AUGUSTA, Ga. — Fairy tales come in all shapes and sizes.
This one comes by way of Canada. Straight to Augusta. Via San Antonio.
Fairy tales are based on improbability, and Corey Conners’ journey into his first Masters as a professional this week qualifies as an 11 on the 1-to-10 scale of remarkable.
On Monday, as the 27-year-old in his second year on the PGA Tour arrived to Augusta National — the soles of his shoes still not touching the ground — Conners was exactly one week removed from fighting for a mere spot in the Valero Texas Open.
A Monday qualifier among 73 players vying for four spots came down to Conners and five other players in a six-man playoff for the final spot in San Antonio, and Connors made it through.
Then he turned that opportunity into his first PGA Tour victory, carding a final-round 66.
The win makes Conners exempt on the PGA Tour through the 2021 season, which means no more Monday qualifiers. It also earned him the final invitation into the Masters field.
So, in the span of a week — specifically one tumultuous final round in San Antonio on Sunday — Conners’ life changed.
“I think it’s very cool in our sport that that can happen,’’ Keith Mitchell, a fellow first-timer at the Masters, said Monday. “I’ve played against [Conners] my whole life and he’s been an incredible player. Everyone gets their start somewhere and Corey got his start [Sunday].’’
Mitchell, with his first PGA Tour win coming at the Honda Classic in March, lived what Conners is living now — albeit a little less frenetically.
“That happens so often in golf, which is so fun,’’ Mitchell said. “You look at the best players in the world, they are going to win a couple times a year. But there’s 40-‑something events, there’s going to be guys that get their first win every year.’’
Conners, ranked 196th in the world, became the first Monday qualifier to win a PGA Tour event since 2010 and only the fifth to do it since 1986.
“I was rooting for him for sure,’’ Justin Rose said Monday. “It [is] very special to see those stories out there because winning is difficult and it’s nice to see it when it does change someone’s life. The status that he’s now going to have guaranteed for a couple of years is huge. It was great to see his wife’s reaction out there. You could tell what a big moment it was for the two of them.’’
Indeed, Conners’ wife, Malory, was caught on camera, beverage in hand, in several emotional moments during her husband’s round.
When he drained the clinching putt on 18, she ran onto the green, hugged her husband and said, “Is this real?’’
“I said, ‘Yeah, it’s real. We did it,’ ” Conners said.
It was as if his mind went back to that Monday qualifier and he toughened when he had to in Sunday’s round, when he had to overcome a stretch of four consecutive bogeys before making the turn.
“I had the mindset that someone’s got to get it done so it might as well be me,” Conners said of the Monday qualifier.
He might as well have been speaking about Sunday’s round, too.
Conners beat the likes of former Masters winner Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Matt Kuchar.
This Masters will actually be Conners’ second. He missed the cut at the 2015 Masters after he qualified as the U.S. Amateur runner-up.
Conners has actually become rather proficient at those Monday qualifiers. His Valero performance marked the third time in six attempts this season that he got into the main field. One of those was at the Sony in January, when he finished tied for third.
“It’s not fun,” Conners said of the Monday qualifiers. “I don’t really like them.”
Conners and his wife were scheduled to fly back on Monday to their home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and watch the Masters on TV this week. After his win, he scrambled to make travel and housing arrangements in Augusta, arriving Monday afternoon.
“It’s funny, we were in the hotel room [Sunday] morning and my wife got the email to check in for our flight home [Monday] morning,” Conners told reporters in San Antonio. “I was like, ‘Don’t check in for that quite yet. I’ve got different plans.’ ”
A prophetic fairy tale.