Rough grass is of no value for protecting danger points; it has no effect in keeping people straight, but merely prolongs the length of time players are in the danger zone.
ALISTER MACKENZIE
Lets just keep that among ourselves...Certainly not to be shared with Chairman Ridley.
Second Cut is the Deepest - It's 2020, why would you expect anything different, as Alan Shipnuck explains:
The rough around Augusta National is usually so benign it has a precious euphemism: the second cut. But things are different this year, as Bryson DeChambeau discovered Friday afternoon whilst playing the 3rd hole. He sniped his tee shot 15 or 20 paces into the left rough and then his ball simply disappeared, never to be found again.It was a wickedly unlucky break and the ensuing triple bogey pushed the pre-tournament favorite to the wrong side of the projected cut line. It also vividly underscored how much longer and thicker the second cut is this year. Traditionally it’s cut to exactly 1 3/8”, but Danny Willett said on Friday “you could maybe call it close to three inches.”
Looks longer than that to me. Long enough, for instance, to swallow a Bridgestone...
Grainier, too, as the ryegrass and Bermuda comingle. “If you have a down grain lie,” says Tiger Woods, “yeah, you can get to the green, maybe even control it, but when the grain is sitting down, there’s really no chance, so you’re going to have to rely on short game and angles.”DeChambeau is the only player so far to actually lose a ball but every shot out of the rough is problematic. The swirls of grass are a kind of Rorschach test and every player must intuit how their balls will react when struck, accounting for idiosyncratic angles of attack, clubhead speed, model of ball and groove pattern in their irons. “It’s a hell of a lot longer than I think what most guys have seen it,” Willett says. “Wet under that, as well, so we’re getting a lot [of balls] that are coming out a little bit dead. Yeah, trying to judge your distance out of this stuff, probably better it coming out dead than it coming out quick, to be honest.”
Hit more fairways? Amusingly, they hate the rough, but there's one thing they hate more:
The second cut was introduced as a low-key penalty for errant drives; it makes it a little harder to impart spin, and that is significant when playing to precise spots on the ultimate second-shot golf course. But the rain taketh and the rain giveth. Adam Scott has been largely unbothered by the vagaries of the rough because the saturated greens are still so soft that even spinless shots from the second cut are stopping dead. “Normally, you’re just losing that little bit of control,” Scott says, “and on a firmer green, you’ve got some difficult decisions to make on how you’re going to manage to get it on the green or keep it on the green. It’s a little more straightforward out there at the moment.”
And because it’s 2020, there are times when hitting it into the rough can actually feel advantageous. Fowler estimates he’s getting half-a-dozen mudballs per round on the closely-cropped fairways. “Actually, I mentioned it to [playing partner Willett] yesterday when we were on 11. He had just missed the fairway right, into the first cut, and chipped a 6- or 7-iron down there to the middle of the green. I was in the middle of the fairway with a mud ball and had to aim over at 12 tee, and I still almost hit it in the water. So I feel like it’s almost harder to pick up mud balls in that first cut. In some situations, you’d almost rather that, or you wouldn’t mind it.”
Mudballs at Augusta National? That's just white (golfball) privilege speaking... I suspect CBS will be taken to the woodshed for even acknowledging such a possibility...
Kraken Released, Stroke-and-Distance Edition - Dylan Dethier does a deep dive on the most famous lost ball since...well, Goldfinger:
It’s hard to believe just how many things had to go wrong for Bryson DeChambeau to lose his golf ball on the 3rd hole at Augusta National on Friday. A return to the scene of the crime some 30 minutes later revealed some clues about how the most-anticipated golfer at this year’s Masters lost a tee shot in plain sight.
So how did it happen? Let us count the ways. Sure, there was the golf shot itself, which was a contributing factor. DeChambeau was three under par for the tournament when he pulled driver on the short par-4, hoping to land his tee shot on or around the green, some 350 yards away. He yanked the shot slightly left of his target line, and when the ball eventually came down from orbit (DeChambeau likely hits it higher than any golfer in the history of the PGA Tour) it settled somewhere in the left rough.
But that on its own should not have been much of an issue. Had DeChambeau found his ball, he would have been left with a tricky pitch shot to an elevated green — but from 50 yards and a nice lie, plenty of things are possible. Instead, what followed was a frantic search-and-rescue operation that resulted in a lost ball, a re-tee and a triple bogey that ejected him from contention.
3. Location confusion
The ball’s final resting place was just a couple yards off the fairway, but like Tom Hanks in Castaway or Oceanic 815 in Lost, the search party had the wrong coordinates. They were looking in the wrong place! DeChambeau himself thought the ball was further left than it actually was, and as a result the clock ticked on as the ball lay idly by.
