Bryson finally breaks his 'par' at Augusta
DeChambeau's '2-under' 65 leads the inevitable Scheffler in delayed first round
As Winnie the Pooh would say, it was a blustery opening day for the 88th Masters. The Daily Drive takes a look at a few of the high (and low) notes from a partial round 1 that resumes early Friday, including Danny Willett’s surprising comeback, Rory McIlroy getting schooled by Scottie Scheffler and Tiger Woods’ very long day ahead. There should be no more weather intrusions the rest of the weekend at Augusta National.
Bryson DeChambeau (Thomas Lovelock/Augusta National)
Bryson DeChambeau knows he will never live it down. So, to his credit, he has owned it and admitted it probably wasn’t wise to mess with the golf gods. And noted that he’s made some mistakes and that was simply one of them.
DeChambeau once referred to Augusta National as a par-67 for him. It was said during his beefy Bryson days, and when he was coming off a commanding six-shot victory at the U.S. Open played at Winged Foot.
The fall Masters of 2020 — postponed until November because of the pandemic — loomed and so did the notion that the course could be overpowered by DeChambeau’s prodigious length. It was. Just not by DeChambeau. Dustin Johnson set a tournament scoring record of 20-under par in conditions not up the Augusta’s usual April standards.
DeChambeau couldn’t even beat 63-year-old Bernhard Langer head-to-head in a Sunday pairing.
And that’s no knock on the two-time Masters winner who captured his first green jacket in 1985. Langer is a legend who set the record for Champions Tour victories. But DeChambeau was driving it more than 100 yards by him off the tees and still couldn’t score better than the crafty German.
Langer beat him in the final round, 71-73, as DeChambeau tied for 34th. In seven previous appearances at the Masters — six as a pro — DeChambeau has never cracked the top 20. His best finish is T21 as an amateur in 2016. He’s missed the cut each of the past two years. In 24 Masters rounds prior to Thursday, he’d only broken his personal “par” once — a first-round 66 in 2019 that shared the lead. Fourteen of those 24 rounds were actually above the actual par of 72.
If you want to keep the joke going, DeChambeau broke his personal par by two shots on Thursday during the opening round of the Masters. That would mean a 65. Which gave him a one-shot advantage over the game’s reigning best player, Scottie Scheffler. On the actual scorecard, it goes down as 7-under.
“I said it and I respect people’s opinions on it,’’ DeChambeau said after matching his best round ever in a major championship. “For me, I have a level of respect for this golf course that’s a little bit different than a couple of years ago, and clearly today was a great test of golf, and I was able to conquer a very difficult golf course today.
“Regarding the 67 comment, you know, you mess up. I’m not a perfect person. Everybody messes up. You learn from your mistake, and that was definitely one.’’
Thursday was far different. He birdied the first three holes. He overcame a three-putt bogey at the ninth and birdied five of his last seven holes, including a risky play from the trees at the par-5 15th that saw him find the green and two-putt for birdie.
“I know his record hasn’t been great, but when he drives it like he did today … he hits it a long way,’’ said Gary Woodland, who played with DeChambeau. “He’s always been one of the best putters in the world, and he showed that today. He makes a lot of putts. But when he drives it like that, he makes this golf course a little bit different.’’
DeChambeau credits a lot of his success to an equipment switch last year that saw him use a new driver (Krank Formula Fire LD) just before shooting a 58 during the final round of the LIV Golf Greenbrier event.
He won another LIV event in Chicago and remarked to his caddie back then, “I can’t wait for April.’’
DeChambeau was so stoked about his equipment, including that new driver, that he wanted to get an early start on Masters prep. He visited Augusta National in early January — when the weather was cold and the course played long — to get comfortable with various lines off the tee. “I’ve got great respect for Augusta,’’ he said then. “I know how difficult it is.’’
He visited again on April 1 before heading to last week’s LIV event in Miami, where he finished seventh. And he clearly has come here this week with a different level of respect for the course and a more reserved approach.
When asked again about the 67 comment, he said, laughing: “You’re trying to pigeonhole me into staying that again, aren’t you?
“I’m going to go out and try to shoot the best score I possibly can. Sure, if you want to line up the math that way, that is a perspective you can take. It was a perspective I had, and it cost me a lot of slack, I guess you could say. It definitely hurt some things.
“I shot 65 today and that was one of the best rounds of golf I’ve played in a long time. There’s three more days to go, and I’m not losing sight of that fact. That it’s right there in front of me. Just got to go execute.’’
Danny Willett (David Paul Morris/Augusta National)
Willett’s unexpected journey back
Danny Willett didn’t see Thursday coming. Neither did his doctors.
The surgery to repair his torn left shoulder surgery six months ago was supposed to sideline him from a year to 18 months. Instead, the 2016 Masters champion put himself in position to seek another green jacket.
Willett fired a 4-under 68 on Thursday, making birdies on three of his last four holes to post the early clubhouse lead before DeChambeau sailed past him. It was impressive stuff from the still recovering 37-year-old Englishman, who made seven birdies on the day.
“It’s unexpected, isn’t it?” said Willett. “No, practice has been good. Again, it was never an issue of whether or not the shoulder was strong enough, it was whether or not I could hit the shots I wanted to. … I had no idea what to expect, so yeah, it’s obviously always nice to come in having shot a decent score, and just give yourself that little bit of confidence inside and hopefully have a nice few more days.”
