We hope you bring our list of Ones to Watch to your Calcutta party during Masters Week, so here’s some more information regarding your pick in the auction this year. We could all be surprised like in 2016 with the win by Danny Willett; or even in 1987 with the miraculous chip-in by Augusta’s own, Larry Mize. Or who could forget Brian Harman of Savannah last year, who went off at 125 to 1 and then won the British Open by six shots? So, the following golfers may be dark horses, but not too dark.
World Golf Rankings as of April 5, 2024
Tyrrell Hatton | World Golf Ranking 17
Tyrrell Hatton is popular to watch, partly because of his remarkable accuracy with his iron shots, and partly for his profanity following a poor shot. The Englishman has six victories on the European Tour, four of them coming in the prestigious Rolex Series events. He has one PGA Tour victory at the 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational and he has played on three Ryder Cup teams, winning twice. Hatton has not cracked the top-10 in seven Masters starts. He has five top-10 finishes in the other major championships. Hatton is ranked No. 17 in the world.
Collin Morikawa | World Golf Ranking 16
An American from Los Angeles, Morikawa, 27, now lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Katherine Zhu. He won five times in college at the University of California, Berkeley. Turning professional in 2019, Morikawa fashioned his first PGA Tour win at the Barracuda Championship in July. A year later, he defeated Justin Thomas in a playoff to win the Workday Charity Open. The following month, Morikawa won the 2020 PGA Championship in just his second start in a major tournament. He posted another major championship win at the Open Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Kent, England, by two strokes over Jordan Spieth. The win made him the first player since Bobby Jones, 95 years earlier, to win two majors in eight or fewer starts. Last October, Morikawa ended a 27-month winless stretch with a victory in the ZOZO Championship. He has seven professional wins and is ranked No. 16 in the world.
Jordan Spieth | World Golf Ranking 19
Jordan Spieth is definitely among the game’s most popular players. He turned pro at age 19 and won the John Deere Classic on the fifth hole of a three-way playoff, becoming the fourth-youngest Tour winner and the first teenager to win since Ralph Guldahl in 1931. Spieth was named the 2013 Rookie of the Year, having reached 10th place on the PGA Tour money list. He began 2014 with a second-place finish in the Masters. He played in The Ryder Cup, the youngest American to do so since Horton Smith in 1929, and started on a streak of victories and high finishes that captured the imagination of the golfing world. He opened the 2015 Masters with a record-tying 64 and broke the 36-hole record with a 66 on Friday. In the middle of an epic year on the PGA Tour, Spieth won the U.S. Open by a stroke over Dustin Johnson. He became the sixth player to win the Masters and the U.S. Open in the same year — a group comprised of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Craig Wood — as well as being the youngest winner of the U.S. Open since Bobby Jones in 1923. Spieth has 13 PGA Tour wins and three major championships, lacking only the PGA Championship to accomplish the mythical Grand Slam. In 10 starts at the Masters, Spieth has six top-10 finishes.
Tom Kim | World Golf Ranking 21
One of the most popular players on the PGA Tour, Tom Kim, 21, always looks like he’s having a great time. The son of a golf professional, Kim turned pro at the age of 16 on the Philippine Golf Tour. He got his first win at the age of 17 at the PGM ADT Championship in Malaysia, leading the field by six strokes. Kim’s nickname Tom comes from Thomas the Tank Engine, a children’s television show that he loved as a toddler. He has 12 professional wins, including three on the PGA Tour: the 2022 Wyndham Championship (by five strokes) and the 2022 and 2023 Shriners Children’s Open, by three strokes over Patrick Cantlay and Matthew NeSmith and then by one over Adam Hadwin. Kim finished second in the 2023 Open Championship. He is currently 21st in the World Golf Rankings.
Tommy Fleetwood | World Golf Ranking 12
Tommy Fleetwood, 33, seems to have trimmed his mullet haircut, and it is doing him some good. But it is in character when you realize he was born in Merseyside, England, the metropolitan county claiming home to The Beatles. Tommy won the 2009 Scottish Amateur Stroke Play Championship and the 2010 English Amateur, turning professional shortly thereafter. There is no beaten path to the Kazakhstan Open, but that is where Tommy carved out his first win on the European Challenge Tour, earning a card on the major tour.
Fleetwood got his first major tour win at the prestigious Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles in a three-man playoff. He won another prominent tournament at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in 2017. In June that same year, Fleetwood finished fourth in the U.S. Open and won the Open de France the next month. To top off a great year, he won the season-long Race to Dubai and the $1.25 million that came with it. In one year, he had risen from 99th in the World Golf Rankings to inside the top 20. Fleetwood came in second in the 2018 U.S. Open by a stroke to Brooks Koepka after tying the championship’s low round of 63. Paired with Francesco Molinari in the 2018 Ryder Cup, Fleetwood and his partner became the first to win all four of their matches. In the same event two years later, Fleetwood went 0-2-1, falling to Jordan Spieth in the singles. Now a Ryder Cup stalwart, he went 3-1-1 in 2023, including a Sunday win against Rickie Fowler. Fleetwood has not fared well in seven Masters starts.
Photos courtesy of Augusta National Golf Club
Seen in the 2024 April issue of Augusta magazine and the Augusta magazine Tournament Guide
