We made it to Kiawah yesterday without incident, and enjoyed a leisurely afternoon walking the beach and otherwise enjoying island life. We'll play The Ocean Course later today, but shall we talk first about the significant weekend of golf?
He's Back - I was a bit skeptical...then again, aren't I skeptical about pretty much everything?
Jordan Spieth went to one word first: Grateful. For his victory, for the people who stood by him, for his family, for his wife. One of golf’s biggest stars had a lot of people to thank following his victory at the Valero Texas Open, which ended a nearly four-year winless drought.
His wife, Annie, he says, was instrumental.
“It’s been a road that’s had a lot of tough days,” Spieth said in his winner’s press conference on Sunday in San Antonio, where he closed with a 66 to beat Charley Hoffman by two. “I’ve had people in my corner that have always believed in me, even when I’ve kind of believed less in myself. I just feel a lot of gratitude to those who have helped me kind of get back here. My wife has been just a rock to me. This is my first win since we’ve been married, so it’s been progressing this way since maybe December. Before that, there was a lot of tough times. When you’re struggling at work, you try not to bring it home and that kind of stuff. I’m very grateful for the people that I have around me. I’m blessed with a great family who’s always just looking out for my best interests. I’ve got an amazing team and I get put in position and I’ve got full trust in everyone that’s on my side that they’re going to be the best at what they do and I’ve just got to go out and feel the freedom to go enjoy playing golf.”
I'm just not sure about this enjoying golf concept... I mean, why start now?
1. Jordan Spieth, the 2015 Masters champ, has rekindled his game over the past few months and on Sunday won the Valero Texas Open for his first victory since the 2017 OpenChampionship. What’s been your biggest takeaway of Spieth’s struggle and, now, resurgence?
Michael Bamberger: What impressed me most was that he never asked for sympathy, and he never seemed to pity himself. He also looked like he had faith, that he would find his way through it.
Josh Sens: I was struck by his resilience but also by his optimism. Even in the lowest moments, there was never a sense of self-pity or quit. He was always grinding. Never any indication that he’d lost belief in himself. He genuinely seemed to know that he would get it back, even if he didn’t know when.
Jordan's a good guy... Yeah, he talks too much to his golf ball and does some strange things (just Thursday I was revisiting his 2015 decision to play the Deere the weekend before St. Andrews, with the minor issue of a calendar Slam hanging in the balance), but never once have a sense anything other than a good kid.
Nick Piastowski: On top of those answers, I’m wondering what’s next. In the immediate future, play like this tends to last a while, so I think we’ll see Spieth around the top of leaderboards all summer. But what if all these trials and tribulations created an even bigger and better Spieth? I’m very interested.
And an especially good week for that thought, as they're headed to a place where he's had some success. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when Augusta was going to fix Jordan.
Sean Zak: I really, really liked the 2017 version of Spieth. Capable of going off any week. Capable of losing a lead. Endlessly entertaining. This feels like that again. You can’t look away.
Chill, Sean. He might be limited to fourteen clubs, but our Jordan always has room in his bag for the big miss.
Dylan Dethier: After he won, he seemed most excited about the idea of thanking the people who had helped him get back to this point. That’s pretty cool.
Well, he went and played in Quad Cities to thank the Deere folks for a sponsors invite, so he's unfailingly nice. The bigger risk might be being too nice....
Then they go a weird direction, not that these two guys don't have a little history:
2. Spieth’s win came at an opportune time. An April Masters, for the first time since Tiger Woods’ 2019 triumph, is back. The 85th Masters returns to its usual springtime date after last year’s November edition and will be held this week at Augusta National. Spieth still hasn’t missed a cut in his seven Masters appearances and has finished outside of the top 11 just twice (the last two years). Meanwhile, defending champ and current World No. 1 Dustin Johnson was T11 and T8 in his two starts since winning the green jacket, but he hasn’t been as sharp in his last three (T54, T48 and failed to advance out of pool play at the WGC Match Play). Who has a higher finish this week, and why?
Bamberger: I like Spieth. He always shows up there (pretty much), and he has shown up at almost every tournament.
Sens: Spieth. But that’s because I think Spieth will win. DJ will be right in it. Place no stock in his recent struggles, which are only really struggles by DJ standards. He can switch it on faster than anyone in the game. He’ll be in the mix over the weekend.
