The first round of the Masters is exactly two weeks away, as if anyone needs reminding.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s players at the Texas Children\u2019s Houston Open certainly don\u2019t, as most are still looking for an invitation to the season\u2019s first major. And it\u2019s this simple: Win and you\u2019re in.<\/p>\n
Among the most popular players in golf without an invite yet is Rickie Fowler, but he took one step toward rectifying that with a 3-under 67 in Round 1 on Thursday at Memorial Park, four shots off the opening pace set by Paul Waring (63).<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Fowler has been consistent this season, with six of six cuts made this season and four top-20 finishes including a T9 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and has steadily moved up the Official World Golf Ranking to No. 61. Ten months ago, he was No. 128.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a great run last year kind of second half of the year and felt like I was in a good spot with my game. Was able to get some downtime to work on the body and get my shoulder in a better spot where I wasn’t having to play through the pain,\u201d Fowler said. \u201cSo luckily had played well through the summer. I had confidence knowing we could go out and kind of play some simple golf. Kind of picked up at AmEx and did a good job there of continuing that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of it is on the mental side, not trying to do too much or anything special. Trying to kind of let the rounds come to me and piece things together and kind of plot my way around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fowler, an 11-time Masters participant with a runner-up finish in 2018, last played in 2024, having qualified via his 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic win that broke a seven-year win drought. He did not play last year and at No. 61 in the world, the only path back to Augusta appears to be a win, either this week or next at the Valero Texas Open. One other path is via the top 50 in the OWGR, a cutoff that ends with the Houston Open.<\/p>\n
On the bubble there is University of Texas product Pierceson Coody, at No. 51 in the world. The 26-year-old was inside the cutoff at the end of February, ranked 45th after a T16 at the Genesis Invitational, then two subsequent missed cuts dropped him outside the top 50 and a T55 last week at the Valspar only moved him from 52nd to 51st. But a good finish this week could send him to Augusta for the first time. He opened in Houston with a round of even-par 70.<\/p>\n
The current 50th-ranked player, Sam Stevens, has already qualified for the Masters via the top-50 OWGR cutoff at the end of 2025. <\/p>\n
More Golf from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first round of the Masters is exactly two weeks away, as if anyone needs reminding. This week\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-548106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}