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      Sam Bennett Stars at the Masters. Wait, Who’s Sam Bennett?

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      No amateur golfer has ever won a green jacket, but after two rounds, one is threatening to conquer Augusta National, almost as aggressively as the weather.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Augusta National Golf Club makes much of its commitment to amateur golfers. Only this week, in fact, it announced that it would begin to more deliberately welcome collegiate champions to the Masters Tournament and the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.But did the club anticipate that an amateur would hover near the top of the leaderboard after play on Friday? Probably not.Sam Bennett is here, it seems, to challenge expectations. With back-to-back 68s, he stood at eight under par after finishing his second round. He has yet to make a bogey.“I just wanted to put two good rounds up,” Bennett, a 23-year-old from Texas A&M University, said. “I knew my golf was good enough to compete out here. I found myself in a situation that now I’ve got a golf tournament that I can go out and win.”No amateur has won the Masters, which debuted in 1934, but three have finished as runners-up. With the second round suspended because of poor weather, Bennett was third on the leaderboard, trailing Brooks Koepka by four strokes and Jon Rahm by one.Bennett does not lack for confidence. Asked why he believed he could catch Koepka, he replied, “Because I know that my good golf is good enough.”He said he did not expect all that many nerves whenever he plays the third round.“I made the cut as an amateur,” he said. “I kind of made my mark. I played steady golf. Now, it’s time for me to go out and enjoy, soak it all in, be able to play the weekend at the Masters. I mean, growing up as a kid, if you would have told me that, I would have said you’re probably crazy.”Bad news: The forecasters were probably right.Saturday’s weather forecast for Augusta, Ga., called for widespread, heavy rain much of the day.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe weather forecast has not been the talk of Augusta this week, but it has been up there. Now it is the talk of the town — and plenty of players are wondering just how long they will need to stay around.The tournament had a 21-minute weather delay in the 3 p.m. hour on Friday. Then came another suspension at 4:22 p.m. By 5:45 p.m., Augusta National said play would not restart on Friday.Competition is scheduled to resume at 8 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, but the forecast is not exactly encouraging.“Widespread rain arrives early Saturday morning and will continue throughout the day, with heavy rainfall intensities likely to occur at times,” Augusta National wrote in a weather bulletin that said to expect up to two inches of rain on Saturday, as well as wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour.The tournament narrowly avoided a catastrophe on Friday, when winds toppled three trees by the tee on No. 17. Although spectators and tournament workers were nearby, no one was hurt.“The safety and well-being of everyone attending the Masters Tournament will always be the top priority of the club,” Augusta National said in a statement on Friday evening. “We will continue to closely monitor weather today and through the tournament.”The Masters last finished on a Monday in 1983, when Seve Ballesteros won.Collin Morikawa isn’t ready to be counted out, but he knows Koepka will be tricky to chase.“With the weather and everything, you’re going to have to really stay patient,” Collin Morikawa said.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesCollin Morikawa, a winner of a British Open and a P.G.A. Championship, has climbed the leaderboard in each of his three Masters appearances, finishing fifth last year. He knows better than most how difficult it is to see a major tournament through to the end. (“People show up breathing differently, feeling differently,” he said on Friday.)After posting a pair of 69s, he is not out of the hunt, standing in a tie for fourth at six under with Viktor Hovland. But given the weather conditions, Koepka is likely to have some advantages preserving his lead, shifting the burden decisively toward the trailing players. Expect to see players looking to claw back strokes in bite-size pieces.“With the weather and everything, you’re going to have to really stay patient, and I’m going to have to go out and make some birdies,” Morikawa said. “I don’t think he’s really going to come backward, so we’re going to have to go out and chase him, and that’s going to be on me to figure out how to make a few more out there for these next 36.”Phil Mickelson promises he’s about to ‘go on a tear.’Phil Mickelson hit from the bunker on the second hole on Friday.David J. Phillip/Associated PressPhil Mickelson shot a three-under-par 69 in Friday’s second round, and coupled with his 71 on Thursday, he was tied for 10th when play was suspended. It is some of the best golf that Mickelson has played since last year when he joined the LIV Golf circuit, where he has finished outside the top 30 in 10 limited-field events.But Mickelson, in postround comments Friday, insisted he was about “to go on a tear.”He continued: “You wouldn’t think it. You look at the scores. But I’ve been playing exactly how I played yesterday, hitting the ball great, turning 65s, 66s into 77s somehow.“I don’t know why I’m playing well — actually, I do. I’ve been putting in the work.”Mickelson credited his teammates on LIV Golf’s Hyflyers team with helping him improve certain aspects of his game. He said that Cameron Tringale, whom Mickelson called “one of the best putters in the game,” had given him tips on his putting stroke and that another teammate, Brendan Steele, had straightened out his driver swing.“Like I’m hitting so many good shots, pretty soon I’m going to have a really low one,” Mickelson said, meaning a low round. “When that happens and it clicks, then the game feels easy again. Then I stop putting pressure on myself, and the scores just start to fall into place.”He added that people think he might be too old to contend in a major championship again at 52, but he insisted he was “on the precipice of playing as well as I played 15, 20 years ago because I’m seeing that when I’m at home. I’m seeing that in practice. I’m just not quite letting it happen when I’m out in the tournaments yet.”Asked if the turnaround could happen over the weekend at the Masters, Mickelson, who counts three green jackets among his six major championships, replied: “It’s possible. Who knows when it will click? It could click tomorrow, I don’t know. Part of it is just slowing my mind down and letting it happen and then it clicks. But that’s kind of the biggest challenge in the game — not forcing it.”— Bill Pennington More

