Inside the dash to get the driver of this Masters competitor… from a museum

Usually, when a player in a PGA Tour event, let alone a major, needs a golf club, there are truckloads of equipment from every OEM to build one for them.

But on Tuesday afternoon in Masters, US Intermediate Amateur Champion Brandon Holtz it needed a specific driver that no travel truck could build. It was already built.

In fact, it was a driver Holtz knew quite well; it wouldn’t take him long to get used to it. He used it just seven months ago in the Mid-Am at Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The thing was, Holtz had last used that driver seven months earlier. In the middle of the morning. At Troon Country Club. In Scottsdale, Arizona.

The driver in question, a Callaway Paradym Ai-Smoke Triple Diamond with one Fujikura Ventus 7-X shaftwas not currently in Augusta or Scottsdale. It was 640 miles from the Masters at the USGA Museum in Liberty Corner, New Jersey, after Holtz donated it to the USGA as a memento of his victory.

But this is the Master and he needed it.

Holtz will appear in the first round on Thursday at Augusta National with the same driver he won with at Troon CC. How he got it back took a mad dash and several USGA officials, from Mike Wahn to Scott Langley to the USGA office manager, just to get it to Augusta National in time for Holtz to use it this week.

“Pretty special for sure,” Holtz said while waiting to tee off Wednesday at Augusta National. “It tells 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 pro (in golf) just a year after his last college basketball game. He became one of the most unlikely Masters competitors in history winning the US Mid-Amateur last fall, the 39-year-old’s first USGA event.

He did this mainly on the strength of his leadership. On the 34th hole of the final match, he hit a driver on the par-4 308 yards to just eight feet and made the putt for eagle to win the match 3-and-2.

As is tradition, each USGA champion donates a piece of his equipment to the governing body to 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 importance of his drive that week and his putt on the deciding hole, Holtz donated his driver to the USGA.

A unique service

USGA CEO Mike Wahn probably isn’t used to being asked to deliver a golf club at the Masters on the 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 contact Wahn to ask if he could get the driver out of the USGA Museum and down to the tournament.

Just before 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wahn got a message and the USGA team “circled the wagons,” Director of Player Relations Scott Langley said to see what they could do.

“I would guess that neither Brandon nor we as the USGA had that in our bingo cards,” Langley told GOLF with a laugh during a call Wednesday night.

The first hurdle 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 located the driver and sent it to Office Services Manager Wayne McGowan, who rushed it to UPS just in time for overnight shipping.

The driver arrived at Augusta National on Wednesday, and the USGA took it straight to conformity testing just to make sure Holtz could still use it. Wouldn’t it be something to find him, drive him all the way to Georgia, only to fail a CT test?

Fortunately, the driver passed the compliance test and was reunited with Holtz sometime before 4:00 PM on Wednesday afternoon.

Was Holtz nervously checking the tracking number to see when his driver would get there? The club that could make or break his game for his Masters debut. No, not all.

“They basically said, ‘hey, just enjoy the day and we’ll give it to you in a moment,'” Holtz said. “So no, I’m not following him, but I have faith they’ll be here.”

Lo and behold, that faith paid off and something Langley was proud the team could achieve.

“As the USGA, we are grateful that they are willing to share their artifacts with us and allow us to display them within our museum and archives,” Langley said. “And on these rare occasions when something comes up and the player might want to put it (back) into the game, we want to do everything we can to accommodate it and we’re thankful that we were physically still able to with the timeline.

What happens next?

With Holtz reunited with his driver, this leaves the museum with a hole in their collection.

Now there is nothing from the 2025 Mid-Amateur champion. That’s how the USGA will ask for the driver’s return when Holtz’s Masters is over.

Langley laughed at the thought.

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I think it’s fair to say we’re going to check in with him. We’d love to have him there and in these cases, these players really appreciate the opportunity to have one of their artifacts in our museum as well. It’s not just saying that 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 laugh about it at the end of the week and agree where the best place to live is.”