Firmer conditions could mean higher scores

AUGUSTA, Ga. — No one needed to see the colorful blooms at Augusta National to realize this will be a much different Masters than the last one. It was the color of the greens.

They were yellow. On Wednesday.

The excitement of the first major of the golf season was mixed with no small measure of trepidation about the test Augusta National might present this week without intervention and a little precipitation.

Fred Couples, who played his first Masters in 1983 and is competing for the 36th time, played a practice round Wednesday with Rory McIlroy.

“Rory said it five times: ‘Have you ever seen the greens like this on Wednesday?’ And five times in a row I said, ‘No,’ ” Couple said. “He was laughing. So I think if it stays like this, come even Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I mean, honestly, a 70 or 71 will be a heck of a score.”

A score like that would have meant getting lapped in November, when the Masters had to take an autumn date after it was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dustin Johnson played conservatively along the back nine because he had a big lead, and he still finished with a record score of 20-under 268 to win by five shots in the lowest-scoring Masters in history.

“I’ve seen some young guys this week have a slightly deer-in-theheadlights look because they’ve walked out on a couple of those greens and they’ve seen the color of them and they’ve felt the firmness,” Paul Casey said. “You can see they’re kind of going, ‘Whoa. This is a whole different animal.’ ”

Still to be determined is what the weather has in store for the rest of the week. The sun has added that scary shine to the putting surfaces starting with the Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Saturday — the winning score was at 1 over par.

Scattered storms are in the forecast the rest of the way.

For the 13 players who played the Masters for the first time in November, it’s like starting over.

“November is a Masters that we’ll probably never see again,” Webb Simpson said. “You know, flying hybrids, 5-woods, 3-woods to the hole and the ball stopping. It’s good to forget about that because that’s not our normal Masters. It’s in a way relearning the nuances.”

The tournament starts this morning with Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to compete in the Masters in 1975, joining Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player for the honorary tee shot.