On the one hand, it's Sir Mumbles...On the other hand, a stopped watch...
This isn't the time to relitigate, but I never liked the change to 3 minutes for a ball search. It doesn't happened often enough to matter in terms of pace-of-play, but the penalty is so severe that it seems unfair to chip away at the search time.
4. The 3-minute ruleThe gallery guard who found the ball said it took just a few additional minutes of searching to track down the Bryson Bridgestone. If the time allowed to find a golf ball was still five minutes instead of three (the rule change took effect at the beginning of last year) there’s a good chance the group would have found the ball.
What, I never said Sir Nick was the only stopped watch...
Ironically, Bryson himself set-up that third hole as the litmus test for his performance this week. For years we've heard ANGC referenced as a Par-68 for the big boppers, but only this guy called it a Par-67. Your humble blogger was all over this a couple of days ago, when I said this in relations to the third hole:
Bryson himself has called the golf course a Par-67, and his aggregate score on this hole would be an interesting prop bet... I could see him make a two, but I can also see him making a five or two.
In my defense, I didn't actually know you could lose a ball here or make a seven. Maybe that's not technically true, because Jeff Maggert made seven there as well.
But how did we feel about Bryson's comportment with the rules official? Dylan has some fun with this bit:
One quote stuck out from the entire situation, a question DeChambeau asked of rules official Ken Tackett mid-search that summed up the disbelief behind it all:
“So you’re saying if we can’t find it — it’s a lost ball?”
I thought he was kind of a jerk when he kept asking whether anything could be done about it, as if he was prepared to slip the guy a few bucks. I totally get that he got screwed and it's a bit unfair to have cameras and mics in that moment, but I still feel an instinct to slap his face...
But this might be the best take, from his playing partner's post-round interview:
Q: Were you involved in the search for Bryson's ball at all?
JON RAHM: Which one?
Exactly.
He's not quite gone yet, though:
DeChambeau ended the day at one over, with the projected cut line at even. He will have strong opportunities to get into red at the 13th, 15th and 16th. But to this point, the tournament favorite hasn't looked anything like a contender.
He's played quite poorly, which will have many sighing in relief. But he won't be going away anytime soon, and April will come very quickly.
Shall we briefly touch on specific players?
Even without his best game, Tiger Woods still in prime position to defend at the Masters
Prime?
Woods added a birdie on the par-5 8th from short range but bogeyed the par-4 third with a three-putt from 12 feet and bogeyed the par-4 seventh after driving into the trees. It’s not that Woods played poorly, it’s just he couldn’t gather much momentum and move up the leaderboard.
Woods was even-par on his round through 10 holes. He will start his Saturday at 7:30 a.m. ET in a dicey spot – in the first cut on the left side of the dangerous par-4 11th hole, some 203 yards from the green guarded by a pond. The first cut is much thicker and taller this year as the tournament officials have not been able to send out the mowers due to recent storms.
We've been talking about the absence of crowd noise all week, but the reaction to that short miss on No. 3 might have been the gasp heard round the world.
He's most certainly not out of it, but a testing day awaits:
Woods did not speak with media, because it was dark out and he has to get up early. Really, really early. Woods needs close to three hours before his tee time to warm his 44-year-old body, and he will resume second round at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning at Amen Corner. (You do the math on the wake-up time). He will face a 203-yard downhill approach, from the rough, to the 11th green. But he has a good angle, and assuming he can make par, he will have the tastiest holes of the course in front of him.
He's only five back, but there's a gaggle of players ahead of him, but a scroll through the names reveals the precariousness of his position. Great players that will keep firing at pins on soft greens, so he'll need to pick up a couple this morning and survive a 1-2 hour lay-off, an interesting proposition when you need three hours to warm up the body.
Phil Being Phil - How annoying must it be to Tiger that this is one of the names ahead of him this morning. No question he's playing well, it's just how he phrases it:
Phil Mickelson, on the 460-yard, par-4 9th hole at Augusta National Golf Club, drove his tee shot over the trees on the left side of the hole, and it settled a short 136 yards away. Mickelson, on the 440-yard, par-4 14th hole, drove his tee shot down the center of the fairway and he had just a wedge shot into the green. Same thing on 440-yard, par-4 17th. Drive down the middle, wedge in.
He wasn’t just driving it well.
“I’m driving like a stallion,” Mickelson said Friday after his second round at the Masters.
The horrific. He took 1.61 putts in the first and 1.72 in the second. Both worse than the field average. Mickelson also three-putted the 3rd hole from 18 feet during his second round.“I’m very frustrated and disappointed with the way I’ve putted,” Mickelson said. “I’ve left eight, nine, 10 shots on the green, and it’s pathetic, and I’m going to fix that and hopefully make a run. But you can’t make those mistakes, give those shots up in this field, in this competition.
