Peter Malnati makes Masters debut, 260 PGA TOUR starts and one eclipse later

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Alicia Malnati paused before crossing the second fairway as her husband, Peter, played a practice round for the 88th Masters Tournament on Monday.

“Is this the way to go?” she asked. “I’ve never set foot here in my life.”

Neither had her husband before Sunday, when he played 18 with only his caddie, Chad Antus.

One of the great joys of any Masters is experiencing it through the eyes of a first-timer. Malnati, 36, vowed he wouldn’t play Augusta National until he’d actually qualified for the annual spring gathering, the first major of the year. He did just that with his emotional victory at the Valspar Championship last month – his first PGA TOUR win in nine years.

“You wonder if you’re ever going to do it again,” he said in his tearful post-round interview.

Now, the world – and a whole lot of friends and family – will watch as Malnati enjoys one of the perks of that win alongside Antus, also a Masters first-timer. They went out just the two of them again Monday, this time for only nine holes, before Malnati met with the media.

“I had heard so much that it seemed like one of those situations where I almost – it could only be a letdown because I was so incredibly excited,” he said. “And it wasn't a letdown. There's just so many times on the course where you get to a spot and you're like, 'Wow.'”

The biggest wow, he added, was from the high point of the 11th fairway and the view of Amen Corner in all its glory. All of this came after Malnati turned down “more than a handful” of invitations to play Augusta National. He said at 36, those were easy to turn down, but at 46?

“I might have had a change of heart on that one,” he said.

It depends on how you look at it, but perhaps Malnati plays in only one Masters every 260 starts on the PGA TOUR. Or only if he misses the first three cuts of the year, duffs a worm-burner that goes viral and still wins the Valspar by two, and a solar eclipse is set to kick off Masters week.

Then again, maybe he’ll make the 2025 Masters, too. Maybe from here on out he’ll never miss it.

On Monday, outside the ropes, Alicia followed along with Hatcher, 4, the older of the couple’s two children. His brother Dash was napping back at the rental house. A family friend in a Titleist bucket hat, like the kind Malnati wears, also followed along. Peter’s mom, Donna, is in town, and more friends and family will be coming and going throughout the week.

Malnati gets eight Masters tickets to share. Luckily, he keeps a life journal and thus carries graph paper around with him, so he’s turned the ticket challenge into a sort of X/Y axis craft project.

“We’re trying to spread the love,” Alicia said.

The days since the Valspar have been a whirlwind. She admitted she had repeatedly forgotten that the win came with a Masters invite, then remembered and delighted in that fact yet again.

“My favorite thing about Peter winning again is the world getting to see what we’ve known about Peter all along,” she said. “How refreshing and honest and real he is, and how much he loves being a dad, how much he loves playing the game.”

The Malnati family savored the moment Monday, everyone talking about the eclipse and donning those cardboard glasses to look at the sky. As for how Malnati will do here, he likes his chances.

“If I can get all my awe out of the way early in the week, my game fits the course superbly,” he said. "… Historically a weakness for me would be driving accuracy. The corridors here aren't terribly narrow. But I've added a lot of distance. I hit it a lot farther than I did two, three, four years ago, a lot farther than I did 10 years ago.

“Touch on the greens, around the greens has always been a strength,” Malnati continued, “and that's something you need here. I think the course suits the game absolutely, like, perfectly. It's my first Masters. Rookies historically don't do awesome here. I go into it with – I go into it expecting to do my best and expecting that to give me a chance.”

Overly optimistic? Maybe not. When it comes to the Masters, Malnati has never lost even once. Heck, he hasn’t even made a bogey.