Youthful-looking Masters competitor mistaken for Drive, Chip & Putt finalist

As one among solely seven amateurs teeing it up at Augusta National this week, Gordon Sargent resides a dream.

The 19-year-old reigning NCAA Division I champion accepted a particular invitation to compete at this 12 months’s Masters — and was reminded of his rookie standing quickly after arriving on property.

Sargent appeared on The Back of the Range podcast, hosted by Ben Adelberg, to speak about his expertise to date. When requested about the way it feels to be dwelling among the final days of his teenage years on the Masters, Sargent revealed that he was a sufferer of mistaken identification.

“I was definitely grounded a little bit this morning when I was looking for Player Dining,” Sargent stated. “A few folks thought I used to be within the Drive, Chip & Putt.

“It starts off yesterday, I tried to go into the pro shop to ask them what time I could play tomorrow. I’m like, ‘Look, I’m a player, I have my caddie right here.’ The guy’s, like, ‘No, you’re going to have to have your badge.’”

Sargent then described a separate dialog with Augusta safety the place he as soon as once more needed to produce a participant badge, which the guards scrutinized for the correct clearance into Player Dining. Once there, Sargent’s story continued.

“One of the waiters there waited on me last time I was there, a couple of weeks ago, so he remembered me,” he stated. “But then, I think they were, like, ‘Where are the kid’s parents? Did they just send him by himself for the Drive, Chip & Putt?’ The waiter was giving me a hard time about it. I talked to him after and he was, like, ‘How’d the Drive, Chip & Putt go?’”

“There probably were some kids over there that were bigger than me, some 13-year-olds,” Sargent conceded with a smile.

Sargent is at present a sophomore at Vanderbilt, and the world’s top-ranked newbie. He’s the primary newbie participant to be honored with a particular invitation to compete since Aaron Baddeley in 2000.

Golf.com Photographer

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of feminine varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everybody on the masthead. She can out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily accountable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular tasks, equivalent to GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview sequence, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video kind on GOLF.com.