Masters field filling up with top-50 locks
Seven more players join field with Lee and Glover hovering precariously on bubble
Rasmus Højgaard booked his first Masters trip a year after twin brother Nicolai (Mateo Villalba/Getty Images)
Seven more players can comfortably expect to receive welcome post-Christmas cards from Augusta National Golf Club, but two more bubble players have some more sweating to do before the year-end OWGR top-50 is set.
Current Nos. 47 and 51 Min Woo Lee of Australia and Lucas Glover of America will have to keep an eye on the math as the final global events of the calendar year play out the next two weeks in Africa before the final Official World Golf Ranking of 2024 in on the books.
There’s nothing to worry about for seven other top-50 players guaranteed to remain that way at year’s end, bringing the Masters field to 83 qualified players. Among the seven who have secured Masters invites via the OWGR top 50 are first-timers Max Greyserman (No. 39) and Denmark’s Rasmus Højgaard (No. 42). They join South Korea’s Tom Kim (No. 21), Australia’s Jason Day (34), Canada’s Corey Conners (41) and Americans Nick Dunlap (32) and Denny McCarthy (43) in getting to book accommodations and tee times in Augusta in April.
Rasmus Højgaard is the twin brother of Nicolai Højgaard, who made a splash as a Masters rookie this year by sitting tied for sixth heading into the final round before a Sunday 76 dropped him to T16 — one shot out of a tie for 12th that would have earned him an automatic return to play in 2025. Nicolai tied for 24th at the Nedbank Challenge on Sunday, failing to budge from No. 58 in the OWGR. He pulled his name from the DP World Tour entry list at this week’s Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa and will have to work hard in the first few months of 2025 to climb back into the Masters field to join his brother.
Max Greyserman’s torrid finish to 2024 earned him a Masters invite (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
Greyserman gets in on the strength of a stellar conclusion to his rookie season on the PGA Tour despite not winning. He was poised to book guaranteed passage to Augusta in August before a startling late collapse in the closing holes at the regular-season ending Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield CC in Greensboro, N.C.
“I’m just going to walk away that I played really, really good golf, executed really well, had probably a four- or five-shot lead, I don’t know, four-shot lead,” he said after settling for runner-up behind Aaron Rai. “I had a four-shot lead with five holes to go? If you’re doing that in a PGA Tour event, you’re doing something exceptionally well so that’s what I’m going to walk away with.”
Ultimately, Greyserman’s three runner-ups at the 3M Open, Wyndham and Zozo Championship along with his solo fourth in the World Wide Technology Championship — all in his final six starts of the year — were enough to lift him from outside the top 125 to inside the top 50 when it mattered to get into the Masters.
Dunlap continues finding new ways to get to Augusta, and he’s only 20. He originally qualified for 2024 as winner of the 2023 U.S. Amateur, but forfeited that ticket when he turned professional after winning the American Express as an amateur in January and accepting that route into the Masters field instead. Despite winning yet again on the PGA Tour at the Barracuda Championship in July — an event opposite the British Open that doesn’t earn an automatic Masters invite — Dunlap rode that success into the top 50 and stayed there.
It's a fitting reward for the first player to win PGA Tour events as both an amateur and professional in the same season.
“It’s been a little tough after AmEx. You know, you kind of lose a little bit of confidence and wonder if you can do it again,” Dunlap said of his struggles after his sudden leap into the pro deep end. “Your expectations go through the roof a little bit and I knew I needed to get a lot better at a couple different aspects of my game and one of them was driving the golf ball and chipping, and I’ve worked very, very hard.”
Now focus turns to whether or not Lee and Glover can fill two more top-50 spots from their sofas at home.
Min Woo Lee must wait and see if he’s going back to Masters (Paul Lakatos/Asian Tour)
Lee has been riding along the bubble despite a series of decent but middling fall results on the PGA, Asian and DP World tours. He’s been clinging to that No. 49 ranking since Thanksgiving and he failed to improve on it in the Australian PGA and Open. But the math still pushed him up to No. 47 this week despite doing nothing.
Glover climbed back into the top 50 after a pair of PGA Tour fall season T3s at the Sanderson Farms and Black Desert championships, and he’s been oscillating in and out of the top 50 since July despite starting 2024 at No. 30 in the world. He holds one excruciating spot on the wrong side at No. 51 for the second straight week. His hopes of getting to play an 11th Masters rests entirely on the OWGR math as the season plays out.
Maverick McNealy was the last automatic qualifier of 2024 after winning the RSM Classic at Sea Island, Ga., in November, completing a sweep of all eight winners of the eight PGA Tour fall events earning their way to Augusta on the backs of their triumphs. It also completed a long eight-year journey since his standout college career at Stanford for McNealy to finally make it to a place he always seemed destined to be a regular.
“Yeah, there were a lot of expectations,” McNealy conceded of the long road to the winner’s circle. “I really feel like my college career was … I made my entire college career in like a 15-month stretch. I won seven out of 12 tournaments in 2015 and I blacked out for a year, year and a half. Then I didn’t really play as well finishing out my college career.
“I didn’t hit it well enough. I feel like at every point – at some point throughout my career every part of my game has been elite. Lately it’s been driving. (In) 2023 I was No. 1 strokes gained putting. I’m, I think, top-10 in strokes gained around the green this year. And in college it was my iron play that separated. So I knew all the pieces were there, they just hadn’t fit together.”