans.
“Through the Solheim Cup, I have gained experience in building a high-performing and successful team, including bringing together individual athletes from different countries and recognizing whose strengths will combine well to create successful pairings,” Matthew told the R&A. “My goal is to channel all my playing and captaining skills into this Great Britain and Ireland Curtis Cup team to optimize their performance.”
The 43rd Curtis Cup will be played August 30 to September 1, 2024, at Sunningdale (England) Golf Club’s Old Course, about 30 miles southwest of London. The Americans have won three consecutive matches, including last year’s 15½-4½ victory at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and lead the series, 31-8-3. READ MORE
More than half of respondents to a Golf Datatech survey of its “serious golfer” database don’t like the USGA and R&A’s proposed “model local rule” that would roll back the golf ball for male touring professionals and elite amateurs, the company reported.
Among the 1,295 respondents, 52 percent oppose the move to tamp down on increasing distances in golf. Only 23 percent of respondents support the proposal. Roughly a quarter said they don’t know enough yet to have formed an opinion, or they don’t care.
The respondents are described as golfers who play the most rounds and spend the most money on equipment.
Golf Datatech is an independent market-research firm for retail sales, consumer and trade trends. READ MORE
Driving distance on the PGA Tour is going up while scoring is falling as the average age of competitors skews younger, according to a 36-page research paper by Mark Broadie, the Columbia Graduate School of Business School professor who created the strokes-gained category for measuring performance on tour. The study draws its strongest conclusions from the past two decades because of the advent of detailed data provided by ShotLink. READ MORE
TaylorMade Golf issued a statement about the USGA and R&A’s recent proposed “model local rule” about rolling back the golf ball for “elite” male players. The equipment manufacturer also launched a survey to help it understand golfers’ views of the proposal. The company intends to forward the responses to the USGA and R&A. To participate, click here.
With data tracked from 650 million shots, including 20 million-plus with the driver, Arccos issued its 2022 Driver Distance Report to profile distance trends among male and female golfers broken down by handicap and age group. READ MORE
TAP-INS
Retail sales of golf equipment in the U.S. dropped for the sixth consecutive month, Golf Datatech reported, citing a 3.2-percent decline in February compared with the same month in 2022. Year to date, sales are down 7.7 percent in 2023 compared with the first two months of 2022. “While no one in the industry ever likes to see consecutive months of declining sales, the January/February time frame average out to be less than 10 percent of total annual sales, so the drop is less problematic than if it were to happen in the peak buying season,” said John Krzynowek, Golf Datatech’s co-founder. READ MORE
A “voluminous renovation” at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford, New York, will render the storied site difficult for professionals to recognize for the PGA Championship in 1½ months, according to Sal Maiorana in Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle newspaper. The East Course was restored by architect Andrew Green in recent years, notably via the removal of hundreds of trees, so that the site more closely resembles Donald Ross’ 1922 design for the PGA, which is set for May 18-21. READ MORE
A dispute with the new owners of Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, over the promised refund of initiation fees has prompted many long-time members to resign from the site of three PGA Championships and a Ryder Cup, Tim Sullivan reported for Golf Digest. READ MORE
For the fourth consecutive year, the LPGA has canceled its Taiwan Swinging Skirts tournament in the fall. The tour cited “operational factors,” without elaborating, for scrapping the October 26-29 event. In February, the tour canceled the Blue Bay LPGA that had been scheduled for March on Hainan Island, citing “ongoing COVID-19-related matters” in China. With the latest cancellation, the LPGA is down to five tournaments in Asia, including three in the fall scheduled for China, South Korea and Japan. READ MORE
The LPGA will revert to a six-round annual tour qualifier, the tour announced. The 108-hole LPGA Q-Series will be played November 30-December 5 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail’s Magnolia Grove Golf Course in Mobile, Alabama. READ MORE
PGA Tour Canada announced a 10-event season that begins in June and features nine tournaments spread across six provinces in Canada and one event in the U.S. READ MORE
Ian Pattinson, a former R&A chairman, has been appointed to an independent chair on England Golf, the organization announced. He replaces Nic Coward, who leaves after six years. READ MORE
Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina released a 1½-minute preview video of a hole under construction on its 10th course, which is being designed by Tom Doak and scheduled to open in 2024.
Six months after Hurricane Ian roared ashore in southwest Florida, resulting in 149 deaths across the state, the golf industry has marked significant progress in its recovery. The Fort Myers News-Press and Naples Daily News contacted area courses to find out where things stand. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon