Utah’s Tony Finau has never missed a cut in the Masters golf tournament, in seven previous appearances.
That’s quite a feat, and it could be argued that the venerable event at Augusta National Golf Club is the former Salt Lake City resident’s best major. He’s missed the cut at the U.S. Open, The Open Championship in Great Britain and the PGA Championship, but has always managed to make it to the weekend in Georgia.
Finau, 35, is again entered in golf’s first major of 2025, the 89th Masters Tournament, but needs to kick his game into gear this week to avoid packing his bags Friday night. The Masters’ 36-hole cut line reduces the field to 50 players, plus ties.
In 2023, Finau told the Deseret News that Augusta National was his favorite major venue and the Masters was the major he most wanted to win. He called it the “holy grail” of major golf and said his confidence was as high as it had ever been.
This year, not so much, although Finau hasn’t said much publicly about the state of his game recently.
Finau, whose best Masters finish is a tie for fifth in 2019, the year Tiger Woods won his fifth Masters title and 15th major championship, is not in one of the featured groups this year, a sign that he hasn’t played his best in 2025. He will tee off at 8:37 a.m. MDT Thursday with Maverick McNealy and Thomas Detry, and at 11:45 a.m. MDT Friday in the same group.
Scottie Scheffler is the defending champion and is seeking his third title in four years, while Rory McIlroy is trying to attain the career Grand Slam, having won every major but the Masters.
Those are the favorites, along with Swedish pro Ludvig Aberg, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele and LIV golfers Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau.
Ten other LIV golfers are in the field, most notably past champions Patrick Reed, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia and multiple major winner Brooks Koepka.
Canada’s Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters champion and a BYU product who currently resides in Utah, is also entered and will tee off at 6:02 a.m. MDT Thursday with Michael Kim and Cameron Young.
Before playing in the Houston Open two weeks ago, Finau told the Golf Channel that he still believes he can win a major within the next few years.
“I still feel I’ve just scratched the surface of what I can accomplish in the game and try to push myself to continue to be my best and accomplish great things on the golf course,” he said.
Finau comes into the Masters having tied for 56th at the Valero Texas Open — he made a hole-in-one on the 16th hole last Friday to make the cut — after posting a pair of 76s on the weekend. The week before, he tied for 32nd at the Houston Open, an event he won in 2022.
“The motivation continues to be winning, and just accomplishing what I feel I can accomplish, which is winning major championships, and winning more golf tournaments,” he told the Golf Channel. “At the end of my career, I feel like I don’t want to leave any stone unturned as far as what I can accomplish, and that just starts on the day-to-day process.”
Finau is currently ranked 35th in the FedEX Cup rankings and 32nd in the World Golf Rankings.
His best finish to date in 2025 was a tie for fifth at The Genesis Invitational in California, but he followed that performance with a tie for 36th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and then missed the cut at The Players Championship with back-to-back 76s.
“My biggest goal of this year is to be as healthy and strong as I’ve ever been, and that starts with, again, understanding where my body is at, to know how I swing the golf club and just do the basic things to be better and get better,” he said.
Finau enters his eighth Masters with three top-10 finishes in the event, having tied for 10th in 2018 and 2021 in addition to his fifth-place finish in 2019. Last year, he tied for 55th after a closing round of 80.
