Augusta National, Playing Easy for Now, Has Three Atop Masters Leaderboard
- last year
The opening round of the first Masters Tournament of the LIV Golf era ended with a blend of PGA Tour and LIV players tied at the top.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The gallery was thick from the start, as it almost always is at Augusta National Golf Club’s first tee. And, as it almost always is when Tiger Woods is lurking at a Masters Tournament, nearly no one was there for the rest of his group, Viktor Hovland or Xander Schauffele.
They probably should have been — especially for Hovland, the only man of the three never to have won a major tournament or finish as a runner-up. By day’s end, after all, he would be in a three-way tie for the lead.
“If you get a little too cocky and you want to push a few spots that you probably shouldn’t, it will punish you very quickly,” Hovland, who scored a seven-under-par 65, said of the course afterward. “So you know a good score is out there, but you can’t really force it. You’ve just got to let it happen, and if you have some makable putts, you’ve got to make them, and then you can get into a rhythm.”
But, he warned, “It’s one of those things, you push too hard, and it will backfire.”
He plainly learned plenty in his first three Masters appearances. But before a waterlogged weather system threatened to turn Augusta National’s hills into the most emerald of slip-and-slides, especially on Saturday, the course was modestly less menacing than usual. Winds were calm, when they rustled the pines at all, and punishing humidity kept the course soft.
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AUGUSTA, Ga. — The gallery was thick from the start, as it almost always is at Augusta National Golf Club’s first tee. And, as it almost always is when Tiger Woods is lurking at a Masters Tournament, nearly no one was there for the rest of his group, Viktor Hovland or Xander Schauffele.
They probably should have been — especially for Hovland, the only man of the three never to have won a major tournament or finish as a runner-up. By day’s end, after all, he would be in a three-way tie for the lead.
“If you get a little too cocky and you want to push a few spots that you probably shouldn’t, it will punish you very quickly,” Hovland, who scored a seven-under-par 65, said of the course afterward. “So you know a good score is out there, but you can’t really force it. You’ve just got to let it happen, and if you have some makable putts, you’ve got to make them, and then you can get into a rhythm.”
But, he warned, “It’s one of those things, you push too hard, and it will backfire.”
He plainly learned plenty in his first three Masters appearances. But before a waterlogged weather system threatened to turn Augusta National’s hills into the most emerald of slip-and-slides, especially on Saturday, the course was modestly less menacing than usual. Winds were calm, when they rustled the pines at all, and punishing humidity kept the course soft.
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