Beer bets, hoop dreams and one dart: The Masters hasn't seen anyone like him

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — One dollar changes hands.

One ball is closer.

They run it back. From a spot around Augusta National’s 6th green, Brandon Holtz picks his golfer, and the man Brandon had just become best friends with chooses his. The two rubberneck as a pair of shots make their way down to the par-3’s putting surface. At the Masters, you can usually find Holtz at the 6th. Earlier, he had negotiated himself all the way up to the rope line at the tee box, the position he said is his favorite, because it’s a front-row laboratory seat. Wind gauging. Club selecting. Some decisions work. Some don’t. “One year,” Holtz said, “I’m with Tiger Woods right here and he hit a bad shot, and he’s got his hands over his mouth and just saying a few choice words, and I’m like yeah, he does it, too.”

After a while, Holtz headed to the green, where he and his wife, Liz, met another couple, and the game of nearest-to-the-pin started. Soon, everyone was playing. Soon after that, dollar bets became beer wagers. Concessions are close by, after all. No one disputes what follows — the wives, Brandon said, “are keeping up.”

But not everyone’s ending matches.

Brandon?

“It took a little bit of a while to get back to home base after that.”

Liz?

“That’s not how the story goes.”

How does it go?

“She doesn’t remember, probably,” Brandon said.

“Had a great time on 6,” Liz said, “and skipped right back.”

Brandon howls.

“That’s how the story goes,” Liz said.

And here’s where Brandon Holtz’s story gets good.

Starting Thursday, another Masters begins. Rory McIlroy, last year’s winner, will be there. Scheffler. Rahm. DeChambeau. Augusta members clad in green jackets. Jim Nantz. Azaleas. Thousands of patrons eating pimento cheese between a couple of slices of white bread.

And Brandon.

Holtz lives where he grew up, in Bloomington, about two hours away from Chicago, St. Louis and Indianapolis, home to State Farm and a bunch of the state’s farms, a Midwest city where folks get gas and breakfast burritos at Casey’s and pick up groceries at Schnucks. Holtz was a college athlete next door in Normal, at Illinois State University, but in basketball, not golf. His neighbors might buy a home from Holtz, though to call him only a real estate guy would be akin to calling Augusta National a patch of grass. He’s 39 but not pushing away 19, charmingly so.

Every April since 2004, the Holtzes have also come down to Georgia, after Brandon’s dad, Jeff, was picked to receive lifetime Masters badges, and they’re visiting again this week.

Because Jeff is caddying.

And Liz is, too, during Wednesday’s Par-3 Contest, and she’ll be joined by Baker, 6, and Millie, 2.

Which means, yes, fore please, now driving will be Brandon Holtz, the unlikeliest entrant into the Masters maybe ever — and perhaps its most relatable. While he is better than most every man at golf, he is very much the everyman, and this year, for him, that gallery rope will be raised. His fellow patrons could be beer-betting on him.

And if they did?

“Honestly,” Holtz said, “I wish I could get in there. ‘Hey, you want to buy me a beer after we’re done?’

“That’d be fun.”

HOLTZ ONCE SCORED 68 POINTS IN A HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL GAME. In his prime, he wasn’t a dribbler. Playing defense offended him. But he could shoot it. And still can. Though he hasn’t played even a pick-up game in a while, the fundamentals have kept warm — shoulders squared to the rim, fingertips pressed into the ball’s black grooves, forearm pointed to the ceiling, right wrist cocked slightly back, and a ball flung end over end, until it flicks through the net. In a game of P-A-R with a recent visitor (think H-O-R-S-E, but shorter), he won handily. On the 68 night, he kept shooting and he kept making, though he needed three overtimes to reach his total. “I didn’t have to tell everybody that part,” Holtz joked.

Colleges covet unapologetic shooters, and 15 offered Holtz scholarships when he was at Bloomington High, before he signed with Illinois State, his hometown’s university, where the Holtzes have held basketball season tickets since the ’90s. From the school’s arena, the scent of popcorn and Papa John’s pizza wafts for a couple of blocks, and inside, the faithful never forget a Redbird. At a game in early March, a few fans said they remembered Holtz, listed as 6-foot-4 and No. 45 in your old programs. Some diehards have even posted a highlight package of him to YouTube.

Over four years, Holtz played mostly as a reserve. Season 1, in 2005-06, he averaged four points and 12 minutes of playing time. Year 2, those numbers fell to two and eight, and after the season, the school fired the coach who recruited him and hired Tim Jankovich, a charmer who left an assistant’s job with the University of Kansas one year before the Jayhawks won the national championship. Jank met with returning players, and 19 years later, he still remembered his Holtz talk. He asked: Why should I have faith in you?

“And he just totally won me over,” Jankovich said.

“He’s just like, just give me a chance, just give me a chance. And I knew right then, just the way he handled himself, he was so honest and mature. And honestly, I loved him from that point on.

“But in no way in my wildest dreams, if you’d have said then, hey, he might play in the Masters one day, I mean, no, I would have fainted.”

And how, exactly, did that happen? As far as anyone can tell, Holtz’s appearance will be a first by a former Division I basketball player.