Piastowski: DJ. Back-to-back is a lot to ask, especially after the emotion of winning for the first time in nearly four years.
Zak: If I needed one round in the 60s from anyone in the world, I’m going with DJ. If I needed some magic during a final round at Augusta, I’m going with Spieth. Feels wrong to pick against the Golden Child right now. Yes, that was a non-answer. Sorry!Dethier: DJ. Remember what he did in November? I’ll try to resist being prisoner of the moment here. But I wouldn’t mind being wrong.
Well, I'm thinking that DJ owes him one....
Dinah Doings - I wasn't familiar with the young lady, but surprise winners of majors seems to be an LPG staple these days:
Patty Tavatanakit started with a big lead and was exceptional. And Lydia Ko still almost caught her. Almost.
Ko shot the round of the year, but Tavatanakit was still good enough to hang on and win the ANA Inspiration on Sunday at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif. The 21-year-old closed with a four-under 68 to get to 18 under overall, besting Ko by two, to win not only her first major but LPGA event.
It was between Tavatanakit and Ko down the stretch as they pulled away from the field. Four others tied for third at 11 under.
“I had no idea,” Tavatanakit said about Ko’s surge. “Didn’t look at the leaderboard at all today just because, I saw her name up there but I didn’t look at it. I wanted to play my own game, which I did, and did a really good job of that today.”
She had a five-stroke lead beginning the day, shot -4 and...won by two. But from what I saw, this is a very deserving champion and she looked totally in control down the stretch. Not to mention that she went wire-to-wire, always a grueling ordeal. Of course, students of golf history will remember that Shaun Micheel also went W-T-W, so let's not assign too much import. Just very impressive...
For the record, the Tour Confidential panel dissed this event with only a glancing reference. Why the hate, guys?
Shall we spare a moment for the former phenom? That is, the artist formerly known as Lydia Ko:
Ko lit Mission Hills Country Club on fire in the final round at the ANA. She made an eagle, eight birdies and nine pars. Tally them all up and you had the lowest final round in major championship history — 10-under 62.
“It just shows it doesn’t matter how far back you are, you can always go for it,” Ko said. “As long as you have one hole in front of you, there is always a chance to make birdies.”
Lydia, you shot 62 and came up two short. So I'm going to have to differ with you, as it seems to matter very much how far back you are.
The day was unlikely for a number of reasons. Ko, the former world No. 1, showed there’s plenty to be hopeful about in career 2.0. Tavatanakit, meanwhile, had never won before on this stage. On Sunday, each sent her game to the next level.“She’s Lydia Ko for a reason,” phenom Gabi Ruffels said of the performance.
Well, she used to be.... Not so much recently....
But isn't she really the distaff Jordan Spieth? Lots of parallels, with the one major exception being that Lydia fires everyone and Jordan no one.
Augusta On Our Minds - We'll get to THAT event in a bit, but the young ladies had the run of the place on Saturday, and it quickly morphed into a demolition derby. This game story focuses on Rose Zhang's rather bizarre play on No. 13:
Chaos. Beautiful, brilliant chaos. That was the scene on the 13th hole at Augusta National shortly after 2 p.m. ET Saturday.
With blue skies overhead and the first glimpse of afternoon shadows creeping into Amen Corner,
Rose Zhang stepped to the tee after falling out of a tie for the lead during the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Karen Fredgaard — the steadily charging Dane who played Augusta National’s middle six holes at four under — had supplied the perfect amount of pressure.
Zhang clutched her driver, made a sweeping practice swing and addressed her ball. A millisecond after she made contact, it was clear something was wrong. The 17-year-old grimaced as she watched her neatly marked Callaway careen directly into the left pines. Her ball appeared to strike a tree branch, dispatching a pine cone toward Rae’s Creek but failing to nestle anywhere within sight.
The only man I can remember hitting it that far left on No. 13 is Ernie Els.... That excerpt doesn't even mention the winner, though you can click through at your leisure.
