It’s a star-studded leader board
AUGUSTA, Ga. – With the 82nd Masters Tournament at the halfway point, here are two bet-the-farm predictions for the weekend:
1) There will be no surprise winner, no Danny Willett emerging from the rank-and-file to don a green jacket. Of the top 13 players on the leader board after the second round Friday, none is ranked outside the top 34 in the Official World Golf Ranking, six are in the top 10 and eight are major champions. One of them is going to win. Will it be Rory or Rickie? Dustin or Justin or Stenson or Watson?
“There’s great players, it looks like, all over that leader board,” said Justin Rose, twice a runner-up at Augusta National. “It’s the Masters and we’re trying to get our games peaking coming in here, and it’s good to see that a lot of guys are able to do that.”
2) Tiger Woods (four) and Phil Mickelson (three) will be stuck on seven combined Masters titles for another year and, given the way the clock ticks in golf, perhaps forever. Woods shot a 75 and was 13 strokes off the lead and Mickelson shot an error-filled 79 and barely made the cut.
“There’s a fine line between wanting it so bad and then also letting it kind of happen,” Mickelson said. “As you get older you feel a little bit more pressure each one because you don’t feel as though you have an unlimited number of events. I certainly put a lot of pressure on myself to perform this week.”
Woods, one year removed from back fusion surgery and playing in his first Masters since 2015, bombed a drive down the middle on No. 1 but then knocked a wedge over the green, an omen of what was to come. He flew the green with irons on Nos. 4, 5 and 6, had to take an unplayable lie in bushes on the latter and played those holes in a combined 3-over. His iron play had been sharp in recent weeks.
“I didn’t hit my irons very good at all,” he said. “I didn’t hit them very crisp or very clean and I didn’t control my distance or shapes or anything. I’m going to have to shoot a special score on the weekend and I need help. I’m not in control of my own destiny here.”
The guy in charge of his destiny is Patrick Reed, who fired a 66, a remarkable round given the swirling, tricky winds, the microscopic margin of error on approach shots and the fact that he played in the final threesome and putted on crusty greens.
It was Reed’s first sub-70 round in 13 trips around Augusta National and at 9-under 135 he separated himself from the field. Australian Marc Leishman was two shots back after a 67 and Henrik Stenson of Sweden was four back after a 70. No one else was closer than five shots.
Reed made nine birdies, in threehole bursts: Nos. 1-2-3, 7-8-9 and 13-1415. He also is 8-for-8 on par-5 birdie conversions. That’s crucial because at Augusta, the par-5s giveth and the rest of the course taketh away.
“It’s important to attack the par-5s,” Reed said. “The par-5s are huge around here to be able to pick up ground. It’s one of those things you have to do, because you’re not going to win if you don’t.”
Reed, 27, is a five-time PGA Tour winner with an enormous amount of self-belief. He showed his mettle when he took down Rory McIlroy in a singles match for the ages at the 2016 Ryder Cup. But it would be foolish to declare him the winner with so much golf yet to be played and so many world-class players capable of going low on the weekend.
As an example of how quickly things can change around here, look no further than 2015 Masters champion Jordan Spieth, who led by two at the start of the round and trailed by five at day’s end.
Reed can ill afford a stumble if he wants to win his first major. Spieth and McIlroy, world Nos. 4 and 7, are five shots back. Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas, world Nos. 1 and 2, are six back.
“We’re only halfway,” Reed said. “I’ve got a long way to go and I just need to continue doing what I’m doing.”
The wild card is the weather. The forecast for Saturday calls for a chance of showers in the morning and a 100% chance of rain in the mid-afternoon.
Should a steady rain fall, the course will play longer and the pace of play will slow to a crawl. If there are embedded thunderstorms, there could be delays.
“They can say it’s going to be bad,” Thomas said, “but whatever it’s going to be is what everyone is going to deal with.”
No matter what happens, this thing isn’t going to sort itself out until the back nine on Sunday. It’s a Masters tradition, unlike any other.