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Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership introduced Tuesday that any golfer who certified for the Masters match primarily based on its earlier standards will probably be invited to play in 2023, together with 16 gamers who’re at the moment competing within the LIV Golf League.
Six previous Masters champions are a part of the group that defected from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf: Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed and Charl Schwartzel.
“Regrettably, latest actions have divided males’s skilled golf by diminishing the virtues of the sport and the significant legacies of those that constructed it,” Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership chairman Fred Ridley mentioned in an announcement. “Though we’re dissatisfied in these developments, our focus is to honor the custom of bringing collectively a preeminent area of golfers this coming April.
“Due to this fact, as invites are despatched this week, we’ll invite these eligible underneath our present standards to compete within the 2023 Masters Match. As we’ve got mentioned previously, we have a look at each side of the Match every year, and any modifications or modifications to invitation standards for future Tournaments will probably be introduced in April. We’ve reached a seminal level within the historical past of our sport. At Augusta Nationwide, we’ve got religion that golf, which has overcome many challenges by way of the years, will endure once more.”
The Masters, the primary main championship of the season, is scheduled to be performed April 6-9 in Augusta, Georgia.
Australia’s Cameron Smith, the No. 3-ranked participant on this planet, qualifies for successful the 2022 Open Championship and the Gamers. Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka had been invited as a result of they’ve gained the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship previously 5 years. Joaquin Niemann and Talor Gooch are within the area after qualifying for the season-ending Tour Championship earlier than leaving for LIV Golf and for being ranked within the high 50 of the Official World Golf Rating.
Abraham Ancer, Harold Varner III, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na and Louis Oosthuizen are additionally within the high 50 of the OWGR and had been invited. Additionally, another participant within the high 50 the week earlier than the 2023 occasion would additionally earn an invite.
Whether or not Augusta Nationwide would change its standards to make it harder for LIV golfers to compete within the Masters has been one of many recreation’s urgent questions throughout the monthslong battle between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour for the world’s finest gamers.
LIV Golf, which is being fronted by two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman and financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund, has lured away most of the tour’s most recognizable gamers with assured signing bonuses reportedly price as a lot as $200 million, in addition to the richest purses within the sport’s historical past.
When Mickelson, DeChambeau and 9 different LIV golfers filed a federal antitrust lawsuit in opposition to the PGA Tour on Aug. 3, the plaintiffs instructed the tour was colluding with the 4 main championships to ban LIV golfers from competing within the sport’s most necessary occasions. Within the lawsuit, LIV golfers’ attorneys accused Ridley of working behind the scenes for the PGA Tour.
The grievance mentioned Augusta Nationwide representatives “threatened to disinvite gamers from The Masters in the event that they joined LIV Golf.” It alleged that Ridley “personally instructed” gamers on this 12 months’s match to not defect to LIV Golf and that he refused to take a seat down with Norman to debate the brand new circuit’s enterprise mannequin.
Mickelson, a three-time Masters champion, did not compete on this 12 months’s match after he was closely criticized for his feedback concerning the PGA Tour’s “obnoxious greed” and the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s historical past of human rights violations. On the Masters, Ridley mentioned Mickelson hadn’t been disinvited to play.
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