AUGUSTA, Ga. — With their Azalea cocktails in hand, a few dozen of Brandon Holtz’s family members and golf buddies from Bloomington, Illinois, walked toward the second green Thursday morning at Augusta National and watched him line up a birdie putt. 

“This is insane,” said City Petersen, who has played a few July 4 tournaments as Holtz’s partner at Lakeside Country Club, the nine-hole course where Holtz spends most of his Saturdays. 

“It wasn’t real until we got here,” said Steve Gildner, a friend in the insurance business. “When he was stretching this morning, he was between (Dustin Johnson) and Rory (McIlRoy). It’s crazy.”

Can you imagine if the local real estate agent in your regular golf game decided to enter some amateur events and ended up qualifying to play in the Masters? Though admittedly an oversimplification of Holtz’s story — more on that in a moment — it’s pretty much the experience his friends had Thursday watching him play with two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson and Nicolas Echavarria. 

“This will ruin Crestwicke for him,” John McGrew, who plays with Holtz at the local country club, said with a laugh. 

“He’s gonna be so (expletive) jaded after this,” said Alan Bardwell, one of the best golfers in Bloomington. “He’s going to look at us like, ‘You guys suck.’”

Between the jokes, the drinks and the busting of chops from outside the ropes, it barely mattered that Holtz shot 81. Nerves? Yes, there were a few, particularly on the first tee. Did he play as well as he hoped? Absolutely not. But all in all, it was the kind of day that reaffirmed the thought Holtz has held in his mind all week: He already won before hitting his first shot.

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“I got out of position a lot today, and that doesn’t work out here,” he said. “Definitely not what I wanted to do, but had a lot of fun. I felt things I never felt before.”

It was much the same for Holtz’s crew of supporters. The closest many of them ever came to the best golfers in the world was their annual trip to the John Deere Classic, a PGA Tour stop a couple hours down the road in Illinois. Now, here they were not just on a dream trip to Augusta but supporting their friend, a 39-year old former Div. 1 basketball player at Illinois State who has attended the Masters for years as a patron and earned his invitation to play last September by winning the U.S. Mid-Amateur.

“The surreal part is I’m always in this mass of people here looking for my husband,” said his wife, Elizabeth Holtz. “Now I look for him and he’s in the fairway.”

How did Brandon Holtz end up here? 

After college, Holtz was a good enough golfer to kick around on the mini-tours for a few years — several rungs down the ladder from the PGA Tour — but not good enough to sustain it as a career. Yes, he was technically a professional, but at his level it was practically a hobby. Holtz’s best-ever payday by a significant margin was $14,000 for finishing second at the Illinois Open in 2017. Playing golf for a living was a money-losing proposition, and once he got married and started a family, he needed to transition into something else to pay the bills. 

Holtz paid the USGA’s $200 fee to have his amateur status reinstated, but the reason, Elizabeth said, was not because he had his sights on playing big amateur events whose winners gain entry into major championships. Rather, it was because he wanted to be eligible to be in father-son tournaments with their 6-year old boy Baker when he got old enough to play.

Now, that plan is somewhat up in the air after the U.S. Open and potentially the Walker Cup if Holtz plays well enough to earn an invitation.  

“I’ve joked with him, are we just going to go back to selling houses next year?” Elizabeth said. “A lot of things happen when you qualify for the Masters. We had no idea how many layers there were with all this. (Turning pro again) isn’t out of the question.” 

More likely, though, real life beckons: Back on the job at ReMax, back playing for small wagers on the weekends at Lakeside, the course locals call “Little Augusta” because it has the best greens in town. 

“He’ll be back playing with all of us hackers next week,” his friend, Joe Bierbaum, said.

Still, Holtz has got a spot in the U.S. Open field at Shinnecock Hills in June. His goal is to make a cut, which it doesn’t appear will happen here. It means a lot of training and discipline, which wasn’t his strong suit the first time he tried to make it in golf. 

“He’s down 35 pounds in three years,” said his fitness trainer, Brian Lahr, who owns the gym in Bloomington where Holtz works out. “He’s got a lifestyle. He likes to party. We’re trying to take this more seriously.”

He’d also like to dial in his driver before the next time he gets an opportunity like this. After winning the Mid-Amateur, Holtz gifted his favorite club to the USGA museum for display. Ever since, he’s been unable to find a driver he’s comfortable with despite gaining access to Callaway’s testing facilities. 

On the eve of the Masters, he managed to get the USGA to ship the club to him here. It arrived Wednesday night, but ultimately he decided not to put it in play. 

Regardless of how he plays at the U.S. Open, though, it will be hard to match the experience he’s had here — from staying in the famous Crow’s Nest reserved for the amateur competitors to having his father caddy for him after their Masters tradition began in 2004 by winning a lottery for lifetime Masters badges. 

There have been other perks, too. 

A year ago, before there was any notion of winning the Mid-Amateur, Holtz and Bardwell came here for Masters week and e-mailed some of the top courses in Georgia to see if they could get a round in. Every one of them said no.

This year? Different story — particularly after Holtz, now a Masters competitor, forwarded them the rejection e-mails from a year ago. 

“He’s just a normal guy,” said Adam Havens, an executive at his family’s consulting company. “That’s why everyone likes him. We want him to enjoy this, but he’s giving his friends and family an incredible experience.”

In that regard, the score didn’t matter. Every time Holtz set up for a shot, his supporters were finding new ways to say how awesome it was just to be there watching. 

Though the day began with two pars and hope that Holtz could put together a round that would have the whole world talking — “Thirty-six pars and we’ll be here for the weekend!” Gildner said after No. 2 — reality set in with a three-putt on No. 5, a missed birdie chance on No. 6 and a wayward drive on No. 7 that he compounded with a punch out that he shanked into the opposite rough, leading to a double bogey.

Quite simply, there’s a bright line between the best players in the world and a guy with a regular job, and Augusta is the kind of place that usually makes the difference very clear. 

“It’s been an emotional week but a fun week,” Holtz said. “I just kept telling myself, ‘Take it back and swing hard.’ This place, whatever you think it is, it’s multiplied by 10. It was a feeling I never felt before and I can’t wait to feel it again.”