The field for this week’s Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club will include 11 former European Challenge Tour players, including three Major champions.
Koepka, a four-time Challenge Tour winner, finished second at Augusta National in 2019 – one-shot behind five-time Masters champion Tiger Woods. Rose has been runner up twice – in 2015 and 2017 – while Oosthuizen came agonisingly close to winning in 2012 only to be defeated on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff as Bubba Watson won the first of his two Masters titles.
Robert MacIntyre, the 2019 Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year winner, impressed on his first Masters appearance in 2021, finishing in a tie for 12th and he will now look to become the second Masters champion to hail from Scotland after Sandy Lyle in 1988.
Englishmen Matthew Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton and Tommy Fleetwood all learned their trade on the Challenge Tour and they will look to follow in the footsteps of Sir Nick Faldo and Danny Willett in becoming the third Englishman to put on the Green Jacket.
South Africans Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Erik van Rooyen have both won on the Challenge Tour. Bezuidenhout triumphed at the 2020 Dimension Data Pro-Am, an event co-sanctioned by the Challenge Tour and Sunshine Tour, while van Rooyen won the Hainan Open in China. The pair will look to become the fourth South African to win at Augusta National after three-time Masters champion Gary Player, 11-time DP World Tour winner Charl Schwartzel, who triumphed in 2011 and Trevor Immelman, who became the only former Challenge Tour player to win the Masters when he secured victory in 2008.
South African Garrick Higgo and Guido Migliozzi of Italy will be looking to perform on one of golf’s biggest stages this week as they both make their Masters debut.
Will a former Challenge Tour player put on the prestigious Green Jacket this week?
