Pros Dish on Who Can Win and Who Can’t
Candid and catty comments about the field at Augusta.
Oonly 50 players have won the previous 80 Masters tournaments. Only 32 of them are still with us. And only 19, some of them playing ceremonially, are expected to tee it up April 6-9 at Augusta National. Which means a lot of players—including Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson, Rickie Fowler, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose and many more—are still trying to figure out how to earn a green jacket. Then there’s Tiger Woods, who is trying to figure out how to win his fifth (but his first in a dozen years).
▶ Who’s got what it takes, and who doesn’t? What are their strengths, and what’s holding them back? To get the answers, Golf Digest interviewed dozens of players, caddies, coaches and other keen observers for candid observations on past champions and those who are still trying to break through. Our interviewees didn’t hold back.
managing flaws
“Ilook at all the top players, and every one of them has a flaw. The question is, how big is the flaw, and how do they make it less of one for that week? Every guy is clearly talented enough to win. Are you going to tell me Jason Day or Rory McIlroy or Justin Rose aren’t going to win the Masters? Rickie Fowler? Jon Rahm, eventually? Patrick Reed? Dustin Johnson could still win two or three. But they all have their issues. Or maybe it’s just that they don’t play to their strengths as well to make up for the weaknesses. Adam Scott won a Masters, and he’s a terrible putter—well, he’s below average. But his ball-striking is so good, and those weeks he’s really on hitting the ball, he only has to be a below-average putter to win.” . . . “People these days learn golf on the range, not on the course, and we’re seeing the results of that at the top level. Everyone learns how to hit it rather than how to play, which is not how to play Augusta. Seve learned how to play with one club, and not many played the Masters better than he did. To me, only Phil, Bubba and Sergio learned how to play golf the right way. They play golf, not swing, which is the way to play Augusta. But it goes the other way, too. Tiger was a real golfer when he came on tour, but he ended up a scientist. Padraig Harrington, the same. Justin Rose, too. And Adam is a scientist with his short game. None of which helps them at Augusta. It isn’t a science course.”
bombers vs. short hitters
“In this day and age, the guys who don’t hit it very far—Jim Furyk, for example—have no chance to win the Masters. Matt Kuchar is another. You can’t win there if all you have is guile and strategy. Dufner won’t win there.” . . . “You have to go with guys who hit the ball a long way and high. For Jason, Dustin, Adam, Rory, Bubba, the par of the course is closer to 68.” . . . “It’s the easiest event to predict because you can break it down. Who can putt, and who can’t? Who can reach the par 5s in two? And so on. Jordan Spieth’s par is 70. He can reach the par 5s on the back nine. But he’s also the best putter. So that brings him down to, say, 69. Rory’s ball-striking starts him at 68. But his putting takes him up to 72. Any time a player wins without that formula, it has to be because weather takes away that inherent edge—say, when no one can reach some of the par 5s. Then you get Zach Johnson or Mike Weir winning.” . . . “Pure yardage is way more important than creating the right angle into the flag. Hitting a 9-iron instead of a 6-iron makes up for a bad angle. You can argue that it shouldn’t be that way, but it is.” . . . “Lee Trevino always said he didn’t like Augusta because he hit the ball left to right. But the truth is that he knew he wasn’t long enough off the tee. He couldn’t get to the tops of some of the hills. Well, today’s shorter hitters have pretty much the same issues.” . . . “It’s just too hard over four days to hit hybrids and long irons to holes where the long guys are hitting 7-irons. You can’t compete with that.” . . . “If I have, say, two more short irons than you do into those greens, that’s eight more scoring opportunities in the tournament. Odds say I’m going to whip your ass.” . . . “Phil, Bubba, Adam, [Charl] Schwartzel—they have proven that long and crooked can work there.” . . . “Between the 5,000 trees they planted and the second cut, you don’t have the luxury of a bit of leeway off the tee. I know Phil says he doesn’t care where his tee shots go, that he can recover, but believe me, he cares.” . . . “The way Tiger played it in 1997, bombing it all around, you can’t do that anymore. You might get away with it on a hole or two, but that’s not a strategy that’s going to work for 72 holes. They make you play Augusta the way they want you to play Augusta.”
patience, patience
“Ten times in every round you’re going to have a shot where, if you get too aggressive and miss, you’re going to make a bogey at best. Sergio is impatient. So is Rory. And Bubba. And Dustin. Jason can get too aggressive because he likes to take shots on. Jordan is the most patient of the elite guys. As much as he carries on between shots, he knows his limitations. And he’s the best scorer of that bunch. Phil is impatient. So is Patrick Reed. And Louis Oosthuizen—he switches off if things aren’t going well.” . . . “The biggest thing every player has to get his head around is the Mickey Mouse pin positions. So much of Augusta is unfair. You can hit a shot to eight feet, and you can hit another shot that lands three inches from the first ball, then finishes 60 yards down a hill. If that’s f------ right, I know nothing about golf. It’s dramatic, but it’s not right. And that sort of stuff gets to players.” . . . “Experience is everything. I know caddies who have been going there for years and have books on the place. Yet they add to those books every year. Something changes every year, even if it’s just a little thing.” . . .
