Gordon Sargent was sitting on his couch back home in Birmingham, Alabama, at 9 a.m. the day after New Year’s when his phone buzzed. It was a number he didn’t recognize, though the name on the caller I.D. was very familiar:
Augusta National Golf Club.
“I was a little caught off guard by it,” Sargent admitted this week while appearing on Golf Channel’s College Golf Talk podcast.
Not since 2000, when the Masters invited Aaron Baddeley, had an amateur been offered a special exemption into the field for the year’s first major. So, it was understandable that Sargent, the 19-year-old reigning NCAA individual champion, initially thought he was being pranked.
“I’m not even positive I believed him after he called me,” said Vanderbilt head coach Scott Limbaugh, the only person besides his parents that Sargent told before Thursday’s official announcement, “just because it’s just so not like something they would do. … We weren’t telling anyone because you want to make sure that it’s a deal.”
Once the Masters broke the news to the public, Sargent said he had over 250 text messages, forcing himself to put his phone on do not disturb while he compete in last weekend’s Jones Cup in Sea Island, Georgia, where he tied for sixth.
Back on campus in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday, Sargent revealed that his official invitation did arrive in his parents’ mailbox on Monday.
“I’ve got pictures of it,” Sargent said. “So, I hope it’s real.”
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Source: www.golfchannel.com
