The British might be coming but not nearly in the same numbers. The 87th Masters – which starts on Thursday – will feature the United Kingdom’s lowest representation in 20 years, with a dramatic reduction of almost 50 percent from just two years ago.
In 2021, there were 15 UK golfers in the season’s first major. This year there are just eight. And while Rory McIlroy, second in the rankings, Matt Fitzpatrick, 15th and Tyrrell Hatton, 17th, ensure there are exciting live chances to see a fourth UK player slip his arms into a green jacket on Sunday, there are only five members of the top 50 in this 88-man field. There were nine two years ago.
To think, seven years ago at the Masters, there were six UK pros in the top 10 and this year there are only seven pros in the tournament – and Sandy Lyle is 65. Matt McClean, a 29-year-old optometrist from Belfast, completes the contingent and continues the fine history of UK amateurs at the creation of Yorkshire architect Alister MacKenzie. However, by any recent metric this is not a stellar year for the Union Flag at Augusta. Anything but.
Granted, before Danny Willett stunned Jordan Spieth in 2016, there had not been a UK winner for 20 years going back to the last Nick Faldo’s hat-trick but the Masters has become a lucrative major for the visitors from across the pond. Since 2003, the UK has boasted six top twos and more than 30 top 10s. If golf is a number’s game – and it plainly is – then it is fair to say that one of the main powers of recent times is going into Augusta underfunded.
Why? Naturally, there are a myriad of factors and the conveyor belt from the amateur ranks must be analysed in depth. But the hot topic of LIV Golf must also loom large, as it does over each and every area of the elite male games in this turbulent era.
When the likes of Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Paul Casey jumped ship to the Saudi-funded circuit then – rightly or wrongly – they were essentially cut off from the access to world rankings points. Standing in top 50 either at year’s end or two weeks before the major itself, is one of the main routes into the Masters. However, it is difficult to ascertain who might have gained their golden ticket via this avenue.
“Paul probably would have,” Westwood, a two-time Augusta runner-up, said. “I missed out last year by one shot of coming in the top 12 who qualify for the next year. Maybe Blandy [Richard Bland] would have finally made it. But it’s hard to say.”
Age might be to blame as well. Westwood turns 50 later this month, while Poulter is 47. “Maybe it’s a little cyclical because the British guys who would regularly get good finishes there aren’t getting any younger,” Westwood said. “But the change to the rankings hasn’t exactly helped the players on the DP World Tour has it?”
Last August, the system was overhauled and the dissent since, particularly on the circuit once known as the European Tour, has only been drowned out because of the din that the LIV controversy continues to generate.
In layman’s terms, the “minimum tournament value” has been scrapped, with the amount of ranking points at each event dictated by measuring every competitor’s performance over the past two years. So, instead of giving 64 ranking points to the winner, the BMW PGA Championship, the Tour’s flagship event last September, earned Shane Lowry fewer than 32.
That disparity appears to have become yet more pronounced at the lesser Tour events and although McIlroy – who had input into the alterations – has pleaded for patience as the system levels itself out over a two-year period, the anger has grown as the rankings have seemed increasingly skewed towards PGA Tour events.
Poulter was one of the first to highlight what he calls ‘the ridiculous PGA Tour takeover of the rankings”.
“It’s interesting what you say about the drop in the British numbers at the Masters because I actually thought it would take longer to all play through than this,” he told Telegraph Sport last week. “But it’s clearly accelerating. It was easy to see this coming. It’s not about LIV – although the fact our events don’t yet get rankings points is crazy – it’s about the system being weighted towards the PGA Tour.
“When I first qualified for the Masters [in 2004] it was purely through my efforts on the European Tour. If a young player compiled the same results now as I did then, they wouldn’t come close to entering the top 50. So that’s a route denied, just because people in Sawgrass wanted their Tour to be even more dominant. It’s a shame. A real shame.
“Never mind the players not fulfilling their dreams of playing Amen Corner, and realizing they will now have to go to the US to have a chance, think about the kids watching at home. The Masters and seeing our Brit guys competing against the best was one of the reasons why people like me got into golf in such a big way.
“Yeah, you still have your overseas favourites, obviously like Tiger [Woods], or Scottie [Scheffler] or Jordan [Spieth] or whoever. But there is something about seeing someone from your country doing it. That makes it seem attainable for you and it was for me when I got out there. But for the young pro now? I’m not so sure.”
In fairness to the DP World Tour, chief executive, Keith Pelley, has vowed to bring up the issue at this week’s meeting actually at Augusta of the Official Golf World Rankings board and he acknowledged the concerns in the ranks. “We implemented a new system but, like with any new system, in regards of what aspect of business you're in, you evaluate, you modify, you tweak and, at the next board meeting, we'll have those conversations," he said.
Pelley points to the 10 PGA Tour cards on offer for the first time in this year’s Order Merit and the opportunities that brings to Europeans to play for the big bucks and the big points. And another problem is they are only set to become bigger in 2024 when the PGA Tour brings in their “designated events” featuring limited fields of 70-78 players scrapping it out for $20million purses with similar rankings spoils. Poulter views that as another red flag.
“So the same guys will largely be playing against each other in the events where the bulk of the ranking points are handed out,” he said. “That will make it harder than ever for a young Brit to get his card - and to be frank, the cards the top 10 on the DP World Tour will earn on the PGA Tour will not be near the top category of cards - and in his absence the points of offer back on the DP World Tour will be fewer because of the talent drain. It’s a mess at the moment. And we can just pray it all works out.
“Look, Britain loves The Masters. A special connection. And whatever is happening in the game, it’s necessary to do all we can to ensure as many of our guys are there as possible. At least we can surely agree on that.”