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      Rory McIlroy, Confident Before the Masters, Is Likely to Miss the Cut

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      McIlroy had five bogeys in the first 11 holes on Friday to finish five over par. His quest for a career Grand Slam will probably have to wait one more year.AUGUSTA, Ga. — On Tuesday, two days before the start of the 2023 Masters Tournament, Rory McIlroy insisted he arrived at the Augusta National Golf Club “as relaxed as I ever have been coming in here.”In fact, he called finishing second at last year’s Masters, “a breakthrough.” His work with a sports psychologist had him feeling “a lot more loose, a lot more confident.”Probing the popular, affable McIlroy about his psyche in the run-up to the Masters is an annual rite of spring in the golf community. The practice can be traced to 2011 when McIlroy, then 21, had a four-shot lead entering the Masters final round then shot 80 to finish tied for 15th.Worse, the meltdown had arresting visuals — the mop-topped McIlroy deep in thorny woods, so far from the 10th fairway the broadcast cameras could barely find him through the maze of loblolly pine trees. When his head finally appeared near a white cabin meant to be out of play, McIlroy appeared dazed.His Masters results improved in subsequent years, statistically at least. But did they help his overall cause? Yes, he contended again, but finishing in the top 10 seven times since 2014 only underscored what has not happened: He has been close again and again but never won at Augusta National.Framing the quest for the championship of the sport’s most watched event were McIlroy’s victories in the other major championships: at the U.S. Open, the British Open and twice at the P.G.A. Championship.McIlroy was four over par by the time he was playing the 15th hole.Only five players have won golf’s Grand Slam: Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Or as McIlroy likes to say with a smile: “I am reminded of that on the eve of every Masters.”He was asked about it Tuesday: What would it feel like to join that group?“Feel pretty good,” he replied. He added his analysis of his struggles at the Masters.“I’ve always felt like I have the physical ability to win this tournament,” he said. “But it’s being in the right head space to let those physical abilities shine through.”Around noon in the second round on Friday, McIlroy stood next to his golf ball in the middle of the 11th fairway. He was in perfect position to attack the downhill green about 170 yards away. As McIlroy swung, his right hand came off the club almost at contact and his shoulders immediately slumped. His left leg buckled ever so slightly.His face had the familiar look of an exasperated golfer: Not again.The ball sailed toward a pond left of the green then plopped into it. McIlroy hung his head. The crowd near the green gasped.It would lead to McIlroy’s fifth bogey in the opening 11 holes. He would rally with two birdies on the par-5 13th and 15th holes, which were playing relatively easy on Friday, then bogey the 16th. His day ended with a familiar ignominy on the Augusta National grounds: His tee shot on the 18th hole disappeared into a thicket of pine trees. There was McIlroy again, barely visible, trying to find a way to extricate his ball from the woods. It led to a final bogey and a round of 77, five over par. He shot an even par 72 in Thursday’s first round.McIlroy, who began the second round at even par and with a chance to play into the weekend, on the 17th hole.Although play was suspended by inclement weather late on Friday afternoon, McIlroy will undoubtedly miss the midway cut for the tournament once the second round is completed on Saturday — or Sunday if rain or thunderstorms continue to interrupt the tournament. It will be the