Some have wondered whether the field at the ANWA is capable of providing final-round drama in the same breath as what we witnessed during the Maria Fassi and Jennifer Kupcho’s inaugural duel in 2019. If Saturday was any indication, it doesn’t seem to matter much who’s holding a final-round lead at Augusta National, the result is likely to be heart-thumping. It was not always pretty (an over-par winner at Augusta National, how about that?), but for the stakeholders of the first female event at Augusta National, the day was another obvious success.
What struck this observer was how different this version was from that first installment. In point of fact, this is what I expected that 2019 event to look like. But in '19 Kupcho and Fassi were playing heroic golf, think Kupcho bending it around the trees on No. 15.... The dominated the course as we're used to from the best of the men, whereas this year the course dominated the young ladies. Still pretty entertaining, that back nine delivers the goods, but none of these girls looked ready for the jump to the pros.
As refere3nced above, the TC panel could spare only one question for all of womynkind:
5. Japan’s Tsubasa Kajitani won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Saturday after its one-year hiatus, and Patty Tavatanakit won the first major of the season, the ANA Inspiration, on Sunday. What moment (or whose play) from what was a big week for women’s golf most resonated with you?
Sens: Our own James Colgan captured it well in his game story — all the riveting commotion on the back nine. Augusta rarely fails to serve it up. Doesn’t matter whether it’s men or women. You never know whether a player is headed for glory or catastrophe.
Bamberger: The Butler Cabin interview in all of its wonderful awkwardness. It just showed how completely international the game is and look where golf took this young woman in her not even 18 years.
Perfect, Mike. They're awkward seemingly by design. Though the purist in me has to acknowledge that the awkwardness is at a reduced level since the passing of Clifford Roberts and Hord Hardin. Roberts was the king of awkwardness, and Hardin is responsible for the single vest Butler Cabin question evah:
Hord Hardin asked Seve the greatest question ever in the Butler Cabin after one of his wins. " well Seve how tall are you?"
— Kip Henley Blue Check Mark ☮️ (@KipHenley) April 13, 2014
Piastowski: Lydia Ko at the ANA. Is it the best round in a major ever?
Hard pass, Nick. It simply didn't mean enough to be worthy of GOAT status.... Plus, yanno, Barndon Grace did it first, and that counts for a lot.
Zak: I loved seeing the battle at Augusta. Six tied for the lead on the back nine? Nerves all around. Kupcho and Fassi played a compelling match in 2019, but seeing the full leaderboard was a treat. It felt like a Masters finish.Dethier: Take a look at the ANA’s final leaderboard and you’ll see a game in great shape going forward. A rising star in big-bombing Patty Tavatanakit. Stalwart top guns Jin Young Ko and Sei Young Kim. Generational talent Inbee Park. American stars Nelly Korda and Danielle Kang. And Lydia Ko may be the most fascinating player in the entire game. The next major can’t come quickly enough.
Shhhh, don't say that last bot out loud, or Mike will add a sixth one...
That Other Augusta Event - Don't panic, I won't be talking about the Drive, Chip & Putt.... I mean the one that starts on Thursday.
A couple of bits from the TC Panel:
3. What’s the most underrated Masters storyline that fans need to be aware of?
Sens: With Spieth resurgent and DJ defending, the Bryson-shrinks-Augusta story isn’t getting near the attention it received in the run-up to the tournament last year. A strong Thursday and Friday should bring that narrative right back to the top of the weekend headlines.
Bamberger: That Tiger will not be there.
Piastowski: I’ll stick to the underrated part of the question — though I really want to answer that I’m interested to see how Brooks tackles Augusta National on one leg. How about Daniel Berger, who played fantastic golf last summer, only to have to miss the November Masters after the field stayed the way it would have been had the tournament been played in April.
Zak: That the only player peaking right now seems to be Spieth. DJ isn’t totally right. Rahm isn’t totally right. Rory seems all kinds of wrong. Spieth feels like the most dangerous player in golf.
Dethier: It’s only underrated for about 12 more hours, and then it’ll quickly become overrated, but: Augusta is playing firm and fast. It’s going to be a radically different test than November.
I'm thinking that Mike can save himself some worry on that score. The next time Tiger is an underreported story will also be the first...
I do think that Sean Zak is onto something though, that I'm not liking the form of those top show ponies, especially DJ.
