2015 Masters field: Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy headline list of qualifiers for Augusta

In just over a week, there will be players hitting golf balls that actually count in the 2015 Masters tournament. We’re almost there and the field is largely set for Augusta National.

There are currently 99 players qualified for the 2015 Masters. That number is higher than where the green jackets at Augusta National would like it. This is unlike the other three majors in so many ways, and a big one is how ANGC builds out their field each year. The other majors all have fields overflowing with qualifiers and a tee sheet jam-packed with more than 150 players going off split tees in groups of three from sun-up to sun-down. The Masters field, on the other hand, almost never exceeds 100 players. It hit 99 four years ago, and that was the largest field since 103 players teed it up in 1963.

Last year’s field finished with 97 players. But two months out, it looked like that century mark was in danger of falling due to all the shuffling in the top 50 of the world rankings. This year, that shuffling added four more players when that exemption closed the Monday before Masters week. The only way left to get into the field is by winning the Shell Houston Open. Most of the invitations were sent at the beginning of the year, especially if you qualified through one of the earlier exemptions. As Luke Donald posted on Instagram, getting the invite, which still comes in the mail like a wedding invitation and is unchanged since the time Bobby Jones was sending them out, “never gets old.”

Both the U.S. Open and Open Championship are actually “open.” You can make it there so long as your handicap qualifies, you pay a small fee, and navigate the many qualifying rounds. Any PGA of America member, those pros who give lessons and sell sweaters at your local course, can attempt to qualify for the PGA Championship. A major portion of those fields are made-up of these no-name qualifiers.

But that’s not the case at Augusta. The green jackets have their own traditions and quirks, like the former champion lifetime invite, but keeping things smaller is the idea. They’ll always hand out several amateur invites, upholding the sacred traditions of their founder, the greatest amateur, Bobby Jones. The amateur ideal is definitely oversold and overpraised at Augusta, but they have done a good job creating new amateur titles around the world that have opened up a few more invites. They created and drove the organization of the Asia-Pacific amateur a few years ago, and then introduced the Latin America amateur this year. It’s not a bad thing that they’re brining these opportunities to younger populations in these parts of the world.

There are 19 ways to earn an invite, but only two remained in the final weeks. The first is to win one of the PGA Tour events before the Masters (Matt Every was the latest addition, winning at Bay Hill to make the field 95). The other was to move into the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings as of the week before the Masters. The last remaining Tour event, the Houston Open, will be a full-field tournament with plenty of guys who are not already invited to the Masters. So we may get another name via that exemption to bump it to 100.

Four new names came from the World Rankings exemption, all international players who have had strong first quarters of the year to play their way into the top 50. Anirban Lahiri, Bernd Wiesberger, Branden Grace, and Paul Casey all punched their ticket just 10 days before the first tee ball. Here are all 19 ways a player earns an invitation:

For a longer breakdown of all the exemptions, go here.

Of the 99 players already qualified, 46 are from the United States. We’re still waiting word on whether or not Tiger Woods will end his personal hiatus getting his game tournament ready. Last year, Woods missed the Masters for the first time in 20 years. That was due to injury as his back recovered from microdiscectomy surgery. If he misses this year’s Masters, it will be because he doesn’t feel he has the game to compete, or not embarrass himself.

Here’s the full field, sorted by country and alphabetical order:

UPDATE: Tim Clark has withdrawn, taking his name out of the field due to an elbow injury. That means the max we’ll have this year is 99.