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      At the P.G.A. Championship, Justin Thomas Looks for Last Year’s Magic

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      The defending champion comes to Oak Hill without finishing first in any of the 20 events he has entered since claiming his second career major victory in 2022.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Five years ago, when Justin Thomas came to the 2018 P.G.A. Championship as the defending champion, he was still cruising along as one of the top three players in the game and had spent a stint as the top-ranked men’s golfer in the world.At that moment, elite golf came easily to him.Thomas was 25 and the winner of one major championship. This week, Thomas once again returns to the P.G.A. Championship as the defending champion. But things are different now.Since his victory last year at the P.G.A. Championship in Tulsa, Okla., Thomas has endured the bumpy, maddening irregularity typical of any golf career (amateur or professional). He comes to the Oak Hill Country Club outside Rochester, N.Y., without finishing first in any of the 20 events he has entered since claiming his second career major victory in 2022.In April, he missed the cut at the Masters Tournament, which was a first for him. A month earlier, he stumbled to a tie for 60th at the Players Championship, an event he won two years ago.In 10 tournaments this year, he has just two top-10 finishes and five results outside the top 20. None of this is particularly unusual in the narrative of any lengthy professional golf career but that has not made it any easier for Thomas, whose father and grandfather were PGA teaching professionals and whose emotions are often readily apparent on the golf course.Always candid, Thomas conceded on Monday that his game was tattered enough at times in the last year that he teed up for some tournaments knowing, in the back of his mind, that he could not win. How must that feel for someone who was once rated the best golfer on the planet?“It’s terrible,” Thomas answered. “How I described it for a couple months is that I’ve never felt so far and so close at the same time. That’s a very hard thing to explain, and it’s also a very hard way to try to compete and win a golf tournament.”But Thomas does feel as if he might be battling his way out of the golfing darkness in recent weeks. He shot three rounds under par at this month’s Wells Fargo Championship on the PGA Tour to finish in a tie for 14th. He has learned a newfangled system of putting, which he said was complex but made reading the greens very simple (sounds like golf, right?). Nonetheless, he sees progress with his putting.Perhaps most important, he has allowed other golfers to help him, because the sport can be too hard to manage by yourself.Thomas, for example, played his 18-hole practice round on Monday with Max Homa, who is now the sixth-ranked player worldwide but who once appeared to have bungled his chance of making a living as a golfer — at about the same time Thomas was winning his first major title.In 2017, Homa lost his PGA Tour playing privileges after he missed the cut in 15 of 17 tournaments. In golf parlance, it is called losing your tour card, which is a gracious way of saying you were expelled from the top level of golf for shoddy play.The next year, Homa magically requalified for the tour, in part by improbably making birdies on each of his final four holes of a minor league tour golf event. Since then, Homa has won more than $21 million on the PGA Tour with two of his six tour victories coming in the last eight months.On Monday, as Thomas was attempting to explain how he was trying to fight his way back to the highest echelon of men’s golf — and how vital it was to remain optimistic instead of pouting — he used Homa as an example.With the Wanamaker Trophy after beating Will Zalatoris in a playoff in the final round of the P.G.A. Championship in 2022.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock“Nobody is in a better place than Max Homa out here,” Thomas said. “There’s no other top player in the world who’s gone through what he’s gone through in terms of having a tour card, losing your tour card, having to earn it back and then becoming one of the top players in the world.“I’ve talked to him about it before because he’s like, nobody out here really knows how bad it can be.”Thomas snickered. He was not going to allow himself to feel too badly about his recent slump. He is still the 13th-ranked golfer in the world. Or as he added: “It’s all relative. And it’s all about making the most of whatever situation you’re in.“That’s how you get out of it, by just playing your way out of it. You hit shots when you want to and make those putts when you need to, and then your confidence builds back up. The next thing you know, you don’t even remember what you were thinking in those times when you felt down.”But Thomas smiled. He is now a veteran at 30, not just getting started in the big time at 25. He knows he has chosen a mercurial vocation.“Like anything else in golf,” Thomas said, “it’s easier said than done.” More

