The Augusta Masters went into incandescence on Friday. It took another hour of wind to start a new 36-hole tournament. In this, Scottie Scheffler benefited, lined up in the last game of the day, a turn that is usually a lottery in many places and avoidable due to the nails that have passed through the greens before, but in Augusta, in view of the history, not resolved so bad. The wind plummets at twilight always.
The world number 1, 25 years old, with a difficult start like everyone else -two bogeys in the first three holes- played the last third of the course when the wind, which had reached almost 50 km/h, dropped until it disappeared. It was the section in which he achieved four birdies that triggered him to sign the best lap of the day (67 shots) together with the wonderful Justin Thomas. And that gave him a noticeable margin. Five strokes ahead for the player of the year – he has won the Phoenix Open, Arnold Palmer and World Match play in six weeks – is a good prize. Who also knows how to play this course. He birdied all the par 5s. Although, as Tiger says, Saturday will see the scenario that the Masters wants “faster, drier. It will be a great test.” And that can draw another panorama.
That challenge will also be faced by Woods, to the delight of CBS, which will be able to aspire to large audiences. It was another marathon exercise for the megastar that came out with the beginning of the wind and with the greens faster and firmer than on Thursday. This made it difficult for him to pick up the speed of his putts. When I understood them I already had a +4 in 5 holes. “I got off to a terrible start. I had a couple of bad shots and a couple of gusty winds caused more. I thought, OK, this isn’t going well! If we can somehow get back to par, that would be a great finish. I could have made it, on 15 and 16, but other than that, it was a good fight and I’m there,” Woods said.
One cut off the record
But since only he knows what he had to go through to get as far as he has done, because, although he is lame, he wanted to prolong his streak of cuts surpassed in the Masters (22), the third longest in history – he is one behind Player and Couples – he waited for his moment and, from the hole 8, which was the second easiest of the field that holed the first birdie, added four more -also two bogeys- and, with no wind, securing a place in Saturday’s games was quite simple. He even shot a couple more times for birdie without success.
He shook hands with Joaquín Niemann, his party partner, -a neck strain while taking a shower knocked out Louis Oosthuizen who couldn’t even get out- and brought out a smile from the inside out. And although I ended up touched, that did not diminish his ambition one bit. “Well, I’m not feeling as good as I’d like. It’s okay. Like I said, I’ve got a chance heading into the weekend. to people who’ve won the Masters by making just one chance on the back nine. If you’re five or six away on the back nine, anything can happen. I’ve got to get it. That’s the key. I’ve got to get it,” he said. convinced.
His swing is different. With a rod, nails and plates in the right leg, the balance of weights from one leg to another is not complete. The ankle twist no longer occurs in the same way. “It’s not even going to happen. But more importantly it’s going to be my back. I have fused vertebrae – he had that operation in 2019 – and the top and bottom are the ones that are going to suffer. I still generate enough speed in the turn , but this will be lost with age and suffer”, he clarified. And then I even joked comparing his physique, which receives daily attention, with a race car. “This is like NASCAR. Every day you have to fix it. I’m good at breaking it down and my team at putting it back together.”
On a sunny and cloudy day, falling temperatures and that they will drop more for Saturday, Scheffler opened a gap with a veteran like Charl Schwartzel, the leader of Thursday Im, the unpredictable Irishman Shane Lowry, who always hits an impossible shot. This time he put it from the bunker on the 10th hole – he was only beaten by Stewart Cink’s 1st hole… and Hideki Matsuyama. Despite being the current champion, he goes unnoticed, but he scored a 69 without fuss. As the Texan fails…
