Ryan Gerard made his 10,000-mile trip worth the effort Sunday, when he was the runner-up at the Mauritius Open, good enough for the 26-year-old American to join 13 other players who qualified for Masters invitations by finishing the year in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking.
That brings the field to 86 golfers who are likely to compete next April at Georgia’s Augusta National — a list that includes five-time winner Tiger Woods, who has not announced if he is playing — going into the new year.
Players can still earn invitations to the year’s first major championship tournament by winning a PGA Tour event (opposite-field events excluded) or getting into the top 50 a week before the Masters.
While the final OWGR of 2025 will not be published for another week, there are no other tournaments that affect the top 50, and the OWGR already has projected the top 50. Sam Stevens of the United States will finish at No. 50 by a narrow margin over Taylor Pendrith of Canada.
Sweden’s Alex Noren at No. 11 is the highest-ranked player who was not already eligible, courtesy of two wins in England, including the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship.
Four players won DP World Tour or PGA Tour tournaments in the fall that helped secure their top-50 spots: Norway’s Kristoffer Reitan (Nedbank Golf Challenge), Finland’s Sami Valimaki (RSM Classic) and American players Michael Brennan (Bank of Utah Championship) and Michael Kim (French Open).
The others who will finish in the top 50 are England’s Aaron Rai, Max Greyserman of the U.S., Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard, Australia’s Min Woo Lee, South Korea’s Si Woo Kim and Johnny Keefer of the U.S. Si Woo Kim went to the Australian Open and finished third, giving him enough points to move into the top 50.
Brennan and Keefer present unique cases. Brennan spent most of 2025 on the PGA Tour Americas circuit, two steps down from the PGA Tour. He won three times and had nine other top-10 finishes. And then he received a sponsor exemption to the Bank of Utah Championship and earned his first PGA Tour victory, which moved him into top 50.
Keefer was on the Korn Ferry Tour and won twice, allowing him to break into the top 50 and narrowly hold down his spot.
The Masters altered its criteria this year, eliminating an invitation to winners of FedEx Cup Fall events and replacing that with national opens around the world. Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen got in by winning the Australian Open, while England’s Marco Penge (Spanish Open) and Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin (Hong Kong Open) also qualified. McKibbin competes in the LIV Golf League, and that circuit’s 54-hole events do not count toward OWGR points.
The Masters is keen on keeping the field less than 100 players — not since 1966 has it exceeded that number — and it would appear to be on track to stay that way. Two spots will be filled by the Latin America Amateur Championship winner in January and the South African Open winner in February.
There are 12 main PGA Tour events before the Masters on April 9-12, with four of them big tournaments in which most of the field for Augusta already will be eligible.
Woods, who turns 50 on Dec. 30, did not play a tournament in 2025, first because of a ruptured Achilles tendon, and then because of a seventh back surgery. The 15-time major champion’s recovery is close to allowing him to play, and he’s likely to be healthy enough before the Masters.
Gerard was at No. 57 in the world when he chose to go to Mauritius, a small island nation of the coast of southeastern Africa in the Indian Ocean, for a tournament co-sanctioned by the Europe-based DP World Tour and the South Africa-based Sunshine Tour. He needed to finish fourth and lost on the second extra hole to South Africa’s Jayden Schaper, who won a playoff via an eagle for the second week in a row after a runner-up finish before that in the Nedbank Challenge.
It still wasn’t enough to get him into the OWGR’s top 50 — he jumped from 153rd to 63rd — but if his momentum continues into the new year, he could be among those headed for Augusta as well.