The 2018 Masters would be made better if Augusta invited these players

The Masters is going to have its smallest field in 20 years. The first men’s major of the season always has the smallest field of the four major championships. The U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship all balloon up to 156 players. It’s sun-up to sun-down golf with the field going off two tees for the first 36 holes. And if someone drops out, there’s always an alternate or replacement to make sure 156 start the championship.

The Masters, as we’ve come to expect in all matters, does it their own way. This is strictly by invitation. Sure, there are parameters and ways to qualify for that invitation. But there are no alternates and the parameters almost never, ever yield a field that’s 100 players or more. The last time we hit the century mark was 1986, but there have been repeated close calls in recent years. When it got close, chairman Billy Payne would always say they’d examine the parameters for qualification. In 2011, when the field was 99, Payne said, “It is borderline to be able to present the kind of competition that we want to.”

This year, however, the triple digit mark is well out of reach. A total of 87 players have earned invitations so far, and one, an injured Brooks Koepka, has already withdrawn. At the moment, there are no banged-up invitees who could be the subject of another WD. So we’re a pretty solid 86 players, with the potential for one more addition. The winner of the Houston Open, if not already invited, earns a late Sunday invitation and changes travel plans to Augusta. So at most, we’re going to hit 87 players this year.

The benevolent green jackets of Augusta National have already handed out one special exemption to rising star Shubhankar Sharma. This special exemption is not used often but occasionally they will extend an invite, usually to an international player, that does not meet any of the 19 official requirements for an invitation. Sharma will make this Masters better and it was a laudable move to extend the invite. With the field at just 86 or 87, I think they should go a little crazy with the generosity and pump it up with several more special exemptions. That’s realistic, right? So here are some suggestions.

Westy, as he’s affectionately known, has become a cult hero. It’s a small cult, maybe a cult of one, but it’s a cult nonetheless. The former world No. 1 is in the sunset of his career, but he’s still competitive. You can’t say he’s washed.

Westy has four Euro Tour starts this year, the best result coming with a T11 in Malaysia. The Houston Open will be his first stateside start, a schedule he’s followed in recent years, especially when not exempt for the WGCs.

Westy would need a win in Houston or else he’s due to miss his first Masters since 2004. In the intervening years, he’s experienced as many close calls as anyone at Augusta without a green jacket. There were two runners-up, a third-place, two more top 10s, and no missed cuts since 2006.

I broke the news to my dad this week that Westwood wasn’t in the field. His immediate reaction was, “Ohhh, that’s not right.” A tradition unlike any other is having Westy involved in Sunday at Augusta, at the very least peripherally. Now, at 90th in the world rankings, that tradition is in danger of ending. Augusta can make it right.

Stricker is the money leader on the Champions Tour, picking up big-time wins at the Cologuard (one dump in a box could save your life!) Classic and Rapiscan Systems Classic. He’s also made every cut in his three starts on the under-50 circuit, finishing as high as T12 at the Valspar Championship.

Stricker can still play and is one of the all-time good guys in the game. A major would resonate in the locker room like few others. But the real payoff here is because he’d play and practice with Tiger Woods, who we’d get to hear drop the old “Stricks” all week. That’s worthy of an invite alone.

Last November, Geoff Ogilvy, one of the smartest minds in the game, said, “There’s this kid Cam Champ who can drive it on the first hole at Augusta. Fly it on the green without even thinking about it.” I want to see that and I want to see it now.

We’ve heard about Champ for a couple years, most notably at the 2017 U.S. Open where he acquitted himself well with those massive bombs off the tee. Champ is also just the start of a new generation that’s optimizing their swing for this kind of extreme distance.

The first hole at Augusta plays uphill and is officially listed at 445 yards. Ogilvy may be embellishing, but he’s not far off and the citation was made in a larger point about how we’ve “outgrown the stadiums” in golf and a rollback of the ball seems wise. I want to see Champ drive the first green at Augusta and I also want to see that rollback discussion hastened and seriously addressed. This would do it.

An invitation to the Masters would have to bring him out of hiding, right? Even the lure of Augusta may not have that kind of power over the reclusive and beloved AK, but it’s worth a shot. We’ve been robbed of one the great talents and personalities in this game.

We know the older guys can still hang at Augusta (see Bernhard Langer, Fred Couples, et al). The old Spanish bull would still know how to get around and compete. He’s got four top 10s in his Masters career, including a T4 just four years ago. But this is less about the score and his contribution to the leaderboard, as my colleague Spencer Hall so eloquently wrote when he observed the Mechanic in 2015:

I don’t even know what he shot while I was following him because he transcends numbers.

I don’t need to go into the greatest hits here. We’ve all memorized the oeuvre. There’s room for him. The Masters would be made better with MAJ.

Pause a beat and take a wild guess where Katayama falls right now in the world rankings. He’s still posting over in Asia, where he’s actually still competitive. OK, ready? Katayama is 150th in the world right now! He finished 2017 at No. 120. He’s not played in a major since the 2013 Open Championship, but there are a lot of golfers who would kill to be in the top 150 in the world.

His ranking screams competitiveness. It tells me he is ready to make a run at a green jacket. Do you remember he finished solo fourth, just missing out on the three-man playoff between El Pato, Kenny Perry, and Chad Campbell in 2009? It’s time to bring him and the flyest headwear in the game back to Augusta.

The 53-year-old Champions Tour player came down to the PGA Tour last week to play in the inaugural Corales Puntacana Championship. The Brian Dennehy doppelgänger was the only player in the field to finish below Tony Romo after the first round, thanks to a flukey triple bogey at the end of the first day. But he stormed back on Day 2 and cleared Romo by a good eight shots (to be clear, he still missed the cut by a good eight shots too). That kind of resilience is worthy of an invite, in my opinion. Plus, he — or someone purporting to be him (FAR more likely) — has quite the Twitter account. Let’s get him in there and pair him up with Woozy.

These seven suggestions would put the Masters field at 93, or an even 94 if we get a Houston Open winner not already in the field. I am, of course, open to negotiations on one or two and open to suggestions for another name or two. But I see no reason why Augusta National does not follow this prescription.