Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership and R&A introduced on Tuesday that winners from the Scotland Open, Spanish Open, Japan Open, Hong Kong Open, Australia Open and South Africa Open will win an invite to the Masters and Open Championships beginning subsequent yr.
Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership has additionally introduced that winners of the PGA Tour’s seven FedEx Fall Tournaments will now not be capable of win an invite to the Masters until they qualify otherwise.
The governing physique mentioned the brand new qualification adjustments for the six nationwide opening winners “recognizing the worldwide power of elite skilled golf, making certain a powerful worldwide route from a number of skilled excursions to each main championships.”
“The Masters Match has lengthy acknowledged the significance of getting worldwide representatives amongst invited visitors,” Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership and Masters Chairman Fred Ridley mentioned in a press release. “We’re proud to work along with R&A with a shared dedication to the worldwide sport.
“Right this moment’s announcement reinforces the organisation’s collective imaginative and prescient to reward the skills of the world world wide to the highest of the historic Nationwide Open Championship. We hope that this formal recognition will deliver a shiny gentle to those gamers and the occasions they symbolize on the Masters and Open beginning subsequent yr.”
The winner of the Scotland’s Open is a collectively accepted occasion by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, and has already gained an invite to the Masters with a full allocation of 500 factors counting within the Tour Championship qualifying spherical.
Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership has modified certainly one of its qualification classes to “Particular person winners of PGA Tour occasions that award full level allocations relevant to end-of-season tour championships.”
The Masters has the smallest self-discipline of the 4 majors and prefers to stick with lower than 100 gamers to enhance their expertise.
That is the primary vital change to the Masters Qualifying class since 2013. Augusta Nationwide invited the highest 30 from the PGA Tour cash checklist, lowering the highest finisher class with the earlier version of the 16-12 Masters.
Fall tournaments embody the Procoll Championship, Sanderson Farm Championship, Bay Present Basic, Utah Financial institution of Utah Know-how Championship, Butterfield Bermuda Championship and RSM Basic.
Worldwide golfers have been capable of qualify for the Open via the R&A Open Qualifying Collection, which consists of 15 tournaments in 13 international locations world wide.
“We share the identical objectives with Augusta Nationwide, serving to gamers compete in each the Open and Grasp places on the Nationwide Open, and in doing so, showcasing and strengthening our sport in these areas.” “This creates excellent alternatives for athletes from all areas of the world to qualify, and we firmly consider this can proceed to complement the standard of the fields of each main championships.”
The openings recognized by R&A and Augusta Nationwide are a part of the Asia Tour (Hong Kong), Japan Golf Tour, Sunshine Tour (South Africa), and the PGA Tour of Australia and Europe Tour (Scottish and Spain).
Though not the objective, the transfer additionally provides alternatives to Saudi-backed LIV golf gamers. R&A created a waiver class for main LIV gamers this yr. Augusta Nationwide didn’t like to make use of particular invites in the event that they felt that somebody needs to be invited. Joaquín Niemann obtained the invitation twice.
Nevertheless, LIV gamers have been stopped by the PGA Tour, however can participate in these nationwide openings and chase the spots to the Open and Masters. The 2024 Neimann invitation to Grasp is essentially because of Australia’s open victory.
The Related Press contributed to this report.
