Why do Masters invite amateur golfers?
Jones and Clifford Roberts founded and determined to build Augusta National and then inaugurated in 1933. A year later, they opened the Masters, only at Augusta National, with a selective positioning of players, gathering many professional stars. Contemporary businesses competed for a $10,000 prize fund mobilized from local authorities.
After winning 13 majors, Jones retired in 1930, at the age of 28 and still dressed as an amateur.
From that feat and advocated by Jones, Augusta National always encourages the next generation to follow his example every time the Masters are deployed. However, the Organizing Committee only selects the cup holder or the top 2 amateur championships in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and three national tournaments in the US, applicable to the most recent competition.
Accordingly, Masters 2023 has seven amateurs to compete for the silver cup for outstanding performers, including Sam Bennett, Ben Carr, Gordon Sargent, Aldrich Potgieter, Harrison Crowe, Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira, Matthew McClean. As for McClean, a Northern Irishman, this year 29 years old is an optometrist, the rest are 18-23 years old and develop golf while studying.
Masters history so far has not recorded amateurs wearing a "green jacket" for the champion.
As usual, the whole amateur group will be treated by the Organizing Committee to a dinner party at the beginning of the event week, then sleep one night in the "Crow's Nest" on the 3rd floor of the Augusta National club. There, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson and Ben Crenshaw all experienced and later won the Masters. Nicklaus has won six times in a record 18 majors, Woods has won five times, in addition to 10 equal titles.
As for the Asian group over the years at the Masters, only Japanese golfer Hideki Matsuyama won both "excellent amateur", in the opening year of 2011 and "green jacket" in 2021. Matsuyama attended the Masters for the first time after finishing first in the Asian amateur tournament. - Pacific Ocean 2010.