There’s talent obviously given by the hooper and hacker above. And there’s maybe a little seamlessness between the sports. For the basketball player, golf fulfills. Tee balls that arch ahead feel a whole lot like 3-pointers. Free throws that require accurate repetition resemble 3-footers. Shoot, golf and basketball even share a key word — shot. But really, golf is just a game of one-on-one. Arrive to the ball, check the defense, make your move — across 18 holes and however many strokes. If you’ve at all wondered why MJ and LeBron and numerous other basketball players have come to golf, there you go. Holtz did play golf as a kid and played on his high school team, and he kept playing in college, shooting mostly in the 70s. After his final two seasons with the Illinois State basketball team — while he never averaged more than eight minutes of playing time, he did lead them out of the locker room ahead of games — he took a job at a course in town. His scores started to drop. The country clubbers in town couldn’t believe this basketball player was taking their money.

But could Holtz actually play for money? Jankovich remembered feeling stunned after hearing that his backup shooting guard was turning pro at golf about a year after his final basketball game. “You didn’t even play in college. You didn’t, you haven’t been playing. Like, you’ve just been at the driving range a little bit,” the coach said. But Jeff, his dad, was good with it, and Brandon was off. He planned to play two years — and played nearly four, from 2010 to 2014, at events in the Midwest and Southeast. Some good. Some bad. Once, while on the road, he opened the door to a hotel room to find two people — living there. “So there was a whole story,” he said.

Holtz lost money as a pro, though. While he played well, earnings couldn’t beat expenses. He stopped playing professionally, outside of a couple events a year. He moved back home. On New Year’s Eve 2016, Brandon and Liz married. Baker and Millie soon arrived. And would you look at that, a lovely foursome, right smack dab in the middle of the Midwest, as idyllic as it can get. Cue Mellencamp’s “Small Town.”

But here’s the thing about shooters: They shoot.

And shoot, shoot, shoot and shoot, be it before college, in college, after college, at the age of 39.

Because the next one might drop.

“I will say, I do feel like I failed him as a coach in the sense that if I had any idea that he was capable of this,” Jankovich said, “I would have begged him to play golf.”

BRANDON IS A TALKER, A BONE FIDE B.S.’ER, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN HE ALWAYS GETS HIS WORDS RIGHT. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there? From Brandon, Liz has heard this instead: We’re going to burn that bridge. “I’m like, that’s not quite it, buddy,” Liz said, “but you’re close.”

At the Masters, Brandon will assuredly look every inch the part, but beneath the collared polo and golf pants is someone who’s sweating because he’s not in sweatpants. He’s a dude, man. And he’s your boy. He’s the friend we all have, the one we have a couple dozen stories about, but can share only a handful of them due to their mature-audiences tone. On his Instagram page, you can watch as he packs for an Augusta National practice round trip while wearing a faded, paint-smeared cut-off tee, given away at the 2004 “Flashes All-American Game.” There’s the post where he lets you know, very specifically, that the best Casey’s breakfast burritos come only from the small-town Casey’s, “because they make their food a little bit better.” There’s also the one that solves the mystery of what one is to do with the final scoops of French onion dip. It’s difficult to dip your chips at that point, you see, and here’s where Brandon has engineered a hack — dump the chips in the plastic container and break ’em up with a fork and enjoy. “You don’t have to worry about getting that dip on your hand.”

Those, and others, were recorded by Liz. Her favorite B-Holtz story, though, happened at a Starbucks. Brandon is not a coffee drinker, Liz said, and doesn’t go to Starbucks and, therefore, is unfamiliar with how to pronounce “latte” and “frappuccino.” He went, though, and, after Liz’s order, he was asked what he wanted.

“And he goes, ‘Yeah, let me get a Coke,’” Liz said. “And the guy on the other side said, ‘Excuse me.’ And I’m like, ‘They don’t do Coke here.’ And he’s like, ‘Can I get a Coke?’ And he’s like, ‘Sir, we don’t serve Coke at Starbucks.’ And if you know Brandon, like I’m dying. I’m like on the — I’m like I can’t wait to see this guy’s face when we pull up because I’m not sure anyone’s ever …”

“Who doesn’t have a Coke?” Brandon said.

“He just couldn’t wrap his head around the fact,” Liz said, “there’s no soda machine inside the Starbucks.”

“It’s a drink place,” Brandon said.

Then there’s the joint where he learned golf, Lakeside CC, a par-32 that, yes, is beside a lake, but, most importantly, has a VFW, a Casey’s and a restaurant across the street, because the weekend gang plays Lakeside like this, Holtz said:

– Load up on “supplies” at the clubhouse.

– Tee off on No. 1, a par-3.

– High score then runs across the street on No. 2 and goes to either the Casey’s or the VFW for more “items.”

– The same game happens on the 4th hole, which is next to the restaurant.

“Yeah, I mean, there were other things going on than just golf,” said Craig Onsrud, the course’s one-time pro who will also be joining Holtz at the Masters.

