The 2016 Masters will feature a healthy number of players with Georgia ties in the field, with 10 participants among the 90-man field either living in the state or having attended college here.
The number of Georgians could have been even higher, but at least eight came close to tournament wins in the past year which have punched their tickets to Augusta.
Of the 10 players with Georgia ties who have qualified, three are former Masters champions, including former Georgia Bulldog Bubba Watson, who will be looking to extend his recent run of winning in Augusta every other year.
Watson won in a playoff over Louis Oosthuizen in 2012, highlighted by his memorable recovery shot from the trees on the first extra hole. Two years later, he captured a head-to-head duel with Jordan Spieth, one of his eight PGA Tour victories since 2010, nine counting last year’s World Challenge.
Watson has been a hit-or-miss performer for much of his PGA Tour career, with that fact reflected in his Masters record. He tied for 20th in Augusta last year, his only finish better than 38th apart from his two victories. Watson’s record in other majors is similar, with the long-hitter lefthander contending only two other times over the past nine years, tying for fifth in 2007 U.S. Open and losing a playoff in the 2010 PGA, his lone setback in six playoff appearances.
Along with his nine career wins, the most recent coming earlier this year in Los Angeles, Watson has 13 runner-up finishes including three each the last two years to go along with two victories in both 2014 and ’15. He finished fifth in the FedExCup standings both years and is currently the fourth-ranked player in the world.
St. Simons Island resident Zach Johnson ranks as one of the more surprising Masters champions, winning in unpleasant weather conditions in 2007 with a 1-over 289 total, matching the highest winning score in tournament history.
Johnson has been one of tour’s top players since he won the defunct BellSouth Classic at TPC Sugarloaf in 2004, with the unexpected nature of his Masters victory resulting from his style of play, which does not fit the power game that has been successful in the majority of tournaments at Augusta National.
Other than his 2007 victory, Johnson has not enjoyed much success in Augusta, with a tie for ninth last year his second best showing in 10 career starts. He captured his second major title in 2015, winning the British Open at St. Andrews and raising his career playoff record to 4-1. Johnson missed the 2010 PGA playoff at Whistling Straits by just one shot, but has never finished better than 30th in the U.S. Open.
Johnson has 12 career PGA Tour victories, and has at least one win in every year but one since 2007, when he won both the Masters and for a second time at Sugarloaf. He has placed among the top 20 in the FedExCup seven of the nine times it has been contested, and has been a fixture on Presidents/Ryder Cup teams for the past decade.
Larry Mize stands with Johnson in the surprise Masters champion category, winning in 1987 in a playoff over Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros thanks to his highlight reel pitch shot from well off the 11th green on the second extra hole.
Mize, 57, is nearing the end of his run as a Masters competitor, but made the cut just two years ago, although it was only the third time he has made it to the weekend since 2001. Mize, an Augusta native and long time Columbus resident, has one win on the Champions Tour after collecting four titles in his PGA Tour career.
Matt Kuchar, one of three St. Simons residents in the Masters field, has been one of the most consistent performers in major championships since 2010, but is still looking for a victory in a Grand Slam event. He placed third, eighth and fifth in the Masters from 2012-14 before finishing well down the list last year, and has a string of solid results in each of the other three majors.
Kuchar has six straight top-30 finishes in the U.S. Open with a best of sixth, has a similar record in recent years in the PGA and has missed just two cuts in majors the last six years. Kuchar, the 1997 U.S. Amateur champion while a member of the Georgia Tech golf team, has seven PGA Tour wins, has placed among the top 20 in the FedExCup each of the last six years with four top-10 finishes, and has six straight Presidents/Ryder Cup appearances.
Chris Kirk has never missed a cut in his eight major championship starts, but was sidelined for both the British Open and PGA last year due to injury. Kirk, a Woodstock native, lived for several years on St. Simons Island after a stellar college career at Georgia, and has recently settled in Athens. He has four victories since joining the PGA Tour in 2011, including last year’s Colonial, and was a hero in his first Presidents Cup last year.
Kirk has finished 20th and 33rd in his two Masters starts, with his best finish in a major a tie for 19th in the 2014 British Open. He placed second in the FedExCup standings that year, and has been in the top 50 in all five of his seasons on the PGA Tour.
With a victory late last season in Greensboro at the age of 51, Davis Love earned what will likely be his final invitation to the Masters. Love last played in Augusta in 2011, his only appearance there since 2007. Love has not been a top-level PGA Tour player in a decade, but has played well enough to keep him from making a full-time move to the Champions Tour.
The long time St. Simons resident has compiled a strong career record in the majors, winning the 1997 PGA Championship and coming close in several other Grand Slam events. He was the runner-up in the Masters in 1995 and ’99 and tied for second in the ’96 U.S. Open. He has six career top 10s in Augusta, was seventh or better five times in the U.S. Open, and has a combined 10 top 10s in the British Open and PGA, with his last top 10 in a major coming in the 2011 British.
Harris English, the fourth St. Simons resident in the field, is back in the Masters after failing to qualify last year. English, a Valdosta native who played his college golf in Athens, won as a PGA Tour rookie in 2013 and added a second victory later that year. He narrowly missed qualifying for the Tour Championship at East Lake in 2013 and ’14, finishing 31st and 32nd in the FedExCup, but slipped in at 28th last year to earn his spot in the Masters field.
English missed the cut in his only Masters start in 2014, with his best finish in a major a tie for 15th in the 2013 British Open.
Patrick Reed, who led Augusta State to back-to-back NCAA Championships in 2010 and ’11, has emerged as one of the top young players in the game not named Jordan, Jason, Rory or Rickie, winning four times since his rookie season in 2013 and placing 21st and 12th in the FedExCup standings the last two years.
Reed placed between 14th and 30th in the four majors last year, just his second starts in all four. He was a respectable T22 in Augusta after missing the cut the previous year, and will be on the short list of probable Masters contenders beyond golf’s new Big 3 plus 1 group of twenty-something stars.
Kevin Kisner will be the lone Masters rookie among the Georgia contingent, and is coming off a breakthrough season in 2015. He finished 21st in the FedExCup on the strength of three runner-up finishes, all of which came in playoffs in which he played outstanding golf in the final round but was beaten by birdies in extra holes.
Qualifying for the Tour Championship earned Kisner’s invitation to the Masters, and he took the lead in this year’s FedExCup standings with a fourth runner-up finish, this time in a WGC event in China, followed by an impressive victory in the RSM Classic at Sea Island GC.
Kisner, Kirk’s teammate on Georgia’s 2005 NCAA Championship team, was born and resides in Aiken, S.C., less than 30 minutes from Augusta, and should have plenty of crowd support as he plays in what amounts to a hometown event.
In just his second major championship start in last year’s U.S. Open, Kisner tied for 12th, the only cut he has made in four attempts.
The most recent addition to the Augusta contingent is Vaughn Taylor, who has lived in Augusta since he was a youngster and played collegiately at Augusta State.
Taylor, who won twice early in his PGA Tour career, qualified for the Ryder Cup team in 2006 and contended in the Masters in 2007, but had struggled since 2010 until he scored a surprise victory at Pebble Beach earlier this year. Taylor trailed three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson by six shots after 54 holes, but fired a final round 65 to edge Mickelson by a shot and regain his exempt status on the PGA Tour, which he lost after the 2012 season.