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      Don January, Who Won the 1967 P.G.A. Title, Is Dead at 93

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      He won 10 tournaments in 10 different years on the PGA Tour and was an early star on the senior Champions Tour.Don January, who won the 1967 P.G.A. Championship and became one of the early stars on golf’s Senior Tour, winning 22 events in its first decade, died on Sunday at his home in Dallas. He was 93. His death was announced by the PGA Tour.“I’m just a damned old pro from Dallas, Texas, who was lucky enough to have a swing that lasted for a while,” January told Sports Illustrated in 1998, the year before he retired.January, who turned pro in 1955, won 10 PGA Tour events in 10 different years, most notably the 1967 P.G.A. Championship, when he defeated his fellow Texan Don Massengale by two strokes in a playoff at the Columbine Country Club near Denver. Six years earlier, he was beaten by Jerry Barber in a P.G.A. Championship playoff.January, at 46, won the Vardon Trophy for the PGA Tour’s lowest scoring average, 70.56, in 1976, the same year he captured the Tournament of Champions. He played on victorious Ryder Cup teams in 1965 and 1977.The idea for a Senior Tour received a boost in 1979 when Roberto De Vicenzo teamed with Julius Boros to defeat Tommy Bolt and Art Wall Jr. on the sixth hole of a playoff in the Legends of Golf, a made-for-television competition in its second year, showcasing two-man teams of older players.January in 2015 at the Greats of Golf Scramble at the Woodlands Country Club in Texas. He was an early star on golf’s Senior Tour, winning 22 events in its first decade.Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire/Corbis, via Getty Images“I was playing on the regular tour at New Orleans and didn’t see the show,” January recalled in a 1985 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “But all we heard the rest of 1979 on the tour was what a sensation it was.”In January 1980, January met with his fellow pros Gardner Dickinson, Sam Snead, Bob Goalby, Dan Sikes and Boros to help lay the groundwork for the PGA Tour to create a Senior Tour.As January remembered it, his small group of pros “decided there might be a market for a modest tour,” though “we had no idea it would grow the way it did.”January won the Senior Tour’s first event, the Atlantic City Seniors, which attracted 50 pro golfers and 12 amateurs age 50 or older. He earned only $20,000 (the equivalent of about $73,000 today) for capturing the June 1980 tournament, but senior events, now part of the Champions Tour, have proved a lucrative showcase for many of the game’s leading players 50 and over.January won the tour’s P.G.A. Seniors’ Championship in 1982, and three years later he became the first player with $1 million in winnings as a senior (about $2.8 million in today’s money). He gained his 22nd and final senior victory in 1987.Donald Ray January was born on Nov. 29, 1929, in Plainview, Texas, the son of a roofing contractor. The family moved to Dallas when he was a child, and he began hitting golf balls at age 8 on a municipal course.January played on N.C.A.A. championship teams at North Texas State College in Denton (now the University of North Texas), then served in the Air Force before turning pro. His first PGA Tour victory came in 1956, when he won the Dallas Centennial Open. He lost four times in playoffs before besting Massengale in an 18-hole playoff at the 1967 P.G.A. Championship.January quit the PGA Tour in 1972 to design golf courses, but the venture proved unsuccessful financially, and he returned two years later. His last regular tour victory came in 1976, in the MONY Tournament of Champions (now the Sentry Tournament of Champions, held in early January on the island of Maui in Hawaii), though he continued to play on the regular tour until 1984 while competing as a senior player.He is survived by a daughter, Cherie Depuy; two sons, Tim and Richard; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.He was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1979.For many years, January sponsored the Don January Golf Classic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to fund scholarships at the University of North Texas.A lanky 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, January was an unflappable figure as he walked the courses, his shirt collar tucked up. As he told The Dallas Morning News in 1999: “People thought I was a cool cat from east Dallas. All I was trying to do was to keep the back of my neck from sunburn so I could sleep on it.”His dry wit was in evidence after he won the P.G.A. Championship, when he was asked about his approach to golf. “Just tee up and hit it,” he said, “and when you find it, hit it again.” More

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      Jon Rahm Wins Masters, Surging Past Brooks Koepka

