The First Look: Masters Tournament - PGA TOUR

It's time for the first major championship of the PGA TOUR season.

Augusta National is primed and ready for the 2024 Masters Tournament after a fabulous finish to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the wonderful Drive, Chip & Putt National Final.

Scottie Scheffler recently added a second PLAYERS Championship to his resume. Can the defending champ do the same at the Masters? He is the unquestioned No. 1 player in the world right now, but he will have plenty of challengers.

Here's everything you need to know as the TOUR returns to Augusta.

FIELD NOTES: Akshay Bhatia earned the last spot in the field with his dramatic playoff victory Sunday at the Valero Texas Open. He is the first former Drive, Chip & Putt participant to make the Masters field. … Scottie Scheffler arrives at Augusta National as world No. 1 and on top of the FedExCup standings. He has finished no worse than second in his past three starts since switching to a mallet putter. He went back-to-back at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and THE PLAYERS, then finished second at the Texas Children’s Houston Open. This is Scheffler’s fifth Masters. He finished T10 last year and has never finished outside the top 20… Tiger Woods is in the field and will have a pre-tournament press conference at 11 a.m. ET on Tuesday. It is Woods’ first start since The Genesis Invitational, where he withdrew in the second round after suffering flu-like symptoms. Woods played last year’s Masters but withdrew on the weekend and underwent ankle fusion surgery shortly after. This marks the fifth anniversary of his “return to glory” victory in 2019. Woods has made the cut 23 straight times at Augusta National – tied for most all-time – and will be looking to add that record this year… Rory McIlroy is taking his 10th crack at completing the career Grand Slam at the Masters. McIlroy has had his opportunities, most famously in 2011. He has finished in the top 10 in seven of the past nine Masters, including a runner-up in 2022 but is coming off a missed cut last year. He earned his first top-10 of the season last week, finishing third at the Valero Texas Open after a recent tuneup with noted swing coach Butch Harmon... Bhatia is among the 20 first-timers at Augusta. Wyndham Clark and Ludvig Åberg highlight the rookie class, along with 2023 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year Eric Cole, Valspar Championship winner Peter Malnati (who is making his Masters debut at age 36) and first-time PGA TOUR winners Nick Dunlap,Stephan Jaeger, Austin Eckroat, Jake Knapp and Lee Hodges. Dunlap already was in the field as the reigning U.S. Amateur champion but then turned pro after winning The American Express, which gave him a spot in the field after turning professional. Fuzzy Zoeller is the only Masters rookie to win the green jacket, while six have finished runner-up in their maiden Masters… There are plenty of notables looking for their first major title including Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa and Xander Schauffele, who are all ranked in the top 10 in the world. In the case of Schauffele, he was in the final group on Sunday at both The Genesis Invitational and THE PLAYERS. He finished T10 last year at the Masters and was runner-up in 2019.

NOTABLE INVITES AND AMATEURS: Fred Ridley, the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters, extended three special invitations for 2024 to Denmark’s Thorbjørn Olesen, Japan’s Ryo Hisatsune and Chile’s Joaquin Niemann. Olesen, who holds dual DP World Tour and PGA TOUR membership, has won three years in a row on the DP World Tour and finished T6 in his Masters debut in 2013. Hisatsune was last year’s Rookie of the Year on the DP World Tour and has made seven of 10 cuts on the PGA TOUR this season. This will be his Masters debut. Niemann will be playing his fifth Masters… World No. 1 amateur Christo Lamprecht of South Africa headlines the amateur contingent. Lamprecht, who is in the field as the reigning British Amateur champion, made headlines by holding the first-round lead at The Open. Lamprecht also is No. 2 in PGA TOUR University. The other amateurs in the Masters are Santiago de la Fuente of Mexico (the Latin America Amateur Championship winner), Neal Shipley of the United States (U.S. Amateur finalist), Australia’s Jasper Stubbs (Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship winner) and Stewart Hagestad (U.S. Mid-Amateur champion). All of the amateurs except Hagestad are making their Masters debut. Hagestad is playing for a third time; he was the low amateur in 2017.

SIGNATURE EVENT STORYLINES: The Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5 for the RBC Heritage will be finalized this week. Though the Masters does not count towards the Aon Swing 5, it could change if Peter Malnati or Thomas Detry are bumped from the Aon Next 10 this week. Malnati and Detry would move into the Aon Swing 5 if they fall out of the Aon Next 10. Click here for the full standings.

COMCAST BUSINESS TOUR TOP 10 UPDATES: Ludvig Åberg and Chris Kirk swapped spots in the TOUR TOP 10 after the Valero Texas Open, with Aberg now at No. 8 and Kirk at No. 9. The rest of the TOUR TOP 10 remained the same… Akshay Bhatia jumped from No. 55 to No. 12 in the standings after his victory and is within shouting distance of the TOUR TOP 10 for the first time… Denny McCarthy, who Bhatia topped in a playoff in San Antonio, moved from No. 85 to No. 19.

FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 750 FedExCup points.

COURSE: Augusta National Golf Club, par 72, 7,555 yards. After multiple changes in 2022 and 2023, there was just one update for 2024, as the par-5 second was lengthened by 10 yards. Over the past three Masters, the second hole played as the easiest each year.

Rory McIlroy, in his pre-tournament press conference at the Valero Texas Open, also mentioned there were changes to the greens on Nos. 2, 4 and 6.

“There's like a back middle hole location on two, there's a slightly bigger area in there where they can sort of move that around a little bit," he said. "On four they've sort of made the back right section a little bit bigger for an extra pin position there. And then six is different, like the top right plateau is definitely bigger and then they've flattened out a section in the back left to maybe have an extra hole location there, too."

72-HOLE RECORD: 268, Dustin Johnson (2020)

18-HOLE RECORD: 63, Nick Price (third round, 1986) and Greg Norman (first round, 1996)

LAST TIME: Jon Rahm won the green jacket in a come-from-behind triumph on a marathon final day at Augusta National. Rahm was four shots back of the leader, Brooks Koepka, to start Sunday and had to play 30 holes due to weather knocking out much of Saturday’s third round. Rahm shot a final-round 69 to win by four over Koepka and Phil Mickelson. Jordan Spieth and Russell Henley finished tied for fourth, along with Patrick Reed.

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Note: Augusta National, which owns and operates the Masters Tournament, controls all digital streaming and broadcast rights to this event. PGA TOUR LIVE coverage will resume next week at RBC Heritage.