Golf fan fulfills dream after mistaken invite to the Masters

(GEORGIA) — What’s in a name? If yours is Scott Stallings, it might include tickets to attend the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

Scott Stallings is a real estate professional who lives in Chamblee, Georgia. He enjoys golf (and has been trying to get tickets to the Masters for years) but is by no means a PGA champion.

Scott Stallings is also the name of a 38-year-old professional golfer from Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s one of the top 100 golfers in the world, has won three PGA Tour events and is competing at the Masters this weekend.

“It was probably about five or six years ago when I actually saw him on TV and realized, you know, wow, there’s another guy that has my name, you know, playing golf,” Stallings, the realtor, told ABC’s Atlanta affiliate WSB. “So every time I saw him on TV, I’d always take a picture of it and posted it on Facebook.”

Last year, the realtor received an invitation to the Masters in the mail originally intended for the pro golfer. Both got in touch after the mixup, and to thank him for his help, Stallings, the golfer, made sure that Stallings, the realtor, got some tickets for himself.

“Just the excitement of receiving anything from Augusta National, and then, you know, kind of hearing the back and forth of him thinking that that was his ticket,” Stallings, the golfer, said. “It was a ticket, I guess, just a different kind.”

The realtor said he has been trying to attend the Masters for over a decade. The tournament, held at the private Augusta National Golf Club, is the holy grail of events for golf enthusiasts; while tickets are notoriously hard or expensive to get, the pristine landscaping, affordable, iconic foods (pimento cheese sandwiches cost $1.50, and Georgia peach ice cream sandwiches cost $2.50), and elite play make the tournament iconic.

Of golf’s four major championships, the Masters is the only tournament to consistently be played at the same course, as opposed to a rotating set of professional courses in the United States and United Kingdom. Lucky fans are able to purchase relatively affordable tickets through a lottery system orchestrated by Augusta National; fans left on the secondary market pay thousands of dollars for tickets.

“The road to the Masters is long, less traveled, just a chain of events that you couldn’t write this stuff if you tried to,” Stallings, the realtor, said.

The two united at the Augusta National this week, with the realtor watching the golfer play.

“I feel like we’ve have just entered the adult Walt Disney World,” Stallings, the realtor, said.

In addition to the tickets to attend tournament, the pro golfer invited the realtor to dinner and gave him a present: the same tickets that led to the fortunate encounter, framed and signed, “from one Scott Stallings to the next.”

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