End-of-year push to rise in world rankings sees notable golfers likely qualify for 2022 Masters

This week’s Official World Golf Rankings list looks a lot like last week’s Official World Golf Rankings list, except that last week’s list was mostly for discussion, and this week’s list may have gotten you an invite to the 2022 Masters.

One of the myriad ways to qualify for the Masters is to be inside the top 50 at the end of the previous year. That has encouraged more than one player in the past to bulk up their November and December slates just to assure themselves of OWGR points and a Masters appearance.

The final official OWGR list of 2021 was published this week, and it bumps the 2022 Masters field by quite a bit. This time around, there were some big names who had not yet advanced, including Matthew Wolff, Tyrrell Hatton, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood and Lee Westwood. All finished comfortably inside the top 50 rankings and will be joined by Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Ryan Palmer and Mackenzie Hughes.

None of these golfers qualified in any of the other ways one can qualify for a Masters invite, though qualification is not yet closed, of course. Golfers can play their way in by winning a PGA Tour event between now and the 2022 Masters or by getting into the revised OWGR top 50 the week before the Masters.

Rising European Tour star Min Woo Lee (No. 49) and former world amateur No. 1 player Takumi Kanaya (No. 50) joined the group above and earned the final two spots, just ahead of Cameron Tringale, who finished No. 51 with 2.17 OWGR points to Kanaya’s 2.24. Tringale has only played in the Masters once (2015), but he’ll have a good run at doing so again by playing his way into the top 50 over the first few months of 2022.

Other ways these golfers could have qualified for the first major of 2022 include making the 2021 Tour Championship, winning a PGA Tour event since the 2021 Masters or finishing in the top 12 of any of the four majors. None met those marks, so their qualification fell to the top 50 at the end of the year. Only Lee and Kanaya, though, really had to sweat things out at the end.

None of this is official until Augusta National makes its qualification list public, but these categories have been used for several years now and are expected to be the categories used again for the 2022 Masters, which will be the 86th edition of this tournament.