Sou belong to the Masters like the famous pimento and cheese sandwich – and almost always play only modest supporting roles: the former champions who are once again able to compete with today’s elite in Augusta in the late autumn of their careers. They use the regulation that the Masters, like the PGA Championship, grants its winners a lifelong starting right.
However, one should not take this literally for life. If the scores get too high, most will withdraw voluntarily, or the officials will alert the seniors to laps of more than 90 strokes that their active time is up.
But there are days like Thursday. The first at the 84th edition of the youngest of the four majors, when three of the 60+ contestants hit the headlines. On Thursday, Sandy Lyle from Scotland was the first player in the history of the golf championship rendezvous, which has been held since 1934, with suspenders on the round. It didn’t help him. The 62-year-old champion of 1988 took 78 strokes. Although he improved to 73 in the second round, he failed as in the past five years with seven strokes over par (151) at the cut.
Incidentally, this year the Masters canceled an old rule, namely that all players who are only ten strokes behind the leader after two rounds can survive this cut and also play at the weekend. Now you have to be in the top 50 in order to be part of the two final rounds.
But while Lyle, the first Masters winner from the United Kingdom, only impressed with fashion, two colleagues in the same age group also caused a sensation in terms of sport. The 62-year-old Larry Mize, who won in his hometown of Augusta in 1987, needs exactly as many with 70 strokes as the big favorite Bryson DeChambeau. The two were five strokes behind the first leading Englishman Paul Casey and only two behind defending champion Tiger Woods, who equaled his best opening round with 68 strokes without a single bogey.
According to the Masters statistics, Mize came in 92nd and last place after the first day with 226 meters in the statistics of the tee length, exactly eighty meters shorter than the “Golf Hulk”. On the second day, Mize then had to pay tribute with a round of 77 and was eliminated.
Larry Mize: on the opening lap level with the favored “Hulk” Dechambeau
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Image: AFP
In the tee length rating, the 63-year-old Bernhard Langer, the only German in the field, was 90th on Thursday with 235 meters. Regarding these statistics, however, you have to know that although the Masters, like the PGA Tour, measures every tee shot, only the drives at holes 5 and 15 are counted for the official rating, the heaviest and lightest hole on the course last year. The reason: These holes are most likely that all players will pick up the driver.
Convincing Langer comes through
Langer, who started the tournament on the 10th hole, was unable to finish the first round on Thursday, like 44 other players, because it was getting dark. After ten holes he was three strokes under par, a terrific achievement for an active player who almost exclusively plays on the PGA Tour Champions, the American “50+” tournament series.
Although the 7499 meter long course played much longer due to the heavy rain, which required a three-hour break after just 25 minutes, Langer finished his round in 68 strokes on Friday and was among the top ten. In the second round, things did not go quite as well for the German “master swinger”, as Sports Illustrated described him after his first Masters success in 1985. But after a second round of 73 strokes on Friday he made the cut, as in the previous two years. This makes him the oldest player allowed to play in the final rounds of the Masters.
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