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      Rahm trailed Brooks Koepka by two strokes at the start of Sunday’s final round but surged as Koepka faltered to claim his second major tournament victory.AUGUSTA, Ga. — It was early for a debacle at the Masters Tournament — the first hole of the first round — but on Thursday morning, Jon Rahm’s internal speedometer had seemingly vanished. Accustomed to calibrating his putts just so, Rahm found his speed off, his ball sliding long and escaping right, before logging a double bogey.“Well,” Rahm thought as he headed to Augusta National Golf Club’s next tee, “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make,” paraphrasing Seve Ballesteros, the greatest Spanish golfer of all and himself a victim of a Masters putting misadventure. Rahm considered something else, too: Unlike Ballesteros, he had 71 holes to recover.He most certainly did.Rahm, the towering Spaniard who dominated the PGA Tour in 2023’s first months, won the Masters on Sunday, overcoming days of punishing humidity, plunging temperatures, green-saturating rains and tree-toppling winds, as well as that Thursday mess on No. 1, to claim his second career major championship. His victory, beneath an eggshell blue sky, came after he began the final round trailing Brooks Koepka, a four-time major winner who missed the Masters cut last April, by two strokes.Rahm ultimately won by four strokes, 12 under par for the tournament.“I’m looking at the scores, and I still think I have a couple more holes left to win,” Rahm said. “Can’t really say anything else. This one was for Seve. He was up there helping, and help he did.”Rahm, playing his shot from the fourth tee, had two birdies on the front nine in the final round.Rahm’s win kept at bay, at least for this month, a premier ambition of LIV Golf, the second-year league that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolled and then watched split men’s professional golf into embittered factions. Koepka has been one of the rebel circuit’s headliners and won a LIV event in Florida last week. Following it with a victory at Augusta National would have marked the first time a golfer had earned a major title as a LIV player. The league’s next chance will come in mid-May, at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y.But Rahm methodically extinguished the league’s 2023 bid in Augusta, where the 88-player field included 18 LIV golfers. Although the league had a robust showing behind Koepka and Phil Mickelson, whose sensational Sunday outing at seven under eventually vaulted him into a tie for second with Koepka, the tournament ended with Rahm, a PGA Tour stalwart, poised to select the menu for next year’s dinner of Masters champions.Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, will presumably be there, too. Koepka will not, even after finishing the first three rounds with at least a share of a lead, showing a consistency — until it disappeared — that was all the more remarkable given the meteorological and scheduling turmoil.“I led for three rounds, and just didn’t do it on the last day,” Koepka said. “That’s it, plain and simple.”When Koepka made bogey on the sixth hole Sunday, after a drive past the green, a chip that zipped well past the pin and a par putt that scooted just past the hole, he also surrendered the lead.The par-5 eighth hole was a place where either man could gain ground: Both had made eagle there during the tournament. Koepka’s Sunday afternoon tee shot, though, came to rest on a stretch of pine straw, forcing a punch-out onto the fairway. Rahm guided his third shot onto the green, positioning him for a tap-in birdie that grew his advantage to two strokes.But there were charges toward the top of the leaderboard playing out elsewhere among the pines. When Koepka and Rahm each made bogey at No. 9, a cluster of aspiring contenders hovered much nearer than they had hours earlier. Rahm stood at 10 under, and Koepka at eight under, tied with Jordan Spieth, who started the round at one under. Another five players — Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Russell Henley, Cameron Young and Patrick Cantlay — were at six under or seven under.Rahm, left, and Koepka on the sixth green, where Koepka surrendered his lead with a bogey.The gap between Rahm and Koepka stayed at two