Masters golden tickets growing ever rarer
The new normals on the PGA Tour are diminishing the auto-magic; Stray Shots
First-time winner Jacob Bridgeman was already set to join Tiger Woods in Augusta (Mike Mulholland/Getty Images)
It’s almost March and the Florida swing is starting, but the Masters field hasn’t officially added a single new professional to its tee sheet since the calendar turned over.
Either established major-winning superstars (Scottie Scheffler, Justin Rose and Collin Morikawa) or already-qualified rising talents (Chris Gotterup and Jacob Bridgeman) have hoarded all of the automatic PGA Tour winner spots through the West Coast swing.
The Latin America Amateur champ (Mateo Pulcini) fills a void in the amateur lineup left by NCAA champion Michael La Sasso forfeiting his spot to join LIV golf. That’s the extent of Masters field news through the first two months of 2026.
There’s a spot on the line this week for the winner at the South African Open, but red-hot Patrick Reed could spoil that by continuing his excellent DP World Tour run at Stellenbosch Golf Club. The 2018 Masters winner is favored to bid steal.
The Cognizant Classic at PGA National seems a prime candidate for someone new to book a ticket to Augusta, with no players ranked inside the top 25 of the Official World Golf Ranking in the field. No. 26 Ryan Gerard is the top-ranked player competing in the event formerly known as Honda, and he was the the last pro to book his Masters spot in 2025 when he flew halfway across the world to Mauritius before Christmas to secure his place among the top-50 invitees.
Outside of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and the Players Championship — where already big names generally win — there are only three other qualifying tour events before the Masters that won’t be filled with “signature event” talent for pros to make it into the season’s first major.
Is this a new normal? Now that the PGA Tour has narrowed the all-exempt roster to only 100 players, trimmed tournament field sizes and is threatening to cull tour events from the front of the season schedule going forward, there won’t be as many golden tickets for PGA Tour winners available after the usual suspects collect their fair share. And with the Masters taking away “auto-magic” invitation to the fall series winners, there just aren’t many opportunities to capitalize.
As of right now, only two players have qualified for the 2026 Masters field exclusively via winning a PGA Tour event — Brian Campbell and Aldrich Potgieter. Last season, nine players booked spots in the 2025 Masters exclusively via winning qualified PGA Tour events.
The best chance for securing the Masters now is the OWGR top 50, and there are four players clinging to bubble spots that aren’t yet qualified — Americans Matt McCarty (No. 39), Jake Knapp (43), Pierceson Coody (45) and Michael Thorbjornsen (50).
As it stands, 14 of the 16 first-time Masters qualifying professionals have reached the 2026 field via either the OWGR top 50 or reaching the Tour Championship. Sure, some of them also won a tour event to help reach those other thresholds, but none of them can simply be called one-hit wonders who cashed golden Augusta tickets. Only Japan Open winner Naoyuki Kataoka and Hong Kong Open winner Tom McKibbin will be Masters rookies by virtue of one deputized victory.
Maybe it’s better this way, and there will be fewer contestants at Augusta who are just happy to be there and realistically have little chance to contend. Hard to argue with that.
But it’s a little less charming with fewer dreamers. Winning a PGA Tour event is one of the hardest things to do in golf, and many players who achieve that for the first time immediately think about the chance to compete in the Masters more than the seven-figure check they get to cash. The auto-magic was a big deal. It’s less so now.
2026 Masters Field
Through Feb. 23, 2026
Here’s how the 86 players currently qualified to play in the 2026 Masters got into the field
# first-timers (22); * amateurs (6); Americans (46); Internationals (40); Seniors (7)
