Masters field 2014: Tiger Woods is first withdrawal with 1 week, and 1 last spot, left

The green jacketed membership of Augusta National can rest easy, as the field for their exclusive little Masters tournament will not hit the century mark in 2014. The Masters annually has the smallest field of any major, by a wide margin ( ~50 players less than the other three) but at the start of the year, it was looking like we might get 100 or more players for the first time since the 1960s. The pace slowed down a bit, and while we’ve had more players qualified than last year for a couple months now, the most we’ll get is 97 on the final invitee list.

Since we last checked in, two players have officially added their name to the field: Steven Bowditch, who earned his first-ever berth with that out-of-nowhere win at the Texas Open, and Stephen Gallacher, who we already knew would get an invite when he showed up in the top 50 of the world rankings this past Monday. The first checkpoint for qualifying via world rankings is at the end of the previous year, and 14 players earned an invite from being inside the top 50 in December. The second rankings checkpoint is the week before the Masters, and only Gallacher inched his way inside the top 50 since the end of 2013. He successfully defended his title at the Dubai Desert Classic, beating guys like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, to jump up into the top 40 and become just the second Scot in the field (Sandy Lyle keeps using that lifetime invite from his 1988 win).

Chesson Hadley and Ryan Palmer both had an outside shot to play their way into the top 50 last week in San Antonio, but they bombed out on Sunday in the windy and extremely tough conditions at the Texas Open. Bowditch earned his spot by winning it all, and this will be just the second major ever in his career, a missed cut in the 2003 British Open his only other major experience.

That leaves one more invite up for grabs -- the winner of this week’s Shell Houston Open getting the chance to change his travel plans last minute. Of course, with 46 players already in the Masters field getting some prep work in this week at Houston, there’s a very good chance we add no one new to the list.

And finally, the larger news with this field update is not the names we’ve added, but the one we’ve lost. The No. 1 player in the world, a fixture at Augusta National since he was a 19-year-old amateur in 1995, was our first WD for the 2014 tournament. Given the list of bumps and bruises to some of the top players in the world, Tiger Woods may not be the last to back out before the first ball is struck a week from today.

Here’s your field, which could include one more name Sunday night: