By Len Ziehm
The Masters starts its 90th anniversary staging on Thursday. This major championship in Augusta, Ga., always gets world-wide attention, but this one may not get as much as most of the others – and for good reasons.
(BULLET) Tiger Woods won’t be playing, and his career is in serious jeopardy after another auto accident last week.
(BULLET) Neither will Phil Mickelson, who has been dealing with a “family medical issue’’ that has limited his competition to only one event of the five played on the LIV Tour this season. So, this will be the first Masters since 1994 without both Woods, who has won it five times, and Mickelson, who has three titles. They will be missed.
(BULLET) Scottie Scheffler, a two-times Masters winner and the game’s current No. 1 player, has had an uncharacteristically slow start to the season. He seems distracted, which would be understandable given that he and his wife are expecting twins. Scheffler goes into this Masters after sitting out the last three weeks of tournaments. He could be rusty.
(BULLET) Rory McIlroy, whose win in the 2025 Masters completed his dramatic drive to completion of golf’s Grand Slam, has also had a slow start in 2026. He’s made only four starts, and one of those was a WD at the Arnold Palmer Invitational when he developed a sore back. McIlroy’s last start was at The Players, and he finished in a tie for 46th.
That leaves quite a few popular attractions out of the action or in limbo. This week’s event won’t come close to resembling the stage set for the first Masters I covered in person. This will be the 40th anniversary of my first Masters. The 1986 version ended with Jack Nicklaus winning his record sixth title at age 46, making him the oldest champion in the tournament’s history. That was the most memorable golf tournament of my journalistic career, and tons of golf followers feel the same way.
Somebody will win the 90th Masters, though. It’s an annual rite of spring to pick the champion, and I’ve done it twice. This time it figures to be battle between two players who have been hot lately. Bryson DeChambeau won his last two starts on the Liv Tour and Matt Fitzpatrick and a runner-up, then a win in the Valspar Championship on the PGA Tour. Neither played last week and neither has won the Masters.
I’m making DeChambeau my choice this week with England’s Tommy Fleetwood rating at least an outside chance. He had a strong finish in 2025, getting his first win on the PGA Tour in the season-ended Tour Championship. That also came in Georgia, at East Lake in Atlanta. He did play in last week’s Valero Texas Open and FINISH, as WHO won the title.
LOCAL HOPEFUL: While no Illinois-connected PGA Tour players qualified for this year’s Masters, the field will include Brandon Holtz. He former Illinois State basketball player who, at 39, works in real estate in Bloomington.
After contending in three Illinois Opens Holtz earned a spot in the Masters by winning the U.S. Mid-Amateur title last September in Arizona. His 65-year old father, Jeff Holtz, was Brandon’s caddie in the Mid-Am win and he’ll also be on his son’s bag at Augusta National.
BITS: J. Andrew Langan, of Winnetka, is the new chairman of the Western Golf Association. A member of the WGA’s board of directors since 2016, he’ll serve a two-year term as chairman.
Vince India, a three-time Illinois Open champion who spent a long career on the Korn Ferry Tour, is now an assistant professional at North Shore Country Club in Gl
Conner Burke has been promoted to head professional at Butterfield Country Club in Oak Brook and Ben DeArmond is now the club’s first-ever director of golf.
Northwestern’s Diana Lee tied for 19th in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, a prelude to the Masters. Lee was 2-under-par for the tourney’s 54 holes and was even par in the final round — the only one played on the Augusta National course.