On the golf side of things, Lakeside is claustrophically narrow. Wayward balls easily end up on somebody’s front porch. But Jeff, Brandon’s dad, suggested to his kid to always hit driver — “if he’s ever going to amount to anything and be something in golf, he’s got to learn to hit his driver” — and he did, and Lakeside coached him into being accurate with it, lest he run out of golf balls. Very little, of course, mimics Augusta National, but, then again, ANGC doesn’t have a Gorilla Car Wash just yards off one of its fairways.

Driver is also what Holtz went with last September on the 16th hole at Troon Country Club, during the championship match of the U.S. Mid-Amateur. In 2024, he’d had his amateur status reinstated — he wanted “just to talk some crap to my boys” in local am events — and the Mid-Am was his first USGA event. He advanced into match play. Or one-on-one, to the basketball player. He knew how to play that, and he kept winning. In the 36-hole title match, he was up two on the 34th tee, a 308-yard par-4 that’s driveable if you’re accurate and costly if you’re not. His opponent, hitting first, came up just short and was in a birdie spot.

Holtz then cut a driver onto the green. He left behind his tee. He was 8 feet from the hole.

He made that and won.

Holtz said he doesn’t remember the swing of the driver or the putter, but he remembers the flight and the roll. He remembers his lip strangely quivering. When the match ended, he remembers squeezing Jeff, his caddie then, too. No one, though, remembers much of the hours that followed, except that there was no way anyone was flying back in the morning.

Everyone knew where their boy was headed. To Augusta.

“When we stand in line to get our picture taken every year we’ve gone,” Liz said, “Brandon repeatedly says something along the lines of like, ‘Man, I’d love to get back there and see what that is. Like, I’d love to get back there and check that out. I’d love to hit a ball and blah, blah, blah.’

“And we’ve jokingly said, ‘Maybe you will someday. Maybe you will.’”

BRANDON HOLTZ SAYS HE’S GOING TO WIN THE MASTERS. He would accept being low amateur — there are six at Augusta this year — but he wants the green jacket. “You show up anywhere just looking to get second,” he said, “then you probably shouldn’t be there anyway, you know?” But there’s a problem.

Don’t ask him what his jacket size is.

“Shoot, I don’t even know,” Holtz said. “I think it’s like 46 long. I got a couple of them in there, but I’m not a real fancy dresser. I’m more of a sweatshirt and jeans guy.”

Shouldn’t he know the fit going in?

“I did have to — I’m pretty sure I had to fill it out in my application. I’m pretty sure it’s a 46 — 44 or 46. But I want it big too, like I like it big. If it’s a little bigger, at least I can fit in it, right?”

Here, a Brandonism works well: We’re going to burn that bridge. Seventy-two holes precede the winner’s ceremony. A first-ever Masters tee ball, too. On Hole 1 of Day 1, the hope will be to aim a touch left, then fade a drive that will carry the bunker on the right. “He’ll be excited,” Jeff said, “and if he takes a deep breath, blows it out like he’s shooting a free throw and smokes it, he’ll carry the bunker, have a little maybe 8-iron, 9-iron in and hit it right to the front.” If there’s a concern, it’s putting. Augusta’s curvy greens can be unsettling — Jon Rahm, you may remember, four-putted the 1st during Round 1 in 2023 before going on to win — and during Holtz’s first practice round, he, too, four-putted the 1st. Still, when Jeff told his son that he would find a caddie more familiar with the breaks, both Brandon and Liz told him, “Hell no, Grandpa,” so the 22-year badge holder with silver, shoulder-length hair will be on the bag. “So yeah, is it my job to tell him, no, it breaks two inches versus one inch on that putt?” Jeff said. “No, my job is to, ‘Hey, keep it light. Hey, look around, enjoy this and now focus.’”

Then shoot.

Why might Holtz’s story resonate more than similar ones that have come before it? Other unheralded golfers, after all, have driven down Magnolia Lane. But have any to this level of relatability? A 39-year-old family man and real estate agent, who was once a college basketball player, who then traveled the country as a mini-tour golf pro just trying to break even, is going to play the Masters, an event where he once sat behind the 6th green and made closest-to-the-pin beer bets.

The story it tells is simple, in an extreme way.

You just never know.

“I think this story is a reason for a lot of people who are continuing the journey that I’m on that they want to do,” Holtz said. “That 37-, that 35-year-old that maybe gave up but had the ability, try to get him, man. I don’t know. It’s an unreal moment to talk about. It’s an unreal moment that I’m going to be there.

“But live it. You only live once.”

And do so your way. With what you would want to eat.

If Holtz is sure he can win the Masters, what would he serve at his Champions Dinner?

“Oh man, people have asked me this,” Holtz said. “I’m a big — I love stuffed crust pizza. I don’t know if stuffed crust pizza will make that list, but man, I could definitely get down on stuffed crust pizza.

“Really lately, sushi. I’ve kind of been into some of the fried sushi. I’ve got to have the staple, the Illinois staple of cheese balls. Honestly, it’d be a variety of things — get a flavor of a lot of different things, right. It’s your dinner.

“Make it your dinner.”

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