‘there isn’ t a pin[ jason day] doesn’ t think he can get at, but you have to have the discipline to not go right at some of them .’
“More than patience, it also takes someone who isn’t afraid to lose and who has really big balls—I don’t know any other way to say it. You have to be able to stomach the thought of winning, believe it or not.” . . . “Each round there are probably nine holes you can make birdie and nine holes you can make par, depending on the pins, and you can’t really alter that equation a whole lot.”
tough decisions
“One of the best things Augusta does is mess with you. And the way they mess with you is they give you options. Pros don’t like options, because then they have to make a decision. At the U.S. Open, when you’re sitting in four inches of rough around the green, you have one option: You take out your sand wedge, open it up and hope it lands soft. But at Augusta you can bump-and-run it, you can putt it, you can loft it, you can use a hybrid or a 3-wood—that makes you uneasy because you’re praying you don’t pick the wrong option. It puts doubt in your mind.” . . . “Augusta is the greatest setup of any tournament in the world. And that’s without long rough. Short grass is used as a hazard there. People think narrow fairways and a bunch of rough is hard. Driving it, yes. But around the greens, short grass is a hazard, and it’s expertly used that way at the Masters.” . . . “Mowing the fairways toward the tees is just one trick they use at Augusta, but it does more than just slow down the ball. You hit the fairway and think you’re OK, but because of the way they mow it, the ball can nestle down a little bit. It’s tough to always get a clean lie. That adds to the anxiety when you’re trying to get the distance right into the green.”
a closer look at the contenders jason day best at augusta: t- 2 ( 2011)
“Jason is the No. 1 putter on tour, and he hits it long and high. He’s perfect for Augusta.” . . . “There isn’t a spot on that course where he’s going to be uncomfortable.” . . . “What he doesn’t need is a windy Masters. His ball flight is too high when the wind is swirling. Plus, he’s always sick. He wants to win Augusta so bad it pretty much guaran- tees he’ll be sick that week. He’s like Tiger in that respect—there’s always something wrong with him.” . . . “He hasn’t quite learned to play the golf course correctly. You can’t just play all out, and he seems to do that a bit too much. There isn’t a pin he doesn’t think he can get at, but you have to have the discipline to not go right at some of them because your misses are so magnified there. But he’ll learn, and I think he’ll eventually win.” . . . “The only thing that hurts Jason is that he doesn’t seem to have a half-shot. Everything is full tilt.” . . . “He just hasn’t put it all together in one week there, and the game is filled with guys who did that, be it Tom Weiskopf or Ernie
‘[ jo rd ans pie th] doesn’t worry so much about the short put ts. he never thinks about the next putt because he assumes this one is going in .’
Els. Not saying Jason won’t win. But the longer he waits, the harder it gets.” . . . “He maybe wants it too badly.” . . . “He has great patience. I just wish he would do it faster. I mean, the guy wears out everyone else’s patience.”
rickie fowler best at augusta: t- 5 ( 2014)
“Rickie seems to have a textbook game for the Masters. If you can win at Sawgrass, you can move the ball both ways. And he can finish well. So he’s not afraid of the big situation. But his putting is the weak link, like so many of the leading players other than Jordan.” . . . “The problem is his chipping. He’s a little flippy at the bottom. Hitting to greens that don’t give him much margin for error, that leads to a lot of bogeys if he isn’t holing out from 15 feet all day. At Augusta, you have to be comfortable chipping into the grain, and I just don’t think Rickie is. When you take the little bump-and-run shot away from him, he looks a little lost.” . . . “He’s starting to put double bogeys back on his card, and I thought he’d gotten over that when he went to Butch. He’s overly aggressive at the wrong times. Bogeys aren’t bad sometimes, but double bogeys—and then you press some more. Bad combo.”
sergio garcia best at augusta: t- 4 ( 2004)
“The irony is that, ball-striking-wise, Sergio is suited to Augusta more than anyone other than Bubba. Sergio hits it both ways. He can hit the draw off the tee and the fade into the greens. He plays old-school golf. But he’s talked himself out of winning there. He clearly hates the place. He’s beaten before he gets to the first tee. His putting weakness is a problem, of course. As Ernie showed, you can be exposed on the first hole of the Masters. [ Els six-putted
the opening hole in 2016.] The same could happen to Sergio. Three-footers in the Mas- ters are as stressful as 10-footers on other courses. If you miss, you’re going to be as far away again. And to hole them properly, you have to risk having an eight-footer coming back. Sergio’s worried about the next one, so he doesn’t hit the first one very well.” . . . “He sees it as a tricked-up course, one they would never build today. But he should like it more than he does. The most striking aspect of the course is that the shape asked off the tee is so often the opposite of the approach shot. That should suit Sergio. But he can’t get his head out of his arse.” . . . “His history in the majors only compounds his bad mood when he plays in the Masters. It’s a shame. He has everything, all the shots. And now he’s putting just fine. But his attitude is awful at Augusta. He can’t escape his past there, especially when he’s reminded of some of the things he has said.” [ After a third-round 75 at the 2012 Masters, Garcia said, “I’m not good enough . . . I don’t have the thing I need to have. . . . I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to play for second or third place .. .