After being wrongly invited to the 2023 Masters, an Atlanta real estate agent fulfills a golfing dream

what’s in a name? If you have Scott Stallings, that might include tickets to 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 is a top 100 golfer in the world, has won three PGA Tour events and is competing in the Masters tournament this weekend.

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

Last year, a realtor received an invitation to the Masters in the Mail originally intended for the professional golfer. They both connected after mingling, 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 listening to it go back and forth thinking that was his ticket,” said golfer Stallings. “It was a ticket, I guess, just a different kind.”

The realtor said he had been trying to attend the Masters for over a decade. The tournament, which takes place at the private Augusta National Golf Club, is the holy grail of events for golf enthusiasts; While tickets are hard or expensive to come by, the pristine scenery, signature foods are affordable (pimento cheese sandwiches cost $1.50, Georgian ice cream sandwiches cost $2.50), and the elite game makes the tournament creative.

Of golf’s four major tournaments, the Masters is the only one that is played continuously on the same course, unlike the group of rotating professional courses in the United States and United Kingdom. Lucky fans can purchase tickets at relatively reasonable prices through the lottery system organized by Augusta National; Fans left on the secondary market pay thousands of dollars for tickets.

“The road to the Masters is long, less traffic, it’s just a chain of events you can’t write this stuff if you try,” said Stallings realtor.

The two reunited at the Augusta National this week, where the realtor watched golf.

“I feel like we just entered adult Walt Disney World,” said Stallings, a realtor.

In addition to tickets to the tournament, the professional golfer invited the realtor to dinner and presented him with a gift: the same tickets that led to a lucky encounter, framed and signed, “From Scott Stallings to the Next.”