AUGUSTA, Ga. — More than golf's first major championship of the year, the Masters represents unification for the sport.
This is the first time since the British Open last July that the best players, regardless of their tours, will compete against each other: same course, same tournament, same television network.
"I believe everyone agrees there's excitement in the air this week," Fred Ridley, the tournament's chairman, said Wednesday. "The best players in the world are together once again."
Still unclear at Augusta National Golf Club is for how much longer.
The Saudi-funded LIV Golf League has 13 players at the Masters, seven of them former champions who can play the tournament as long as they want. That's down from 18 a year ago. Only nine LIV players are currently assured of being back at Augusta National next year.
Ridley offered little hope the pathway for LIV to Augusta was about to get wider.
He said the Official World Golf Ranking was a "legitimate determiner" of the best in the game, bad news for a rival league that does not get OWGR points. And while the Masters annually reviews its criteria for invitations, Ridley announced no new changes.
Instead, he leaned on the Masters being an invitational, and the club alone decides who it deems worthy of getting that elegant, cream-colored notice in the mail.
"If we felt that there were a player or players, whether they played on the LIV tour or any other tour, who were deserving of an invitation to the Masters, we would exercise that discretion with regard to special invitations," Ridley said.
The battle is for a green jacket, but that might not be the only competition.
It will be difficult to look at a leaderboard without considering who is with LIV Golf. That much hasn't changed from last year — the first Masters since the rival circuit to the PGA Tour was launched in summer 2022 — and LIV certainly showed the league playing exclusively 54-hole, no-cut tournaments (sometimes with several weeks in between them) didn't affect its players as three of them were among the top four on the final leaderboard.
And just like last year, there is no animosity inside the ropes.
LIV players Phil Mickelson and Joaquin Niemann went through a practice round with Akshay Bhatia, the final player into the field because of his victory Sunday at the PGA Tour's Texas Open. Xander Schauffele, still on the PGA Tour, told of running into Dustin Johnson and the two deciding to play a practice round, no different from what would have happened long before LIV began luring away players with guaranteed riches.
The future remains murky, though.
Augusta National and the other three organizations that run the majors have seats on the OWGR board that reviewed LIV's application to join and get ranking points. The vote was unanimous not to award points until certain enhancements were met.
LIV eventually decided to withdraw its application, and several players decried the OWGR as no longer relevant.
Well, it is to Ridley and the Masters. The top 50 at the end of the year and a week before the Masters get invitations. Bryson DeChambeau said the majors — the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and British Open — should invite the top 12 from the LIV points list.
Ridley wasn't buying that.
"I think it will be difficult to establish any type of point system that had any connection to the rest of the world of golf because they're basically — not totally, but for the most part — a closed shop," Ridley said. "There is some relegation, but not very much.
"But I don't think that prevents us from giving subjective consideration based on talent, based on performance to those players."
That's what led Augusta National to offer an invitation to Niemann. The club did not cite anything he did on his current tour — the 25-year-old from Chile has two LIV wins this year — but instead his willingness to travel outside outside of that circuit and win the Australian Open, along with a top finish in the Australian PGA.
Talor Gooch did not get an invitation. He won three LIV events last year and later suggested Rory McIlroy would have an asterisk next to his name if he won the Masters because all the best aren't there.
Gooch is unlikely to be missed, not with top-ranked Scottie Scheffler going for a second green jacket, McIlroy chasing the career Grand Slam, Tiger Woods playing for only the second time this year and a host of others from all tours chasing one of golf's most prized possessions.
And then the PGA Tour will zip on over to South Carolina's Hilton Head Island, the LIV Golf League will wing its way to Australia, and the next reunion of all of golf's best won't come until the PGA Championship tees off May 16 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.
"There's a lot of people a lot smarter than me that could figure this out in a much more efficient way," said reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm, who was still on the PGA Tour when he won last April but joined LIV in December.
"But the obvious answer is that there's got to be a way for certain players in whatever tour to be able to earn their way in. That's the only thing can I say. I don't know what that looks like. But there's got to be a fair way for everybody to compete."