There are two Masters taking place this year, the one you’re watching, and the one you’re playing in. Well. Maybe not you, exactly, unless you can count your handicap on two fingers, but the best player you know, that guy on the school run who used to play off scratch, that cousin who won the sports scholarship, or the uncle who everyone says could have made it back in the day. His name is Brandon Holtz and, if you haven’t spotted him yet, he is, he says himself, “the old fat guy” who has been playing with the two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson this week.
Holtz is 39 and works full time as a real estate broker in Bloomington, Illinois. He plays as much golf as he can but, given that he has two kids, a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter, it isn’t nearly as much as he’d like. He is currently 3,262 in the world amateur golf rankings. Which of course means he is a hell of a good golfer. And also that he is ranked a full 3,160 places below his nearest competitor among the six amateurs in the field here. And that’s before you even get to the other 10,000 or so professionals in the Official Golf World Rankings, where he is currently unlisted.
