With Masters debut, Sam Stevens gives his family a moment forever
For the royal golf family of Wichita, the Masters had always lived in a familiar place: on television, in memory, in imagination.
It was the only tournament that could stop everything in the Stevens household. Sam Stevens can still picture himself as a kid, parked in front of the TV with his father, Charlie, watching Augusta National as if it were sacred ground. He remembers Phil Mickelson breaking through for his first green jacket in 2004. He remembers the shock of Tiger Woods’ chip on No. 16 in 2005, the ball hanging on the lip just long enough to burn the image into his mind forever.
“I can’t remember how many hours and days me and my dad spent watching the Masters growing up,” Stevens said.
Now the same tournament that once lived in the Stevens family living room is about to become part of the family’s own story.
The 29-year-old Wichita native will make his first career start in the Masters on Thursday morning at Augusta National, teeing off at 10:03 a.m. in the first round alongside Sungjae Im. Stevens qualified by snagging the last spot inside the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking at the end of 2025.
That alone would make this a landmark week for Wichita golf.
But what makes this one feel even more special is who gets to walk through those gates with him.
Four generations of the Stevens family are expected to be on hand at Augusta: Johnny, the 83-year-old patriarch; Charlie, the father who helped build Sam’s game; Sam himself; and Sam’s four sons with his wife, Kelsey. For a family that has poured so much of its life into golf, this is not just another tournament trip. It is the kind of moment families remember forever.
“To be able to treat them to this after all of the sacrifices they’ve made for me to be able to play golf as a kid, that’s really special to me,” Stevens said. “To have them there and then my four boys, that’s just... really special.”
That feeling is probably strongest when Sam talks about the two men who helped shape his game long before he became one of the top 50 golfers in the world.
He credits his father and grandfather with laying the foundation when he was just a kid in Wichita, when the hours were long and the payoff was impossible to know. Back then, it was just practice, repetition and family time. Now, with four children of his own and a career on the PGA Tour, Stevens sees those years differently.
“You don’t realize it when you’re a kid, but now that I’m a dad, you definitely have an appreciation for the time they spent with me,” Stevens said. “They always made time to come out to the course and help me practice and work on my game or go play with me. I still don’t know if I fully realize how much they did for me, but now that I’m a dad and I’ve got a full plate of responsibilities, you start to realize how much effort and time they really put into it.”
In Wichita golf, the Stevens name already carries a certain reverence. There is not another family tree in Kansas that runs deeper or has produced more accomplished players across more generations. The list is long enough to become exhausting if recited one title at a time, which is why the simplest way to understand it may be this: for decades, if there was an important amateur golf event in Wichita or Kansas, someone from the Stevens family usually won it at least once.
Johnny, known affectionately as “Slim,” is the crown jewel of that legacy. He remains arguably the most decorated amateur Kansas has ever produced, the only golfer in state history to win the Junior Amateur, the Amateur and the Senior Amateur. Charlie has his own decorated résumé in Wichita golf. Sam won Wichita city and stroke-play titles before turning pro. Johnny’s daughter, Cathy, built a standout career of her own, and her daughters have continued the line into yet another generation. Add it all together and the family tree includes more than two dozen state championships.
That history is important, but this week is not really about the family scrapbook.
It is about Augusta.
It is about Johnny, after a lifetime in the game, finally getting to see the course in person for the first time. Charlie said that may be one of the best parts of the whole trip.
“He’s a golf course afficionado, so he’s going to get a real kick out of seeing the architecture up close,” Charlie said of Johnny. “This is like a golf course geek’s biggest dream.”
Johnny is uniquely equipped to appreciate the place. He has long had an eye for course design and architecture, and he helped George Ablah develop Willowbend Golf Club in Wichita in 1987. So while plenty of first-time visitors arrive at Augusta National simply overwhelmed by its beauty, Johnny is likely to see it through a different lens too — as a student of the game walking one of its masterpieces, a course designed by Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones and preserved through 90 years of golfing lore.
And Charlie, despite all the golf he has watched and all the great courses he has seen, is still processing what it means to finally be there.
“The course really is all that it’s cracked up to be,” Charlie said by phone from Augusta earlier this week. “A lot of these courses you see on TV and then you go there and it’s totally different. I’ve seen so many Masters and it’s almost exactly how I imagined it. It’s something you’ve got to see.”
There is something poetic about that line coming from Charlie, because for so long the Masters was exactly that for the Stevens family — something to see, something to dream about, something that belonged to everybody else.
Now it belongs, at least for this week, to them too.
Stevens, a 2014 Kapaun Mt. Carmel graduate, is not just another touring pro passing through Augusta. He is, by any reasonable reading, the first true Wichita product to play in the Masters since Grier Jones last teed it up there in 1973. Others were born in Wichita and later played in the Masters, but their golf roots were planted elsewhere.
Stevens is different. He is a homegrown Wichita golfer, developed here, shaped here, launched from here.
In a city that has produced plenty of good players, Sam is carrying a local story onto one of the sport’s most exclusive stages. Wichita has seen golfers win city titles, state titles and college honors. Augusta is something else. Augusta is where golfing memory becomes mythology.
Stevens understands that as well as anyone, which is why he chose to visit Augusta ahead of time to dull the shock of seeing it for the first time. He skipped a week on the PGA Tour and flew to Georgia last week to practice at Augusta National on Monday and Tuesday, hoping to quiet the initial awe before tournament week. He said the place instantly felt “special,” and he could feel the club’s famously strict atmosphere as soon as he arrived.
“The venue itself is incredible, but what makes it so cool is all of the history that’s there,” Stevens said. “You think of all of the greats who have played here. You think of all of the incredible things that have happened, whether it’s Tiger chipping in or the meltdowns at the end. You’ve seen it all here. It’s just so special here.”
The challenge now is handling all of that emotion without letting it interfere with the golf.
That may be where Stevens is best equipped for the week. After eight years of grinding as a pro since turning professional in 2018, he has climbed to this stage not by playing flawless golf, but by making himself sturdier. He said he is not sure this is the absolute best golf of his life, but he does believe it is the highest floor he has ever had. Weaknesses that once got exposed have been turned into neutral parts of his game and in some cases strengths.
The result is more margin for error, more cuts made, more big checks and now, a Masters debut.
“I feel like I’m playing really good golf right now and I don’t see any reason why I can’t continue that here,” Stevens said. “The worst thing I can do is start thinking about how it’s the Masters. It’s just golf. There’s still 18 tee boxes and still 18 holes in the ground and you’ve got to get the ball in there as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter what the tournament is, golf is always the same.”
But this week is also bigger than that for the family.
This is a son getting to bring his father and grandfather to the place they spent a lifetime watching from afar. It is an 83-year-old golf savant finally getting to study Augusta National in person. It is four generations of the royal Kansas golf family standing together on the most famous course in America. It is Wichita, after 53 years, seeing one of its own back in the Masters.
And for a family that has already given so much of itself to the game, that may be the sweetest part of all.
“You never imagine your son becoming a professional golfer making a living out of it at the highest level,” Charlie said. “It’s such a blessing. It’s going to be a little surreal watching Sam out there this week.”
This story was originally published April 8, 2026 at 7:03 AM.
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