This Masters will be unlike any other Masters in recent memory

Masters made a long play about Warren Buffett. In the past 70 years, it has produced four absolute magnet champions: Arnold Palmer, who won the tournament four times; Jack Nicklaus, with his six titles; Phil Mickelson, a three-time winner at Augusta; and Tiger Woods, who won his fifth (and most recent) green jacket in 2019. This year, for the first time since 1954, none of those players are competing in the event.

This year, for the first time since 1994, neither Mickelson nor Woods is on the field.

Of those four, only one will be there, Big Jack himself, playing the first shot of the festival on Thursday morning, alongside Tom Watson (twice winner) and Gary Player (three coats).

So this will be different. The next 20 or 30 or 40 years in Augusta will be different again.

Palmer and Nicklaus were so respected at Augusta National that they were invited to join the team as paying members, the only previous winners to receive such an invitation. In other words, they could come to the club as they wished, play the course, bring guests, stay in the cabins, visit the winery without an escort. Woods and Mickelson, like all previous winners, were honorary members. They still needed someone to be there to play the course. Palmer and Nicklaus had direct relationships with the team’s most important figures in its history, including the team’s founders (Bob Jones, Clifford Roberts); various prominent members (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Warren Buffett); and former winners from near and far (Gene Sarazen, Seve Ballesteros). There are plaques on the course honoring Palmer and Nicklaus, with brief histories of Augusta highlights.

Maybe the plaques will come to Mickelson and Woods, and they certainly deserve their sensational performances at Augusta over the decades, but they’re unlikely to come anytime soon.

In the long history of the Masters, Tiger Woods is the only player to have received a public reprimand from the club chairman. That happened at the 2010 Masters, when Woods returned to public life and tournament golf after a private life scandal that spread all over the world’s tabloids. Then the chairman, Billy Payne, reading from a prepared statement at the State-of-the-Masters press conference on Wednesday, said that Woods had “let us all down” and that he had failed as an example. Woods finished T4 that year.

From 1995, when he played as an amateur, until 2013, Woods played in every Masters. (It was in 2013 that he was given a two-shot penalty for taking a bad putt on the 15th hole of his Friday round. He had a T4 finish.) Woods did not play in 2014 while recovering from back surgery. He did not play in 2016, following another back surgery. He did not play in 2017, reportedly due to back problems. He did not play in 2021, following a horrific car accident in Los Angeles. He did not play last year, following surgery on a torn Achilles in his left leg. Woods is not playing this year, following his March 27 DUI arrest in South Florida, near his Jupiter Island home.

Palmer has played in 50 consecutive Masters tournaments, none as a novice. Woods played 19 straight from 1995 to 2013, including two as an amateur. Nicklaus has played in 46 consecutive Masters tournaments, starting with three as a freshman. Mickelson played in the 1991 and ’93 Masters as a freshman, sat out in ’94, and then played 27 consecutive events as a professional, from 1995 to 2021. Mickelson did not play in the 2022 Masters, the year it was revealed that he was leaving his professional home for life, the PGA of the PGA series, the proglobal Golf Tour, LIV There was turmoil at the time and Mickelson took a break from the tournament game and public life for several months.

“For the past 10 years I have felt stress and depression slowly affecting me on a deeper level,” he said in a statement at the time. “I know I haven’t been the best person and I really need time to put the ones I love first and work on becoming the man I want to be.” Fred Ridley said at the 2022 Masters that the club “didn’t drop” Mickelson from the tournament. But it was an open secret in certain circles that Mickelson was not playing well. He was the reigning PGA champion at the time, which he won at the age of 50. With the encouragement of the team, he would probably play. In 2023, Mickelson returned to the tournament, was unusually quiet at the dinner and finished in a tie for second.

Mickelson is not playing this year. In a statement Thursday, he said, “Unfortunately I will not be playing in the Masters next week and will be out for a long time as my family continues to deal with health issues. I wish everyone the best of luck and will be watching.”

Ridley responded with this statement: “We know how much Phil loves the Masters tournament, and he will be missed by everyone at Augusta next week.

When Woods won the Masters in 2019, at the age of 43, his health seemed to be in a good place, as he was after his arrest in 2017 and his years of back problems, as well as other body parts. When Mickelson won the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, becoming the oldest winner of the majors, he seemed destined to be the closest thing golf had to the next Arnold Palmer. Both are guaranteed to be Ryder Cup captains, to compete in US Senior Opens and other major events and enjoy the kind of acclaim Nicklaus and Palmer enjoyed decades after their playing careers ended. No sign of that yet.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com