DID JOHNSON’S RECORD WIN ACTUALLY HAPPEN?
It’s among questions as Masters gets set for usual April start
To the left of the 17th green at Augusta National Golf Club is the Record Fountain, a hexagonal stone edifice that has drinking faucets and plaques commemorating record scores and the annual winners.
Missing is “2020: Dustin Johnson, 268.”
You wonder if that’s on purpose.
Johnson’s 20-under score shattered the record held by Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth by two strokes. He also broke the 54-hole record at 16 under and became the first player with two rounds of 65 or better in the same tournament.
He also, people around here keep pointing out, was the first champion to play the tournament in November and play it without the pressure of spectators after the postponement from its usual April slot because of the pandemic.
We’re back in April again, and you hear it over and over this week from
the players and club members proudly strolling the grounds: It’s a different golf course in the spring.
If the practice rounds are any indication, it is. The greens are already
bathtub slick.
They weren’t in November, when players were drilling 5-irons from 200plus yards that were plugging into the famously uninviting greens. The course was soft in more ways than one.
“When the greens are firm,” three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson said, “the precision, the course management, the angles, where the ball is left, all of this stuff becomes incredibly important in your ability to play this course effectively. When the greens are soft, it’s irrelevant because you can fly the ball over all the trouble. Angles don’t matter.
“There’s no U.S. Open rough here. There’s no tight fairways. The defense is the greens.”
Lee Westwood, playing his 20th Masters, put it like this:
“In November when we played, the golf course was nothing like it normally is. You could actually miss it in spots you were terrified about when you were making your plan, and you could be aggressive to certain flags. It wasn’t, as everybody would sort of say, a true Masters. This week, it’s back to how the golf course should play, fast and firm.”
Mother Nature is the final arbiter, of course, and there’s a 50 percent chance of rain on Friday and Saturday. Some suspect that’s
why the greens are so hard and dry already, anticipating they'll get somewhere between a sip and gulp of water before the weekend.
And if the notoriously fickle weather shifts?
“I think it has the potential to be even crazier,” Xander Schauffele said. “When I say crazier, I mean faster and firmer. … If the rain doesn't come, then it will be really fun.” Fun?
“I think every guy who plays professional golf is a little bit of a masochist,” he said, “so I'm here for the torture.”
Here are some other questions as the 85th Masters returns to its rightful place in the sports calendar.
Will DJ go back-to-back?
Dustin Johnson won the postponed 2020 Masters last November and remains No. 1 in the world golf rankings. History doesn't give him much chance.
There have been only three back-to-back champions: Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods. In 15 of the 19 years since Woods did it, the defending champ has failed to crack the top 10; in the past nine years, he's been in the top 14 only once.
More bad news for DJ: He's the betting favorite at 8-1. In the last decade, none of the 13 favorites or co-favorites has cashed.
“It's a tough tournament to win,” Johnson said. “You've got to do everything well. And with it firm and fast, it's just a really hard golf course because, obviously, any hole at any time can jump out and get you. It's just very tough to win once and especially multiple times.”
If not DJ, then who?
Long shots — in betting, not off the tee — rarely win at Augusta, either. Nor do players who haven't played well lately.
That leaves a sweet spot of accomplished players who are in form and rated just behind the favorite. Guys like Jordan Spieth (10-1), Justin Thomas (12-1), Bryson DeChambeau (12-1), Jon Rahm
(14-1) and San Diego's Schauffele (20-1).
Spieth emerged from a three-year slump with some inspiring performances this season capped by a win last week in San Antonio. Thomas won the Players Championship last month. DeChambeau is the reigning U.S. Open champion and has dropped hints about a new driver that might shorten Augusta more than he already has with his prodigious length off the tee. Schauffele has five top 10 finishes this season and was runner-up at Torrey Pines and Phoenix.
None of them, though, has the secret advantage that Rahm does: His wife just gave birth to their first child.
The Spaniard had said he'd leave the tournament when Kelley went into labor, but she delivered Kepa, a son, over the weekend.
Anecdotally at least, the mixture of elation and relief seems to confer a “baby bump” to golfers.
“My first round as a dad, I shot 64,” Rory McIlroy said, “so he's got that to live up to. I mean, he's probably just had the greatest few days of his life, right? It's such a cool feeling.
“Being here and being relaxed, and maybe having
your mind not fully on Augusta and the Masters and the green jacket, is not a bad thing.”
It worked five years ago, when a little-known Englishman named Danny Willett shot 67 on Sunday to win the Masters … just days after his wife gave birth to their first child.
Does rookie have a chance?