strokes until the 12th hole, that wondrously botanical landmark in the heart of Amen Corner. The hole, a 155-yard par-3, is the shortest test at Augusta National. Koepka lifted his tee shot high, and then it plunged toward the turf just behind the green, though he avoided the bunker. His second shot did not quite reach the green, and his third cruised to the right and beyond the pin. He made a putt for bogey.That put Mickelson, 52, already done with his round, in a solo second place.Koepka birdied the 13th hole to pull even with Mickelson, but Rahm preserved his three-stroke advantage with a birdie, his first since No. 8.It did not last — because Rahm’s lead swelled to five strokes on the next hole. Rahm’s second shot, from near the tree line, plunked onto the green and then rolled in something approximating a semicircle until it stopped near the cup, setting up a putt for birdie. Koepka’s second shot also reached the green, but it rolled farther from the pin. A long try for birdie missed, and a much shorter one for par lipped out, sticking Koepka with a bogey, his fifth of the round.He came close to making a putt for eagle at the 15th before settling for a birdie there.Rahm led by four strokes with three holes to play. Koepka cut it to three with a majestic birdie after his tee shot cleared the water at No. 16, but his comeback possibilities were still narrowing quickly. It did not help that his ball, on his second shot at the 17th hole, went from a shadowed patch of east Georgia mud to where some spectators were sitting. He had made bogey on the hole near the end of the third round; he carded another as the tournament drew toward its conclusion, pushing Rahm’s advantage back to four strokes.Rahm and Koepka, on the eighth fairway, had each made eagle on the hole earlier in the tournament.Rahm, whose lone major victory had been at the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, was virtually assured of a green jacket and, some months from now, a Masters trophy engraved with the signatures of every man he beat.Once he made his tournament-ending par putt on the 18th green surrounded by a thick, roaring gallery, he jubilantly lifted his arms skyward, clinched his fists and then briefly covered his face with his hands. He plucked his ball from the cup and tipped his hat.“Never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole,” he said.Even by the standards of a star who first reached the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2020, Rahm has played especially well in recent months. In November, he won the DP World Tour Championship by two strokes. In January, he won two PGA Tour events, both with scores of 27 under par, and he captured the Genesis Invitational title in February.He stumbled in March, with a tie for 39th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational; a withdrawal from the Players Championship with a stomach illness; and a mediocre showing at a World Golf Championships match play tournament. But he insisted he was an unbothered “week-to-week guy,” content to play one event to the next without becoming all that mentally hemmed in by his booms or busts.“Every single tournament I go to, my plan is to win, and my mind-set doesn’t deviate from that,” he said last week.Until Sunday evening, he had never finished better than fourth at Augusta National. But for this year’s tournament, his seventh Masters appearance, he arrived with such a storehouse of knowledge of the course that he suggested it would be challenging to use in full.“I feel like it’s very difficult to apply everything you learn from each round here at Augusta National,” Rahm, on the sixth hole, said.“I feel like it’s very difficult to apply everything you learn from each round here at Augusta National,” he said.He added: “Obviously, the more you play, the more comfortable you get with a little bit of the lag putting out here, I would say. It can be very deceiving to understand some of the breaks and some of the speeds on the putts. You know, a little bit of learning and things like that, but at the end of the day, it’s a golf course where you have to come out here and play good golf, right? It’s plain and simple. There’s no trick to it. The best player wins, and that’s what you’ve got to do.”He did it, on what would have been Ballesteros’s 66th birthday. More

