The days of hitchhiking are seemingly long gone, as BYU wide receiver Parker Kingston took to his keyboard in search of a lift to Augusta National for the 90th edition of the Masters Tournament from April 9-12.
It’s a tall order, but it got me to wondering just how many Big 12-connected folks actually end up at the tournament? Is that number even in double figures?
Assuming you have an extra ticket, the framework exists to spend a week with one of the Big 12’s top returning receivers at golf’s holiest of links.
It’s not Kingston’s first appeal to the game of golf, either. Kingston previously shared his love for the game, and specifically the Masters, on a May 2025 episode of the Coug Connect podcast hosted by Jake Brandon.
Kingston said that, a week before recording, he’d shot 5-under through nine holes in the best round of his life.
“I actually hated golf,” Kingston said. “My dad made me play it because there’s nothing else to do in the summer. I stopped playing a lot until I was probably, until like 2019, that’s when I really started picking it back up again.”
A handful of Big 12 golf alums have participated in the Masters over the years, including former Masters champion Jordan Spieth (Texas), Swedish star Ludvig Åberg (Texas Tech), and Austin Eckroat (Oklahoma State).
Snagging a ticket to the Masters is hard enough. The tournament disperses tickets through a lottery system, which now charges $525 for a four-day series badge, should you be lucky enough to have your number drawn by the magic computer.
Plus, that computer stopped accepting applicants in June 2025 (the window is open June 1-20 of the year preceding the tournament), and those fortunate souls are restricted to a specific account-based system that prohibits resale of tickets.
The odds of winning the ticket lottery, as estimated by the eggheads, are around 0.55%, or 1 in 200 persons. The tournament doesn’t release official data regarding lottery probability, but roughly 22,000 tickets are available daily.
But somewhere in that lot might be the right Big 12 name, or someone familiar enough with BYU football – specifically Kingston’s five receiving touchdowns from 2025 – to lend the All-Big 12 First Teamer a lift down to Georgia.
