LIV Golf's Joaquin Niemann joins 2024 Masters field on a special invite with Thorbjørn Olesen and Ryo Hisatsune

LIV Golf star Joaquin Niemann has been invited to the Masters field and he has accepted. It's not often that LIV players get special invitations to the Major tournaments since their tour is a slightly more controversial one, but the Chilean golfer was added to the list for April.

Niemann was the only player from Saudi circuit to get the invitation. It had a little more to do with his victory in the Australian Open and the willingness to play tournaments outside LIV to try and get some points to rank for the Major tournament.

Thorbjorn Oleson and Ryo Hisatsune were also given invitations. The Masters has a qualification for those in the OWGR top 50, but none of them were in. Hisatsune was ranked 76th, while Oleson came in at 56th, just outside the qualifying range.

Joaquin Niemann is ranked 81st since he's no longer on the PGA Tour. LIV events don't get points, so he has fallen pretty far from his peak since defecting. Nevertheless, he was adamant that he wanted to play in the Majors even while on LIV.

Via ESPN, he said:

"I want to win majors, but I've got to get in first."

He added:

"It kind of hurt me a little bit not being in the majors and I think also helped me to get motivation to kind of earn my spot back into the majors, into the elite players."

These special invitations bring the field up to 83 players. The only remaining method for players to qualify is to win one of the seven PGA Tour events before the Masters or by making their way into the top 50 in OWGR ranks by April.

---

Joaquin Niemann heading to Augusta National in April

Joaquin Niemann has been off to a very hot start in the LIV season. The golfer won in Mayakoba and also won the Australian Open in December. He joined the European tour after winning the Australian Open and finished fourth in the Dubai Desert Classic.

Joaquin Niemann made it into the Masters field

This is just the 15th time that players have received special invitations to the Masters since 1999. That was the year they began using world rankings in their qualification, and they have given three players invitations thus far in 2024. It's just the second time that three invitations have been given in one year.

This will be Niemann's fifth-ever appearance at the Masters. He finished 16th last year and is looking to, as he said above, win one of them. His status remains up in the air for the US Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship, but he's in the field and ready to go in April.

Joaquin Niemann will likely join several other LIV Golf members as a result of their qualifying through previous wins and other metrics, but he had to go about it the hard way. Ranked too low, he had to put himself into other fields to try and earn the elusive ranking points, and Augusta has rewarded him for his effort.