Hattiesburg native Davis Riley will be back at Augusta National for the 2026 Masters, a year after he finished tied for 21st and delivered the best result by a Mississippian there in more than three decades. The tournament begins Thursday, April 9, and Riley enters a field that is already drawing attention for what it does and does not include.
Riley’s T-21 finish at the 2025 Masters was the best Masters showing by a Mississippi-born player since Jim Gallagher Jr.’s T-17 in 1991. He then backed it up with the strongest major result of his career in May 2025, tying for second at the PGA Championship behind Scottie Scheffler. For a player from Hattiesburg, the sequence has turned him into a familiar name on one of golf’s biggest stages, and it gives Mississippi a reason to watch the first major of the year with more than casual interest.
The 2026 Masters runs through Sunday, April 12, with practice rounds set for Monday, April 6, through Wednesday, April 8. The field currently has 91 players, and Augusta National prefers to keep it under 100; it has done so since 1967. BetMGM Sportsbook listed Scheffler as the favorite at +500, with Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau at +1000, Jon Rahm at +1200, and Ludvig Aberg and Xander Schauffle at +1400.
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The year’s most striking absence comes from the top of the sport’s old guard. Tiger Woods will not play after his recent DUI arrest in Florida, and Phil Mickelson is out because of a family health matter. It is the first Masters since 1994 without either of them in the field, a break from a familiar era that leaves the tournament leaning more heavily on the players now at the top of the game.
Coverage will begin Thursday and Friday at 12 p.m. CT on Prime Video, with taking over at 2 p.m. and carrying the weekday rounds through 7:30 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday, Paramount+ will start at noon, before CBS takes live tournament coverage from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. The Masters also offers live video channels and its own app, so Riley’s return can be followed from the first tee shot to the final putt.
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Riley is not arriving in Augusta as an afterthought anymore. He has already shown he can contend at majors, and in a Masters field that is smaller than most tournaments and missing two of the game’s biggest names, the pressure on players like him is to turn a good week into something lasting.