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      Photographs From Sunday’s Final Round at the Masters

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      After days of rain and dark clouds, the final round was sunny and clear with nothing but blue skies and green fairways providing a brilliant backdrop for Jon Rahm’s win.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The weather on Saturday at the Masters Tournament threw the schedule into chaos as rain and wind drove golfers off the course at Augusta National Golf Club in mid-afternoon when conditions became too poor to continue play. That meant Sunday — usually the start of the final round — began with the finish of the third round before advancing to the big finish: Jon Rahm capturing his first green jacket and second major tournament win.The excellent weather on Sunday provided a crystal clear backdrop for the highs and lows of the final round at the Masters, the first men’s golf major tournament of the year.Viktor Hovland was tied for the lead after the first round and finished tied for seventh at six under par.Xander Schauffele shot below par in three of his four rounds, including one under on both Saturday and Sunday.The tournament calls its attendees patrons rather than fans.Tiger Woods made the cut but withdrew from the tournament before third-round play resumed on Sunday following its suspension Saturday.Russell Henley tied for fourth after shooting under par in each of his final three rounds.Rahm celebrated his win with his wife, Kelley Cahill, and oldest son, Kepa. More

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      Phil Mickelson Has Best Final Round in 30th Masters Appearance

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      Mickelson, who withdrew from last year’s Masters Tournament as he took criticism for joining LIV Golf, earned a measure of redemption from fans by finishing in a tie for second place.AUGUSTA, Ga. — When Phil Mickelson was introduced on the first tee Thursday to begin his 30th appearance at the Masters Tournament, he was greeted by muted, faint applause. All the members of the renegade, Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit in the field were being treated roughly the same during the opening round. Not shunned, just not welcomed.It was a form of the silent treatment and as Mickelson walked down the first fairway Thursday, he was surrounded by a corridor of fans who hardly made a sound.On the 18th green late Sunday afternoon in the final round of the 2023 Masters, Mickelson sank a twisting, downhill putt for birdie and twice pumped his left fist as he went to retrieve the ball. He was barking something to himself but it was inaudible because the thousands of fans enveloping the green were on their feet roaring their approval. Soon, the gallery was chanting: “Phil.”Mickelson, who would finish tied for second at eight under par, waved to the crowd and smiled broadly, perhaps understanding better than anyone how much had changed in four days.The palpable undercurrent to this year’s Masters, the sport’s most watched tournament and the initial men’s major of the year, was the first head-to-head match between the LIV rebels and the pros aligned with the entrenched PGA Tour at the venerable Augusta National Golf Club, which in every way epitomizes traditional golf. Mickelson has always been the headliner of the defectors, and he took the brunt of the heat for turning his back on the established golf world last year — so much so that he voluntarily withdrew from the 2022 Masters.Mickelson tied for second with Brooks Koepka, whom he plays with on the LIV Golf circuit.David J. Phillip/Associated PressAnd now, after his best final round ever at the tournament, Mickelson, the three-time Masters champion, was being feted as if nothing had changed, with delirious cheers.As his playing partner Sunday, Jordan Spieth, said afterward: “It felt very much like eight, nine or 10 years ago.”Spieth also played well on Sunday, shooting 66 to Mickelson’s 65, and he had firsthand experience of what it was like to play with Mickelson years ago.“I’ve played with him three or four times on Sunday here,” Spieth, who finished in a three-way tie for fourth at seven under par, said. “And I didn’t feel a whole lot different than those times.”That is the most meaningful takeaway of this year’s Masters. A LIV player may not have won during the four days at Augusta National but they did not lose, as many expected. The reception Mickelson received proved that many golf fans are not drawing lines in the sand over this golf feud.The LIV-affiliated golfers took three spots in the top 10, including Brooks Koepka matching Mickelson. Twelve of the 18 entrants made the cut. For a week at least, the embarrassingly low television ratings this year for LIV events in the United States seemed less significant. The conversation about LIV’s relevance was altered for a week, led by Mickelson. There will now be fewer assertions that LIV’s 54-hole events are merely exhibitions that do not prepare players for major competitions. Mickelson, 52, certainly showed plenty of stamina and panache for the final round on Sunday. Moreover, he predicted before the tournament that he was “about to go on a tear.”Since Mickelson had not played especially well during his LIV tenure, not many in the golf world took that prediction seriously.“It just reaffirms that I knew I was close and have been hitting quality shots,” Mickelson said after Sunday’s round. “This doesn’t feel like a fluke. I didn’t make loose swings at an inopportune time. I stayed very present and calm throughout, then executed and had a blast.”Mickelson was smiling, even beaming. He understood the moment as he stood in front of the Augusta National clubhouse wearing the logos of the LIV team he captains — the HyFlyers — on his hat and a breast of his black pullover.“Like this is so much fun,” he said. “Again, we’re all grateful that we’re able to play and compete here.”Mickelson, playing in the second round, had not played well on the LIV Golf tour, but said he was confident going into the Masters.Mike Blake/ReutersHe added a subtle, yet cheeky and revealing, comment — what else would you expect from a Phil Mickelson news conference? — that was made plainly accurate by his performance and those of others in LIV’s wing of professional golf.“I think it’s tremendous for this tournament to have all the best players in the world here,” he said with another grin. “It means a lot.”Mickelson is correct. For now at least, his performance and that of his brethren within LIV made a statement at the 2023 Masters. For one, the civil war on the fairways and greens that was envisioned didn’t materialize. The golfers from both tours got along. OK, maybe not every LIV representative was as welcome as the likable Cameron Smith, but some of those LIV guys weren’t well liked back when they were on the PGA Tour.In the end, what the four days at the Masters proved is that the LIV circuit is not going anywhere. That is not necessarily a positive development for the expanded community of golf fans because it means tournament fields, except at the majors (for now or until some exemptions for LIV golfers expire) will be diluted and missing some big names — on both sides.The cheers were real for Mickelson late Sunday, and understandable. But maybe in some subconscious way those ovations signaled what golf fans are missing — the whole gang back together again. More

