2023 Masters: Augusta National announces changes to qualifying criteria for 2024 Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Augusta National Golf Club announced three changes to its qualification criteria for the 2024 Masters.

The first is an additional invitation for the NCAA Division I individual men’s champion. Vanderbilt sophomore Gordon Sargent, who won last May at Grayhawk, was invited to play in this year’s event, and that will now be an automatic exemption moving forward – provided he remains an amateur for the Masters.

“That is a major amateur championship,” Masters chairman Fred Ridley said, “and I thought it was time that we acknowledged it. And we couldn’t be happier to have Gordon here this week; he’s a fine young man and a heck of a player. We are codifying that now going forward.”

Full-field tee times from the 87th Masters Tournament

The other two tweaks are more “administrative” in nature, Ridley said.

The players who qualify and are eligible for the previous year’s season-ending Tour Championship will be invited to the 2024 Masters. That would close a potential loophole for a player such as Talor Gooch, who qualified for East Lake via the top 30 in FedExCup points but then defected to LIV Golf last summer and was thus deemed ineligible to compete in the Tour’s postseason. (It’s worth noting that Gooch also would have been eligible for the Masters through his top-50 world ranking.)

The club also confirmed that it will invite winners of full-point PGA Tour events this fall.

Augusta’s decision to continue to rely on the top 50 in the world ranking could limit the number of LIV Golf members who participate next year. The rival circuit’s application to receive OWGR points is currently under review.  

Ridley said there have been ongoing discussions to ensure that the Masters field is “representative of the best players in the world” and was looking at other pathways for qualification on the other world tours.

“Our conclusion for the time being is that the Official World Golf Ranking, it’s a really good way to invite players,” he said. “It’s an objective criteria based on data-driven analytics, and it’s consistently applied. I think most would agree it’s a good system.”