Ten shots? Right...
Rory Being Rory - He is one of the most likeable players out there, but also the most maddening:
You're trying to complete the career slam, yet you need a pep talk? perhaps you're in the wrong line of work...
You can click through if you want, but he seems to have perfected the disastrous start. So reminiscent of Portrush, when he wants it the most he plays his poorest.
DJ Being DJ - A couple of different takes on Mr. Paulina:
Dustin Johnson plays smart, steady golf to climb to top of leaderboard at Masters
Which includes this amusing anecdote:
Behind the 14th green at Augusta National, a tournament marshal asked a woman dressed as if she was headed to a yoga class and with a designer handbag hanging at her chest which player she was watching.
“Dustin Johnson,” said Paulina Gretzky, daughter of the Great One Wayne Gretzky and Johnson’s fiancée, pointing to him. “That big dummy over there that just missed his putt.”
I assume she's saving the Oakmont micro-skirt for Sunday...
Whereas Joel Beall sees our hero as a Rorschach test:
Masters 2020: What you think about Dustin Johnson says more about you than him
So how do you view Johnson’s performance through 36 holes at Augusta National, a performance good enough for a share of the Masters lead as shadows overtook the property Friday afternoon?Do you see a man of immense talents at the height of his powers? He is the reigning FedEx Cup champ and PGA Tour player of the year, finishing first or second in five of his last six appearances. A 65-70 start, highlighted by hitting 16 of 18 greens in Round 2, through two days is merely an extension of his heater.
Do you see his nine-under score and wonder what could have been? Starting his second round on the second nine, Johnson parred the 10th and rattled off three straight birdies to reach 10 under. But he played the final 14 in one over in conditions that made Augusta National as gettable as it’s going to get, evidenced by the rest of the field posting their share of red on the scoreboard.
But this is where he left those shots on the table, no?
He was even par on the par 5s in Round 2, surrendering two shots to the field. And because of the hot start, Johnson’s day felt like a bit of a letdown, something even he acknowledged. “Obviously I feel like I played a little bit better than my position right now,” Johnson said.
Which could be said about the entirety of DJ's career as well...
Exit time, shall we see who those Tour Confidentialistas like?
Four players share the lead at nine under at the darkness-suspended Masters. Four players are a stroke behind, five are two behind, and another five are three behind. Or, in another way of saying it, everyone is low and everyone is in contention after Friday. Which player is in the best position to make a move up the leaderboard on moving day at the Masters?
Sean Zak: Jon Rahm is the man. He’s very quietly and steadily moved up to just one back. He’s got a short birdie putt on 13 and that very gettable 15th ahead of him. It’s very reasonable that he’ll have the final tee time Saturday afternoon.
Hard to argue with this, especially since Spaniards win Masters.
Josh Sens: Sean’s right about Rahm, no doubt. I’d be shocked if he’s not leading going into the third round. But I’m sticking with my pre-tourney pick of DJ to make noise on Saturday afternoon. Come Sunday, he’ll be playing in the final pairing in a major yet again.
Alan Shipnuck: I agree Rahm looks very dangerous. But Dustin has hardly used up all of his bullets. He burned a lot of edges today – I think the putts will fall tomorrow, and he’ll shoot something in the mid-60s.
Fair enough, but are we talking Oakmont DJ or Chambers Bay DJ?
James Colgan: No love for JT here? Color me surprised. He’s played FAR from his best golf over these first two days, and yet he’s still tied for the lead heading into the weekend. If not for a ricochet off a tree on 1, Justin would be comfortably in the lead right now.
James, maybe they heard that I picked JT Pretty much the kiss of death...
Dylan Dethier: Tiger Woods! He’s the defending champ, he’s five shots back, and he’s about to take on the golf course’s most scorable section. If Woods can finish off the 11th hole on Saturday morning, he has a chance to make a run through those remaining holes. The biggest question mark is whether he can get his body to cooperate that early in the morning..
Jessica Marksbury: I agree with you, Dylan. Tiger should easily get to within three on his final eight holes on Saturday — at the very least! Then he can head into the third round already warmed up and ride that positive momentum right up the leaderboard in the afternoon.
I think it might be a longer turnaround than Jess does. Can you short a guy on DraftKings?
Nick Piastowski: Any of the leaders who finished Round 2 on Friday. For those who didn’t, it’s going to be a grind to get up early, play a few holes, possibly wait an hour or two, then play again. Hard to keep momentum going that way. That being said, I picked Hideki Matsuyama before the tournament, and I’m going to plug him in this space, too. One bogey so far. That’s good!
I agree. Late-Early turned out to be the ticket this week.
Enjoy Moving Day.
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