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      At the Masters, Brooks Koepka Holds the Lead and Tiger Woods Withdraws

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      Woods exited the tournament during the third round that finished around noon on Sunday. Koepka held a two-stroke lead over Jon Rahm head into the final round.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods withdrew on Sunday from the Masters Tournament, where he was in last place and openly struggling to overcome the agony of years of injuries.Augusta National Golf Club announced Woods’s withdrawal 75 minutes before the resumption of the third round, which was suspended Saturday because of bad weather. Woods had completed seven holes of the round and was six over par, bringing his tournament score to nine over after he had made his 23rd consecutive Masters cut, tying a record shared by Fred Couples and Gary Player.In a post on Twitter on Sunday morning, after Augusta National’s announcement, Woods attributed his withdrawal to “reaggravating my plantar fasciitis,” a condition he has dealt with for months. In November, it led Woods to skip competing in an event in the Bahamas that he hosts.Woods’s decision at the Masters came on a far more prominent stage, and it marked the second time in less than a year that he withdrew from a major tournament. Last May, he left the P.G.A. Championship after the third round, when he had shot a nine-over-par 79. He skipped the U.S. Open and then missed the cut at the British Open.Although Woods, 47, has long grappled with injuries, he has especially struggled since a car wreck in February 2021 that nearly cost him a leg. He made his return to tournament golf at the Masters last April, when he finished 47th, and has repeatedly said he expects to enter only a handful of events each year.“It has been tough and will always be tough,” Woods said on Tuesday at Augusta National, where he has won the Masters five times, most recently in 2019. “The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same. I understand that. That’s why I can’t prepare and play as many tournaments as I like, but that’s my future and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”For Woods, whose wreck left him with open fractures of the tibia and fibula of his right leg, the challenge of the last year in golf has been less about his swing and more about the rigors of walking 72 holes over four days, especially at a notoriously hilly course like Augusta National. After he missed the cut at St. Andrews in July, he said it had been “hard just to walk and play 18 holes.”“People have no idea what I have to go through and the hours of the work on the body, pre and post, each and every single day to do what I just did,” he said after his British Open ended. Later in 2022, he said, without disclosing more details, that his year had included undergoing “a few more procedures because of playing.”The next major tournament is scheduled to start on May 18, when the P.G.A. Championship will be played at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y. Woods did not say on Sunday whether he intended to be in the field; in February, he said he would “hopefully” appear in all four majors this year.Although poor weather had forced three suspensions of play during this Masters, tournament officials appeared confident that the competition would end, as long planned, on Sunday. When the third round concluded shortly before noon on Sunday, with the Masters field down to 53 players, Brooks Koepka had a two-stroke lead over Jon Rahm.Koepka, who was 11 under par, sputtered slightly on the back nine in the third round, including at No. 17, where he three-putted for the first time during this tournament. Rahm also encountered trouble on the back nine, making bogey on two holes.Viktor Hovland, who barely missed a birdie putt on the 18th green at the end of his third round, was at eight under. More

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      Sunday’s Masters Plan: End the Third Round, Play the Fourth, Crown a Winner. Maybe Dry Out, Too.

