Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Aberg lead precocious Masters rookie class

Augusta National doesn't take too kindly to first-timers.

In one of the most well-known trends in golf, the Masters has not seen a player win in his first start since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. But Wyndham Clark is happy to take on the challenge.

"I mean, stats like that are meant to be broken," Clark said in his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday. "So I know it's a tall task. It's a challenging golf course. There's a bunch of good golfers. With that said, you still have to match -- you have to still bring your game. So it's not like you can just flip a switch and win it.

"But, yeah, that would be an amazing accomplishment. And I like my chances. I really like myself on this golf course."

Clark did not even have a PGA Tour victory to his name at this time last year. He broke through at the Wells Fargo Championship one month after the Masters, then fended off Rory McIlroy to win the U.S. Open in June.

The 30-year-old notched his third victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, meaning all three of his victories have come in either a signature event or a major, when the metaphorical lights are brightest.

"At the end of the day, it's putting a golf ball in the hole as fast as possible," the World No. 4 said of the mental challenge of playing a prestigious tournament. "The good thing is I came and did a couple visits here, and I wanted to try to get the awe of Augusta National kind of out of the way so that, when I showed up this week, it's all business and I can just focus on the golf at hand. And I've done that well in this last year."

Another player ranked inside the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking at No. 9, Sweden's Ludvig Aberg, is part of the strong class of newcomers.

He was still finishing his college career at Texas Tech 12 months ago, but Aberg's rise since then has included one victory apiece on the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, a European Ryder Cup selection and a top-10 at The Players Championship. This will mark not only Aberg's first Masters, but his first start at any major.

Aberg, 24, said he's embracing the nerves.

"It's a tricky balance because obviously I'm feeling all the first-time feelings that everyone's feeling, but I'm also trying to be okay with all those things coming at me at the same time," he said. "Because I think once you start fighting it, once you start trying to push it away, I think that's when it becomes tricky."

Unlike Clark, Aberg said he didn't know about the first-timers drought at the Masters until he was told this week.

"I think that speaks to the difficulty of the golf course and the difficulty of some of the things that you might get thrown at you in the tournament," Aberg said. "But I can't really do a whole lot about that."

Akshay Bhatia played his way into his first major field by winning the Valero Texas Open on Sunday. Other first-timers include Nick Dunlap and Jake Knapp, who notched their first wins on the PGA Tour this winter, with Dunlap doing so as an amateur at The American Express before turning pro.