This is more akin to the kinds of things I focus on early in the week:
4. Johnson shot a course-record 20-under 258 last year to win by five. Sure, it was a different season, but it was still a head-turning performance on Augusta’s storied grounds. How do you think last year’s scoring affects this year’s setup?
Sens: I don’t see it affecting at all. Last fall, the green jackets switched up some of what had become the traditional Sunday pins. This week, I expect them to go right back to setting things up as they have since as long as many of us can remember.
Bamberger: I completely agree with Josh. This will be business as usual. Looks like the course will play firm and fast. Totally different from November.
Piastowski: It won’t. The time of year will, though. The fast-fairways-and-greens Augusta National is back. The receptive Augusta National we saw last November is gone.
Zak: Business as usual sounds like firm and fast right now. At least that’s what Bryson DeChambeau told us Sunday night. The ball is gonna roll, roll, roll out there and we’re here for it.
Dethier: Whoops, looks like my last answer jumped the gun here. I think they’ve been particularly focused on firming things up this spring. I’m always hesitant to predict high scores — these guys are too good! — but I’d be shocked if they get near 20 under.
To put it differently, Augusta 2021 is not expected to remind folks of Winged Foot 1974.
I do think that's right, and I agree that the Masters folks have never seemed to obsess over the winning score. That said, the course will be firm and fast for the simple reason that it can be... Not a lick of moisture in the weather forecast, so they'll set it up as they want to but can't always manage. There's a belief that the Lords of Augusta are immune to weather, but that's a myth. Only Al Gore had the chutzpah to claim to be able to control the weather, but of course that was all about the graft...
6. Augusta National will allow limited fans on site this week, but let’s help the viewers watching through their TV screens. Based on your experiences on site, what’s one thing about the course they should pay special attention to while watching from home?
Sens: The course is just so much flatter than you see on TV. I joke. What always strikes me is the scale of the property. You feel almost dwarfed by it. But then a roar goes up and everything becomes intensely intimate, as if the action is happening just a breath away from you, no matter where you are.
Bamberger: How tight the lies are on some of those greenside pitch shots and chip shots. Some of those shots are almost impossible for the ordinary golfer.
Piastowski: I haven’t been yet, so I’ll rely on my colleagues’ stories. You can’t mimic the thunder of the cheers — no matter how loud you turn up the TV volume.
Zak: The bad tee shots on 5, 7, 17. No water, plenty of double bogeys. These holes don’t seem so brutal, right up until the moment they are. Don’t sleep on them while waiting for the exciting holes.
Dethier: There’s a moment at about 5 p.m. every day where the wind seems to die, the shadows get longer and the game gets simpler. That’s the time you want to be out there playing. Walking and watching, too.
I did enjoy this one more than I expected to:
6 surprising Masters traditions that didn’t last, from a parade to a beauty pageant
A parade?
Masters Parade
In 1957, local business leaders formed Masters Week of Augusta Inc., with the mission of
creating ways to promote the tournament and try to draw people to town. Implemented ideas included a horse show and a flyover by a blimp squadron from Glynco Naval Base in Brunswick, Ga.
The centerpiece from 1957-64 was a spring parade on Tuesday afternoon in downtown Augusta that newspaper editorials, city leaders and civic organizers compared to the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City and hoped would grow to rival the annual Tournament of Roses Parade that precedes the Rose Bowl every new year in Pasadena, Calif.
A reported 25,000 parade-goers lined Broad Street between 13th Street and 5th Street to see elaborate floats, marching bands, beauty queens and massive balloons. Augusta National founder Bobby Jones rode in the lead Cadillac convertible, followed in other open-top cars by Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and other prominent Masters competitors.
Somewhere in the inaugural parade queue, The Augusta Chronicle wrote, was a float from the Fort Gordon Library that depicted Satan trying to blast out of bunker.
“It was just a real exciting thing for our little country town,” Lillian Cullum, who died in 2015, told the Chronicle of the event her late husband — Cullum’s Clothing Store owner, Jim — helped establish.
Hard to look at that photo and understand discontinuing this event.
This might surprise as well:
Long-drive contest
In an effort to lure patrons to pay to attend practice rounds, Clifford Roberts was a fan of various special exhibitions. There were teaching clinics emceed by Chick Harbert featuring Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Dow Finsterwald, Lionel and Jay Hebert, Art Wall and Jackie Burke.
