Update: Holtz did not use the old driver in his opening round of 81 at Augusta National.
Usually, when a player at a PGA Tour event, let alone a major, needs a golf club, there’s a plethora of equipment trucks from every OEM to build them one.
But on Tuesday afternoon at the Masters, U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Brandon Holtz needed one specific driver that no Tour Truck could build him. It was already built.
In fact, it was a driver Holtz knew quite well; he wouldn’t need much time to get familiar with it. He used it just seven months ago at the Mid-Am at Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The issue was that Holtz had last used that driver seven months ago. At the Mid-Am. At Troon Country Club. In Scottsdale, Arizona.
The driver in question, a Callaway Paradym Ai-Smoke Triple Diamond with a Fujikura Ventus 7-X shaft, wasn’t currently in Augusta or Scottsdale. It was 640 miles from the Masters at the USGA Museum in Liberty Corner, N.J., after Holtz donated it to the USGA as a memento from his win.
But this is the Masters, and he needed it back.
Holtz will tee off Thursday in the first round at Augusta National with that same driver he won with at Troon CC. How he got it back took a mad dash and several USGA officials, from Mike Whan, to Scott Langley, to the USGA’s office manager just to get it to Augusta National in time for Holtz to use this week.
“Pretty special for sure,” Holtz said as he awaited the delivery on Wednesday at Augusta National. “Shows you what the USGA does and will do for you.”
A USGA tradition
Holtz is a former college basketball player at Illinois State University who turned professional (in golf) just a year after his final college basketball game. He became one of the most unlikely Masters competitors in history by winning the U.S. Mid-Amateur last fall, the 39-year-old’s first-ever USGA event.
He did so largely on the strength of his driving. On the 34th hole of the final match, he hit a driver on the 308-yard par-4 to just eight feet and made the putt for eagle to win the match 3 and 2.
As is tradition, every USGA champion donates a piece of their equipment to the governing body to either be displayed in the USGA museum or placed in the archives there. Sometimes it’s a club, other times it’s a shirt, a pair of shoes or a golf ball.
Given the significance of his driving that week and the tee shot on the decisive hole, Holtz donated his driver to the USGA.
A unique service
USGA CEO Mike Whan probably isn’t used to being asked to deliver a golf club to the Masters on Tuesday afternoon of tournament week, but that’s exactly what happened.
Holtz was feeling so bad about his driving this week at Augusta that he had a member of his team reach out to Whan to ask if he could get the driver out of the USGA Museum and down to the tournament.
Just before 4 p.m. Tuesday, Whan got a text and the USGA team “circled the wagons,” Director of Player Relations Scott Langley said to see what they could do.
“I would venture a guess that neither Brandon nor us as the USGA had that on our bingo cards,” Langley told GOLF as he chuckled during a Wednesday night phone call.
The first obstacle was that the director of the USGA Museum was on vacation in Paris, but she was able to get in touch with someone at the museum who quickly found the driver and got it to Office Services Manager Wayne McGowan, who rushed it to UPS just in time for the overnight shipping deadline.
The driver made it to Augusta National on Wednesday and the USGA took it straight to conformance testing just to make sure Holtz could still use it. Wouldn’t that have been something to find it, get it all the way down to Georgia, only for it to fail a CT test?
Luckily, the driver passed the conformance test and was reunited with Holtz sometime before 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
Was Holtz nervously watching the tracking number to see when his driver would get there? The club that could potentially make or break his game for his Masters debut. No, not all.
“They basically said, ‘hey, just enjoy your day, and we’ll get it to you at some point,'” Holtz said. “So no, I’m not tracking it, but I have faith that they’ll be here.”
Lo and behold, that faith was rewarded, and something Langley was proud the team could accomplish.
“As the USGA, we’re grateful that they’re willing to share their artifacts with us and allow us to display them within our museum and archives,” Langley said. “And in these rare cases where something pops up, and the player might want to put it [back] into play, we want to do everything we can possibly to accommodate that and we’re grateful that physically we were still able to with the timeline.
What happens next?
With Holtz reunited with his driver, that does leave the museum with a hole in its collection.
There’s now nothing from the 2025 Mid-Amateur champion. So will the USGA ask for the driver back when Holtz’s Masters comes to an end?
Langley laughed at the thought.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “I think it’s fair to say we’ll check in with him. We’d love to have it there, and in these cases, these players really appreciate the chance to have one of their artifacts in our museum as well. It’s not just saying it because it’s ours, but it’s just an amazing collection of golf history.
“I’m sure we’ll have a conversation about it … I’m sure we’ll have a laugh over it at the end of the week, and we’ll agree on where the best place for it to live is.”