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      Plus, Fred Couples sets a Masters record.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sometime on Sunday evening — weather permitting, because everything during this Masters Tournament seems to be like that — Brooks Koepka or Jon Rahm or one of 52 other players will get to wear the jacket they actually want to during this trip to Augusta National Golf Club.It’s green.Saturday’s weather threw the tournament into carefully managed havoc, with the third round scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. Koepka, Rahm and Sam Bennett were to try to finish the seventh hole, which they were playing in the 3 p.m. hour on Saturday when conditions became too poor to continue. If all goes according to Augusta National’s plan, the final round will tee off at 12:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, with the 54 players paired up and playing from the first and 10th tees.Augusta National, seeking to avoid its first Monday Masters finish since 1983, used a similar approach in 2019’s fourth round, when weather led groups of three to start from two tees.Tee times, of course, are only part of Augusta’s weather war plan. The club also has a highly sophisticated, sort-of-secret weapon: a vast, subterranean system known as SubAir that draws moisture away from the golf course’s greens and fairways. The system has many functions, including pumping fresh air to assist with the root structure of the grass. But when heavy rainfall strikes, it can siphon rainwater away from the central areas of the course to places on the property that are more likely to be out of play.Players love the SubAir system because it can keep the speed of a course’s devilish greens consistent despite a downpour, as well as make fairways drier, which leads to harder landing surfaces and longer drives off the tee. The system emits a low hum, a sound the top players have come to appreciate.“They just turn it on,” Viktor Hovland marveled last year, “and overnight it’s a completely different golf course.”Fred Couples — yes, 63-year-old Fred Couples — made the cut.Fred Couples acknowledged the crowd on the 18th green during the continuation of the weather-delayed second round on Saturday.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesLet’s be honest: It is virtually certain that Fred Couples will not win the Masters this year. He might even finish last, or close to it. But Fred Couples, the 1992 champion, is still in the field, which is more than some of his (much) younger counterparts can say.At 63, he is the oldest player ever to make the Masters cut.“There really isn’t a secret,” Couples said. “Everyone loves this place. That doesn’t mean you’re going to play well. If I hit it really solid, I’m a good iron player.”Couples, who has lifetime playing privileges at the Masters thanks to his 1992 win, last played the third and fourth rounds in 2018, when he finished in a tie for 38th. His last top-10 finish came in 2010, when he placed sixth.“I am excited to make the cut,” he said. “That’s why I come here. The last four years have been really mediocre golf — maybe one year I was semi-close to making the cut — but that’s my objective, and I did it. It’s not like, ‘Ha, ha, ha. Now I can screw around and play 36 holes for fun.’ I’m going to try and compete. Play a good pairing with some younger guys and watch them play.”Indeed, he knows he will compete only so much. He is fine with that.“I can’t compete with Viktor Hovland or Jon Rahm or anybody, but I can compete with myself, and that’s really why I come,” he said.A few notable scores so far in the interrupted third round.Brooks Koepka hit a bunker shot to the second green on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThere is still plenty of third-round golf to play, but the round has not delivered as much of the movement that players want: Only 11 improved their scores. Three — Patrick Cantlay, Matt Fitzpatrick and Sungjae Im — picked up three strokes. Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, improved by two, and Koepka brightened his score by one.Phil Mickelson remains at four under par for the tournament after bogeying two of the last three holes before play was suspended on Saturday. Justin Rose started the round at four under, got to six under and was back to four under when everyone headed indoors.Dustin Johnson, who won the tournament in 2020 with the lowest score in the competition’s history, is six over for the round, putting him in a tie for 51st at five over. More

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      At a Flooded Augusta National, Koepka Builds a Lead and Woods Sinks