Events included an alternate-shot match, a show by trick-shot artist Paul Hahn, an approach-shot contest to the practice green and an iron-play contest in the expanse of property between the 9th
and 18th holes that served as the original practice area. According to David Owen, who wrote The Making of the Masters: Clifford Roberts, Augusta National, and Golf’s Most Prestigious Tournament, Roberts once devised a competition in which the pros took turns trying (unsuccessfully) to repeat Gene Sarazen’s famous “double-eagle” shot from the 15th fairway.
“The contests were fun, because the pros were always so relaxed and having such a good time,” a spectator from the era is quoted saying in Owens’ book.But the most popular special event was the long-drive competition that started when the Masters returned after its three-year World War II hiatus.
The long-drive contest took place on Wednesday at the first tee. Winners through the years included Sam Snead with a 290-yard drive in 1948; Mike Souchak with a drive of 294 yards in 1956; and Mike Fetchick with a record blast of 351 yards in 1957.
In 1954, before missing the fabled Snead-Hogan playoff by one shot despite making a Sunday ace on No. 6, amateur Billy Joe Patton launched a drive 338 yards and then passed up on his last two long-drive attempts. Nobody could top him.
In the final long-drive contest in 1959, George “the Human Howitzer” Bayer won with a drive of 321 yards, with Frank Stranahan next at 294. In 1960, the event was replaced permanently by the Par 3 Contest.
Folks see the modern Masters and tend to naturally assume that it planned. But Augusta National opened during the Great Depression, and they very much made it up as they went along. In fact, the original plan was to land a U.S. Open, so the Masters itself, nee Augusta National Invitational, was just one of those improvisations.
This is extremely fortunate timing:
Jon Rahm is heading to Augusta National Golf Club as a father.
Just days before the 2021 Masters the 26-year-old posted a photo alongside his wife on Instagram to announce the birth of their baby boy, Kepa, on Saturday morning.
“Momma Kelley is doing great and recovering. Kepa is also in great health,” Rahm wrote in the post about his 7.2 lb., 20.5 inch “big boy from the Basque Country.”
“Without a doubt the greatest day of my life!” wrote Rahm, who had previously said that he would leave any tournament, even the Masters, to be present for the birth of his son.
Kepa? The Basques name their children for Jewish prayer beanies? Who knew?
Do you pick him? At least if you bet him you're reasonably assured he'll finish the week. Hopefully, not on Friday, though tis is a very hard cut to miss.
Somewhat surprisingly, this guy is at Augusta and not amused with Mr. Faxon:
Brooks Koepka’s right knee is apparently good. His left and right thumbs are working, too.Koepka, less than a month after undergoing surgery to repair a kneecap dislocation and ligament damage, told both ESPN and Golfweek on Sunday at Augusta National that he plans to play in this week’s Masters. Then he took to Twitter.Tweet No. 1 from his iPhone. Koepka quote-tweeted a story from March 24 with a headline that read: “Brad Faxon on Brooks Koepka’s injury: Range chatter suggests Koepka could be out 6-8 months.” He then added the meme from the Michael Jordan Last Dance documentary in which Jordan said: “And I took that personally.”
I'd wait a bit before signing off that his knee is fine.... Whatever he found in Phoenix likely needs to be found once more, so I'm not loving him this week.
This seems a bit ambitious:
Masters 2021: 50 defining moments in Masters history, ranked
It's as eccentric as you'd expect, including some rather dubious double-counting. If I tell you that Scott Hoch is in the top twenty, is that 'nuff said?
No. 19 on that list gets its own treatment:
Masters 2021: Twenty years ago, Tiger Woods faced more pressure than any golfer in history
I don't know. I'm guessing about a thousand guys struggling to get their cards have been under more pressure, not that I have any interest in diminishing it.
For some reason, this artwork from Golf Digest amused:
Tiger in a suit? Man, those guys have a rich fantasy life... But Earl seems to ne enjoying it.
I shall leave you there, as Madam desires a walk on the beach before breakfast. I haven't decided on a blogging strategy for the week. I'm sure I'll share some thoughts on the Ocean Course either from here or from home, especially since the big boys will be here in May. Check back frequently and I'm sure we'll do some business.
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