Amateurs relish experience at Masters
Though it remains one of the world’s more exclusive clubs, Augusta National does still invite a number of amateurs to compete, giving them a rare glimpse of the high life.
Chile’s Toto Gana, just 19 years old, was here as the reigning Latin American Amateur champion. He shot 80-81 to sit at 17-over par. And he couldn’t sound much happier.
“I feel really, really good,” Gana said. “This experience is amazing, I’ve never been in an experience like that, so I am really, really, really happy.”
Asked for his best moment, he said he chipped in on the sixth hole.
“People were clapping and I never felt like that in my life,” he said. “So, it’s been ... perfect.”
Aww. Come here, you, and let me pinch those cheeks.
*** Australia’s Curtis Luck, 20, also an amateur, had a slightly different experience. He shot 78 Thursday but came back with an even-par 72 Friday — well below the field average — to give himself a shot at playing on the weekend.
Luck, who won the U.S. Amateur and the Asia-Pacific Amateur and sports the shaggy beard and long hair of an urban hipster, will turn professional when the Masters is over. But he didn’t want to discuss after his round Friday if he was looking forward to playing Saturday, when the weather is expected to be far more pleasant.
“Yeah, I would love to. We’ll just see what happens,” he said. “I’m not going to make any comments really too much, because I would probably get pretty annoyed with myself if I said that I had made the cut.”
Luck said he would live the monastic life Friday afternoon while his fate was determined.
“So I won’t watch any television or anything this afternoon, I’ll just look late tonight and see what happens. And, yeah, if I’m in, I’m in and I’ll think about that tomorrow, if that’s the case.”
He made the cut, which was at 6-over.
*** England’s Danny Willett, who won at Augusta last year with an assist from the collapse of Jordan Spieth, threw up a quadruple bogey of his own on the first hole Friday, which included a secondshot shank into the trees. He said it has been an interesting 12 months, after rounds of 73-78 left him at 7-over.
“You’re still a Masters champion. There’s still pressure that you put on yourself and that people, I guess, put on you to kind of play well,” Willett said. “It’s been a tricky 12 months, but we haven’t played great golf, but, by the same token if you look at the career that we’ve had, we’ve not really had a slump in form in two years. We’ve had two fabulous years. And when you have a little bit of a downturn, it feels like the world is coming to an end.”
Willett hasn’t cracked the top-30 on the PGA Tour since his Masters win, although he plays primarily on the European Tour, where he scored a few top-5 finishes in the closing months of 2016. When he finished early Friday, he was hopeful the cut line would move up above him.
“It’d just be nice to play the weekend again. It’s an amazing place to be, especially with the weather that’s coming in. And it really would be nice to kind of make it into the weekend. Like I said, we had that in our own arms but we let it slip. We need a little bit of luck.”
He didn’t get it.