The Masters in just about every single professional golf season is the highlight of the year. That certainly is the case in 2024, and as the season’s first major begins this week at Augusta National Golf Club, the Masters can make another significant claim.
This is the most important golf tournament of all time.
Bold? Perhaps. Quantifiable? Not exactly. However, given where the 88th playing of the most famous golf tournament in the world is taking place in the history of the sport, one could argue there has never been more on the line and at stake than there will be on the rolling hills of Augusta, Georgia.
Professional golf, quite frankly, isn’t in a great place. The mass defection to LIV has left the sport fractured. While the big-name, big-money (and in many cases, washed-up) stars of LIV toil in relative obscurity in a league that doesn’t mean much of anything, the PGA Tour also finds itself lacking relevance in a way it hasn’t since before the Tiger Woods era.
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The Tour hopes its new partnership with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium led by some of the most powerful names in professional sports, can right the ship. The backdrop for all of this is, though, the framework agreement the Tour struck with the Saudia Arabian Public Investment Fund last June, a deal that was supposed to end this strife.
Yet, here we are, almost a year later, and it sure doesn’t feel like anything is imminent — despite a recent Bahamas meeting among the biggest stakeholders. Until some sort of tangible agreement is reached — one that brings the world’s best players together more often than four times per year — the majors will be more important than they’ve ever been. All of that brings us back to Augusta. This is the first Masters since that initial framework agreement was struck. It will be a topic of conversation this week, no doubt.
That conversation will be amplified by the fact that reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm is rejoining his former Tour mates for the first time since becoming the best player in the world to join LIV when he jumped ship earlier this year. This will be golf fans’ first time seeing Rahm since the defection, and it’s impossible to know just how prepared he will be to defend his crown. How will he be received by his peers? By the media? By the patrons? It’s a fascinating dynamic to play out on the biggest stage in the sport. Rahm’s top objective is to become the first back-to-back winner in two decades.
Additionally, regardless of whether he likes it, Rahm is now a torch-bearer for LIV. These tournaments are important to LIV players because it gives them a chance to prove themselves and fight back against the narratives that A) they don’t care about anything but money and B) they can still win the most important tournaments. A year ago, three of the top six finishers were LIV golfers, and that doesn’t include Rahm. Someone like Joaquin Niemann, who has been tearing up LIV this spring, is returning on a special invite, and he’ll have a chance to back up his passive-aggressive digs at the pro golf landscape by breaking through and winning.
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Then you have the old guard of the Tour, the stars who have held out despite massive offers from LIV. There’s no bigger name than Rory McIlroy, who has tried to hold the Tour together for the last year-plus while battling issues with his own game. He missed the cut last year, a borderline unfathomable failure in a tournament and on a course tailor-made for someone like him. All the while, the only thing standing between him and the career grand slam remains the green jacket.
And there’s no better player right now than Scottie Scheffler, who is playing historically brilliant golf. He logged two wins and five top-six finishes in his last six starts. The only outlier was a 10th-place finish at The Genesis Invitational. Scheffler enters this week as a hilariously short +450 favorite to win the Masters for the second time in his tremendous career.
Oh, right: There’s also that Tiger Woods guy, who is back to make just his second start of the season. The greatest of all time made his only start of the year at the Genesis where he looked OK in the first round before withdrawing midway through the second round due to illness. There’s history on the line this week, as there typically is every time Woods tees it up on Magnolia Lane.
If Woods can make the weekend, it will be the 24th consecutive Masters start in which he has made the cut, breaking a tie with Fred Couples and Gary Player for the most ever. The five-time Masters winner is already on the property getting reacquainted with a golf course he might know better than anyone.
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Expectations for Woods are relatively low. You might have said the same about Phil Mickelson a year ago — and he finished second. This course and tournament have a way of letting the game’s legends turn back the clock, to the point where one can’t totally rule out some sort of Woods-Mickelson duel at some point this weekend.
Ultimately, the best thing about the Masters is that it eventually all comes back to the golf. This week will be a spectacle, no doubt. But come Thursday morning when the pegs go in the ground, the focus will be on the tournament itself. And if the leadup is any indication, the 2024 Masters will go down in history as a pivotal moment in the history of the sport.
Featured image via Rob Schumacher/USA TODAY Network
