San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
CAREER GRAND SLAM PUT ON HOLD
Rory Mcilroy’s wait to complete the career Grand Slam will extend into at least 2023.
His 14th Masters will not be the one where he gets the green jacket slipped over his shoulders. The fourtime major championship winner — two PGA Championships, one British Open, one U.S. Open — shot a 1-under 71 on Saturday in the third round of the Masters.
That left him 1 over for the tournament and tied for ninth but 10 shots behind leader Scottie Scheffler.
“You’re just trying to go out and shoot the best score that you possibly can without being reckless and without taking on too much risk,” Mcilroy said. “So, I’ll try to go out and do that (today). I think I moved up a few places with that score today and just try to move up a few more tomorrow and try to get a top 10 and move on.”
Mcilroy has had six top-10 finishes at the Masters, and that doesn’t even include 2011, when he led after three rounds but shot 80 on Sunday to freefall all the way to a tie for 15th. He missed the cut last year.
“It’s just hard to go very low out there,” Mcilroy said. “Anything under par is a good score. It’s just blustery. There’s no easy birdies. Even the par 5s aren’t. Usually they’re sort of, not guaranteed 4s, but you feel like they’re holes that you would likely pick shots up on. Yeah, it’s been a tough couple of days, and I’ve just sort of hung in there as best as I could.”
Eagles on 10
Augusta National went 14 years between eagles on the 495-yard par-4 10th hole.
And then came two in the span of two days.
After Gary Woodland did it on Friday, Charl Schwartzel holed out from the fairway on Saturday. It was the 10th eagle on No. 10 in Masters history, and this is the first year in which that hole has been eagled twice.
Masters money
The Masters winner gets a gold medal, a green jacket, a lifetime invitation back to Augusta National and a sterling silver trophy.
And this year, more money than anyone has ever won at the Masters.
Augusta National announced Saturday that the winner of this year’s tournament gets $2.7 million out of a total purse of $15 million. Both are tournament records.
It’s about a 30 percent increase over last year, when Hideki Matsuyama got $2.07 million from a purse of $11.5 million.
In terms of total dollars, it’s by far the biggest one-year increase in Masters history. Percentage-wise, the tournament saw a bigger jump from 1982 to 1983, when the purse and winner’s share both increased about 40 percent. The winner in 1982 got $64,000; the winner in 1983 got $90,000.
The Masters purse and firstplace check now match what is offered at the first two stops of the Fedex Cup Playoffs — the St. Jude Championship and the BMW Championship.
Local watch
Four strokes better than Tiger Woods in a tie for 18th is San Diego State alum J.J. Spaun, who got into his first Masters by winning the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio last Sunday. He’s probably not winning this week, but there’s more at stake: The top 12 plus ties are invited to next year’s Masters.
Spaun was even par on the day and within the top 12 as he evaluated his options in the fairway at the par-5 15th. He had been laying up on par-5s all week. But this was Saturday at the Masters; he pulled out a 3-wood and went for the green in two from 239 yards dead into the wind.
“I hit it pretty, dang good, too,” Spaun said. “It one-hopped onto the green and I thought, ‘Oh, we’re home.’ ”
He wasn’t. The ball started rolling back on the severely pitched green, picked up speed and just kept rolling … into the pond. Spaun took a penalty stroke and bogeyed. Then bogeyed 16 and 17, too. He drove it under the trees at 18, hit a 4-iron left of the green, then chipped up and sank a 12-foot putt “to kind of save the day.” He enters today two strokes out of the top 12 and a return trip in 2023. Regrets about 15?
“No regrets,” Spaun said. “You’ve got to do it. This is what it’s all about.”
Messing with Texas
If Scottie Scheffler hangs on today at Augusta National, he’ll be the latest Texas man to etch himself into permanent Masters lore.
He could become the 10th Texan to win the Masters — which would extend the record for most from any U.S. state — and join Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, Ralph Guldahl, Jackie Burke, Charles Coody, Ben Crenshaw, Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed.
Texas, in Reed’s estimation, is a great practice ground for the Masters.
“You have to be a shot maker,” Reed said. “I think that’s the biggest thing about this place. You never have a flat lie.”
Staff writer Mark Zeigler contributed to this report.