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      Third-round play was suspended midafternoon Saturday. Koepka was alone atop the leaderboard, and Woods was at the bottom. Twenty-two strokes separated them.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The raindrops tumbled toward the turf in sheets, rapping umbrellas on their way down and pooling anywhere they could: in shoes, in plastic beer cups, onto the famously — and, on Saturday, formerly — fiery greens at Augusta National Golf Club.That last part was a problem, since ponds are no place to play a Masters Tournament. Even though he was merely on the seventh hole, Brooks Koepka minded only so much. By the time tournament officials suspended third-round play about 3:15 p.m., he was among only 11 players to have picked up a stroke or more on a cold, mostly miserable Masters Saturday.“That seventh green was soaked,” said Koepka, whose score for the week improved to 13 under par. “It was very tough. I thought I hit a good bunker shot, and it looked like it just skidded on the water, so I’m glad we stopped.”Play is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday. Koepka will begin with a four-stroke lead over Jon Rahm, who trailed by two at the start of his third round. Everyone else in the 54-man field is at least seven off the lead and expecting a decidedly soft course.People headed for the exit after play was suspended because of heavy rain.“I think it’s going to be gettable,” said Sam Bennett, the amateur from Texas A&M University who is in third place, at six under. “I’m guessing we’re going to still have to play it down since we started playing it down, which might be a little tough,” he added, referring to the requirement that players play the ball as it lies on the fairway, even if it’s dirty. “I’m sure there’s going to be some mud balls out there.”Probably so, since Georgia mud in the spring cannot easily be eliminated by deploying Augusta National’s SubAir system to suck water from greens.All through this Masters week, players and organizers had mused about the threat of rain and the possibility of the first Monday finish since 1983. Tournament officials signaled that they were still hoping to finish the competition as scheduled on Sunday, with the final round set to begin at 12:30 p.m. off the first and 10th tees.It has been a vexing stretch for Augusta National, a club that ordinarily revels in brilliant weather during the Masters. The skies forced two stoppages of play on Friday, so when they cleared enough on Saturday for players to finish the second round and begin the third, it seemed a modest victory.The hours of play were enough for Koepka to find a bunker on No. 2 and make birdie there anyway — for a second consecutive day. (He birdied there on Thursday, too, without the sandy detour.) Rahm also birdied the hole on Saturday, though his back-to-back bogeys, on Nos. 4 and 5, ultimately left him headed out for the afternoon at nine under.For the third round, tournament organizers used groups of three and a two-tee start to try to bank as much golf as they could. When play was suspended, the men at the top of the leaderboard appeared somewhat content.Sam Bennett of the United States lining up a putt before play was suspended.The feeling was much different at the bottom, where Tiger Woods was mired in 54th. He had spent the morning stubbornly striving to produce the best mediocre version of himself, and it had been just enough to make the cut that cast Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau out of the tournament much sooner than they would have preferred.So there was Woods, who has not missed a Masters cut since he turned professional in 1996, bundled up with his comrades as if the tournament had transformed into a British Open burdened by rain and wind.One could be forgiven for wondering whether it was worth it.Woods began his third round early Saturday afternoon with a perfect drive off the 10th tee, but his approach shot to the plateau green was short and rolled back into the fairway, leading to a bogey. After three routine pars, Woods, whose swing appeared more stiff as Augusta’s temperatures plunged into the 40s, made an awkward pass at the ball on the 14th tee and hooked it into a line of trees left of the 14th fairway. That led to another bogey.After a drive in the fairway and a safe layup second shot on the par-5 15th hole, Woods’s limp seemed to be more pronounced as he descended the steep hill toward the green. His pitch shot to the green landed on the putting surface but had too much spin and rolled backward into the pond. His next attempt at clearing the water remained on the green, but after two putts, Woods had his first double bogey of the tournament.As he walked onto the tee for the short par-3 16th hole, Woods’s stride looked shorter and his movements constrained. His swing at the golf ball was awkward, and the shot veered left and well short of its target, plopping into the water hazard alongside the hole. His third shot stopped 40 feet from the hole, and two putts later, Woods had registered back-to-back double bogeys, dropping his score for the tournament to nine over.Koepka watched as course workers tried to clear water off the seventh green.Koepka, pursuing his first major victory since 2019, was 22 strokes ahead. He is 30 holes and an iffy weather forecast away from his first Masters title. Sunday morning, the tournament’s official forecast said, could bring a “lingering drizzle.”The meteorologists also added a new feature to the weather update: a Monday forecast, just in case. More