It hasn't happened since Fuzzy Zoeller won in 1979. One reason is that, other than amateurs, so few pros in the 88-man field (68 fewer than the annual PGA Tour stop at Torrey Pines) are here for the first time.
There's another good reason, though. Augusta National provides players a bare-bones yardage book without a laser-measured rendering of each green's contours, as tournaments regularly do on tour. It means players and caddies must compile the information themselves, which generally requires multiple rounds over multiple years.
It essentially means less experienced players are flying blind because, as Schauffele noted, what looks like a safe miss from the distortion of the TV lens can actually be the opposite on the course. It becomes a matter of trial and
error.
And taking fastidious notes.
John Wood, a longtime caddie turned NBC commentator, recently devoted a Twitter post to the detailed yardage and green books he kept over the years. He even created a personalized chipping book for Augusta, something he didn't do anywhere else.
“Mind you, ALL of this has to be double checked yearly,” Wood wrote in the thread. “Augusta National is a living, breathing entity that continues to evolve from year to year.”
Who’s the nostalgic pick?
Lee Westwood, who turns 48 on April 24. The oldest Masters winner is Nicklaus in 1986, at 46 years, 2 months, 23 days.
Westwood has been playing well, winning the European Tour's Race to Dubai last year and finishing second in back-to-back PGA Tour events this spring. He's also broken par in eight of his last 11 rounds at Augusta National, and he came here three weeks ago to get ready.
To understand Westwood's reverence of the Golden Bear, you need only look on a wall of his home in England. There's the iconic
Nicklaus picture on the 17th green from 1986, following the ball's path toward to the hole with his putter.
Westwood bought it during the 1997 Masters, after he learned he was paired with Nicklaus for the final round, then asked him to sign it. “Lee,” it says, “enjoyed our round. Best wishes, Jack.”
“There's very few people you would do that with,” Westwood said. “He's a legend of the game and arguably the greatest player to ever play the game. … To have a chance to break one of his records would be very special.”
There's also this: Nicklaus had his son caddying for him in 1986. Westwood will have his son, Sam, on the bag this week.
Will par-3 champ win it?
It's never happened, and it won't again this year. That much we can say for sure. While everything else is inching back toward normalcy, the par-3 tournament will not be held today.
Patrons are back, however, unlike in November, although the exact number remains a mystery. The relative lack of traffic on Washington Road and empty parking lots has most estimating it will be closer to 10,000 or 12,000. There are no grandstands, and marshals are sometimes enforcing mask mandates.
Everyone the grounds also must have a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of arriving. Badges were distributed through members, corporate sponsors, workers and players.
How many with local ties?
Just two this year, Schauffele and Mickelson.
Their career arcs are headed in opposite directions. Mickelson, 50, has been splitting time on the Champions Tour and arrives at the Masters with no PGA Tour finishes inside the top 25 for the first time in his career.
“I'm having fun, a lot more fun than I thought, on the Champions Tour,” Mickelson said of the 50and-over competition, “yet the challenge that gets the best out of me is trying to play and compete against the best players. It's what gets me motivated to be in the gym and to try to be physically able to swing fast enough to compete against these guys, and to be strong enough in my core to be able to practice as much as I need to.”
Mickelson was spotted banging balls on the driving range Sunday … for three hours. He had proof on his finger, a Band-Aid for the callus.
Where’s Tiger?
He's home in Florida, recovering from a grisly rollover crash in Los Angeles in February. The L.A. County Sheriff's Department is expected to release a formal accident report today.
Justin Thomas, one of his closest friends on tour, lives nearby and has visits him regularly between tournaments. They traditionally play practice rounds together at Augusta with Fred Couples.
“We texted Friday morning, and he said it's kind of starting to set in,” Thomas said. “He's bummed he's not here playing practice rounds with us, and we hate it, too.”
Most of their visits were consumed by watching the NCAA Tournament on TV.
Rory McIlroy also visited Woods and left with a new perspective on how to approach the majors.
“In his family room he's got his trophy cabinet and it's his 15 major trophies,” McIlory said. “I said, ‘That's really cool. Where are all the others?' He said, ‘I don't know.' I go, ‘What?' He said, ‘Yeah, my mom has some, and a few are in the office and a few are wherever.' … He talked about these are the four weeks that matter. So the weeks that didn't matter, you know, he racked them up at a pretty fast clip.
“But I'm just thinking to myself, how easy must that have felt for him if all he cared about were four weeks a year? The other stuff must have been like practice. So that's a cool perspective to have, right? Yeah, that's all I could think about on the way home.”
McIlroy paused for comedic effect.
“And I was glad he was OK, too.”
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