Willett last teed it up at Wentworth in the BMW PGA Championship last September, gutting out a tie for 67th despite searing pain from a shoulder tear that he exacerbated by continuing to play with it. An MRI revealed that the tear had doubled in size during the week at Wentworth, so he had to shut it down and undergo surgery. His doctors told him he would be out of the game for 12 to 18 months.
“It was something that needed doing,” Willett told the DP World Tour earlier this week at Augusta National.
“Week in, week out, it was painful, and you’re training so much just to try and get it into a place where you can think you can be able to move and swing a golf club all week, but ultimately, when the doctors went into the shoulder, it was worse than what we thought. In the end it’s a good decision, and mentally I’ve come around to the fact that it needed doing, and I needed to do it now.”
Willett didn’t make the decision to give it a try until after a Sunday practice round with a friend of his at Augusta.
“I played all right, so I was like, you know what, there’s a sniff,” he said. “We played 27, woke up the next day, no pain, no nothing, walked it. And that was kind of like, all right, even if you play bad I think it’s still worthwhile taking the risk and at least pegging it up and feed off people’s energy around here and hopefully have a few good days.”
Willett told the DP World Tour that he spent six weeks in a 90-degree cast that he could only take off to shower, and spent four months doing an extensive daily rehab routine that included ice baths, saunas and gym work.
“I’m a relatively gritty human being,” he said. “And we just had a great team of people that was helping with the rehab and I made it my goal to kind of do that every day. You know, my job for three or four months was to get up and do all the boring stuff that I needed to do to make sure that the movement was there. I really invested in myself.”
Whether it was just the high coming off the round or not, Willett was feeling no pain in the immediate aftermath.
“I feel all right. I think I might take the next six months off,” he joked. “No, it’s completely unexpected. Sometimes that happens, whatever. You make a couple of birdies and your mind starts thinking, ‘All right, I can do it.’
“Nice finish there on them last four holes to come back, and instead of posting an alright score of level-ish which would, again, for me have been an amazing achievement — but to shoot 68, yeah, really happy.”
Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy (Joel Marklund/Augusta National)
Master Scheff teaches Rory a lesson
Rory McIlroy’s opening bid to complete his career slam was relatively unsatisfactory, shooting even par on the par-5s and settling for a 1-under par 71 in Thursday’s first round of the Masters, leaving him six shots behind leader Bryson DeChambeau and five behind playing partner Scottie Scheffler.
Playing with world No. 1 Scheffler, McIlroy watched the 2022 Masters champion steadily construct a bogey-free 66 with birdies at 2, 6, 12, 13, 15 and 16.
“I think when they’re playing with you it’s hard not to notice,” McIlroy said. “Scottie does such a good job … it doesn’t look like it’s 6-under par, and then at the end of the day it’s 6-under par. He’s just so efficient with everything.
“If you look at Scottie compared to the rest of the field, the amount of bogey-free rounds he plays and he shoots is phenomenal, and that’s the secret to winning major championships and winning big-time golf tournaments is more limiting the mistakes rather than making a ton of birdies.”
n tricky conditions with constantly gusting winds, McIlroy’s called his round “a little scrappy.”
“Overall still not a bad score, and obviously a lot of golf left to play,” he said.
McIlroy did not get off to the start he wanted, missing a good birdie chance on the first after bombing a 354-yard drive to within 87 yards then making a complete mess of the par-5 second for bogey after blocking his drive into the trees nearly to the fourth tee. After a great recovery, he hit his wedge long from 100 yards and missed a 6-footer for par.
He got the lost stroke back with a birdie after driving 340 yards to the apron of the par-4 third, but he gave it right back with a bogey from the bunker on the par-3 fourth with the tees moved up 80 yards.
Birdies at the par-5 eighth, par-3 12th and par-4 14th got McIlroy 2-under, but he failed to capitalize on birdie chances at 15 and 16 and then bogeyed 17. He made a clutch up-and-down from behind 18 to save par.
“I think after the slow start sort of making a few birdies around the turn was good,” McIlroy said. “A little wasteful coming in. I had a good chance for birdie on 15 in the middle of the fairway and didn’t take that. Missed a shortish one on 16 and then the bogey on 17. Probably turned a 3-under into a 1-under there at the end.”
Tiger Woods (Chris Turvey/Augusta National)
Long day ahead for Tiger
For the second straight year, weather delays did Tiger Woods no favors.
The two-and-a-half hour delayed start meant there was no way the 48-year-old could finish his first round on Thursday. He got through 13 holes at 1-under par and will have to return to the 14th tee at 7:50 a.m. for the restart, leaving him little time to recalibrate all the issues with his ailing body. He’ll have less than an hour before having to start his second round at 10:18 a.m. to finish the rest of his 23-hole day in what’s forecasted to still be breezy conditions.
“Well, it was nice to finish up 13,” Woods said of the par that ended his day in the dark. “We’re going to warm up and just kind of head down there and start our round (Friday), and I think the flow would be pretty much almost like between 20 and 30 minutes in between rounds, so it’ll be a natural flow from the finish of the first round and continuation of the second.”
Regarding his body, he said: “It’s there. The body is okay. We’ve got some work to do yet tonight.”
Woods, who began with a birdie on No. 1, and the late starting crowd got the worst of the winds Thursday.
“The wind was all over the place,” he said. “It was one of the most tricky days that I’ve ever been a part of. It was hard to get a beat not only on what direction it was going, but the intensity, and it kept switching all over the place, and then you had to … the timing was affecting putts on the greens. It was a very difficult day.”
Depending on how well things go for Tiger on Friday, we should know if he breaks the consecutive Masters cuts streak by the end of Friday if the tournament gets back on schedule.
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