The Masters field is full for the 2019 edition at Augusta National

The Masters field is yet another area where the tournament distinguishes itself to make it unlike any other championship. It is the most coveted invite in golf. And the official word is “invite,” not exemption or qualifier or whatever other common term may be used at the other major championships. There’s a set list of of ways to get into the field based on a tournament you won or your status or your world ranking, but the invitation still comes from the members at Augusta National and they could take it away, although that seems almost inconceivable in the modern era. If you check one of the boxes for “qualification for invitation,” you’re going to get a letter in the mail welcoming you to the field.

In addition to some of that ceremony around building the field, the list of invitees is unique from all the other majors in its size. The U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship all balloon to 156 players later in the year. The Masters starts to get panicky when their field number approaches triple digits. It has not hit triple digits since the ‘60s and when it came close in recent years, the chairman of the club even cited the potential for reviewing their different methods for granting an invite.

This year, there’s no such fear of hitting triple digits. In fact, at the beginning of March, there was some thought it might turn out to be the smallest field in the modern era with only 84 qualified. On Sunday, two more international names were added to the field via the last check-in for top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings. The top 50 at the end of the previous year earn their invite around Christmas time, and since then, only two new names slot into that top 50 of the ranking the week preceding the Masters. They are Justin Harding, the upstart South African, and Shane Lowry, the veteran Irishman.

So our field rests at 86 players with just one more potential name to be added next Sunday night as Masters week starts. The winner of the Valero Texas Open receives an invite and if that’s a name not already on the list, then our field gets to 87. It’s an extremely small field, even by Masters standards.

There are 19 different “qualifications” for invitation. Some of them cast a wide net, others are unique to just one person on the planet (e.g. the runner-up of the U.S. Amateur). The 2019 field is listed below, in order of the qualifications as they’re set out by the Masters. Each player is listed under the first method in which they qualified. For example, Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods could fall under five of the categories of qualification below, but are listed first as earning an invite as a past Masters champion. Here’s your field for 2019 with the potential for one more name to join at the Texas Open.

When you win the Masters, you can count on going back every year thereafter. That’s one of the perks of winning a green jacket. You get a spot in the field forever, technically. But some of the older past champions really started to slow things down and fill up the tee sheet. Augusta National in the last few decades would gently encourage these champions to maybe, possibly step aside. Some would just call it a Masters career and give up on posting rounds in the mid 80s, choosing to come and just spend the week as a non-competing champion. Mark O’Meara joins that crowd this year. Ian Woosnam, however, still soldiers on posting scores for the first two rounds. Here are the past champions, who are still invitees, that will not play this year:

Barring any late withdrawals, there will be 20 Masters champions playing in the 2019 edition of the tournament. In addition to the Masters, the PGA also gives out a lifetime invite and The Open gives out an exemption to its winner until he hits 60 years old. The U.S. Open is the stingiest with its winner, who earns just a 10 year exemption.

The list this year includes Tiger Woods, who is back for his second straight start at Augusta National. It felt like a longshot that we’d ever see him again in the Masters but now we may be in the early stage of another decade or two playing at Augusta. Patrick Reed joins this list for 2019 and he’ll get the honor of serving dinner to this group, and those non-playing champions listed above.

There is an unwritten agreement between the majors to acknowledge the champions of the other three. So if you’ve won a major, you’re getting in all of them for at least five years. The Masters also gives out a three-year invite to The Players Championship winner, acknowledging it as some larger event that’s not quite a major. The entire golf world seems to struggle with the nomenclature of The Players but it does have some enhanced status. Its European Tour counterpart, however, does not. The winner of the BMW PGA Championship, which is sort of The Players for the Euro Tour, does not automatically earn an invite.

There may be no tournament in the world that holds the amateur in higher regard than the Masters. This comes as a nod to its founder, Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur player of all time.

An amateur has never won the Masters and not come particularly close in recent years. But they still reserve a significant portion of the field for amateurs. Augusta National has also done commendable work creating new amateur championships around the world in the past decade in an effort to bring the game to different corners. It makes the field more diverse and is a worthwhile effort of trying to “grow the game” in different populations. The Asia-Pacific Amateur and Latin America Amateur, which Augusta started and operates, have been successes. Here are your amateur qualifiers for the 2019 Masters.

A strong showing at the Masters gets you an invite the next year. This qualification has been adjusted over the years, but now rests at the top 12 getting to return the following year. Charley Hoffman, who always seems to play well at Augusta and pop up on a Thursday leaderboard, is the only player from this group who would not have qualified another way. So Hoffman can thank his work from last year for his ticket back to Augusta.

Here again is another nod to the other three major championships. If you’re a top 5 finisher at the other majors, you also get to go to the Masters. This is a general agreement among all of the majors and Stewart Cink can thank his unexpected run to contention at the PGA at Bellerive last August for his first spot in the Masters since 2014.

If you win a full FedExCup points event on the PGA Tour schedule, which runs almost every week and month on the calendar these days, then you get a Masters invite. This is the one remaining way to get in the field — win the Valero Texas Open and you’ll get a last minute ticket to Augusta. We saw this happen with Ian Poulter last year winning the Houston Open for the last ticket to the Masters.

UPDATE: We do have a last-minute invitee and it’s Corey Conners from Canada. Conners won in dramatic fashion at the Valero on Sunday, punching the final and 87th ticket to the 83rd Masters. Conners did not even have status on the PGA Tour and had to Monday qualify into the field in Texas, and then parlayed that into a berth to the most exclusive invite in golf. It’s an astounding rise in the matter of a week.

This is also an exemption that the other majors use to build their fields. If you make the final FedExCup event, the Tour Championship in Atlanta, then you also get a boatload of invites for the following year. That Tour Championship field is the smallest of the season, only 30 players deep, so getting there is not easy. You have to have won or played your ass off all year and then through the Playoffs. Patton Kizzire is the only player below solely using this exemption for the 2019 Masters.

The world rankings are a flawed system but it’s the best we have right now. There are also portions of the calendar that give the Euro Tour and international tour stars an advantage. This exemption is used to beef up the international mix. If you move into the top 50 in the last official world rankings at the end of the year, you are safe for the following April. Here are some of those Euro Tour and Asian tour heavyweights that made it into the field around Christmas.

After that year-end check-in, there’s also the week-before check-in with the world rankings. This allows for a hot player, usually from the international ranks, to play his way into the field in the first quarter of the year. Justin Harding and Shane Lowry are the two movers here. Harding went from 87th to start 2019 to 48th the week before the Masters. Harding started 2018 at 716th in the world rankings, so this is the culmination of a two-year tear on the European Challenge Tour and the big league tour abroad. Lowry has played in three Masters but did not earn an invite last year. His invite this year comes after winning in Abu Dhabi, one of the Euro Tour’s best and deepest early-season events.

On a rare occasion, the Masters will just go off the books and use their discretion to hand out a special exemption. In recent years, it’s been used to invite an international player, perhaps on the rise, that they want to include in the field. The choice usually also brings a sizable interested audience, or targeted audience, from abroad.

Ryo Ishikawa received this special exemption three years running and Shubhankar Sharma of India earned one last year during his run of hot play. This year it’s Japan’s Shugo Imahira, who has never played in the Masters and narrowly missed qualifying as the 53rd ranked player in the world in the end of 2018 rankings. Imahira won the 2018 Order of Merit on the Japan Golf Tour and the Chairman decided to exercise his special exemption powers.