third time McIlroy will be excluded from the final two rounds of the Masters and the second time it has happened in the last three years.When his Friday round ended, McIlroy walked into an adjunct building alongside the Augusta National clubhouse where players enter their scores. He was expected to do two television interviews inside that facility and then speak with a group of reporters waiting for him outside. He instead declined all interviews, according to a spokesman for the club.It is certainly understandable if McIlroy, consistently one of the most accessible elite golfers in the game, had nothing else to say.Saying too much has not helped in the past. It was on the eve of his disastrous fourth round in 2011 that McIlroy told a packed interview room at Augusta National: “I’m finally feeling comfortable on this golf course.”And in his Tuesday interview, he could not have been more effusive about how prepared and confident he felt about contending at the 2023 Masters. He was philosophical.“I think you have to go through everything, right?” said McIlroy, who is the world’s second ranked golfer. “Not every experience is going to be a good experience. I think that would lead to a pretty boring life. You know, you have to learn from those challenges and learn from some of that scar tissue that’s built up.“You know, I felt last year that I maybe shed some of that scar tissue and felt like I sort of made breakthroughs.”Fitting of his disappointing round, McIlroy hit his tee shot from No. 18th into the pine trees.He continued: “Good experiences, bad experiences, it all adds up at the end of the day.”Friday afternoon, McIlroy received polite applause as he left the 18th green. He nodded at the crowd and forced the thinnest of smiles.But another of his comments from Tuesday perhaps best expressed his thoughts at the moment.“I’ve been knocking on the door for a fifth major,” he said, “for a while.” More

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      Brooks Koepka Seizes Masters Lead After 2nd Round

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      The LIV golfer was at 12 under with a three-stroke lead after two rounds when play was suspended because of inclement weather.AUGUSTA, Ga. — After the Friday round of last year’s Masters Tournament, Brooks Koepka stormed to a Mercedes-Benz parked at Augusta National Golf Club. He was in a fury, a four-time major tournament champion with a beat-up body, a war chest of pent-up ambition and another missed cut.He tried twice with his fist to break the back window, which did not so much as crack, a pair of low moments in a year so overrun with them that one of the finest golfers of his generation found himself wondering whether he should play on.“If I wasn’t going to be able to move the way I wanted to, I didn’t want to play the game anymore — it’s just that simple,” Koepka said on Friday, when he recounted how it sometimes took 20 minutes to get out of bed, or how he had sometimes feared demanding too much of his knee.But as Koepka gave the world a new glimpse into his tormented mind and sustained agony, it was as the leader of the Masters, where his five-under-par 67 in Friday’s second round gave him a three-stroke lead when play was suspended for the day because of inclement weather.Koepka walked past the pond on the 16th hole.A victory on Sunday — or whenever the tournament ends, given a Saturday forecast of two inches of rain and winds reaching 30 miles per hour — would be of an exorcism of sorts for Koepka, who went from champion to close-but-not-quite to cut material over just a few years. It would also be a singular achievement for LIV Golf, the circuit Koepka joined last year after Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolled it with billions of dollars, and assure Koepka that, even as much of the golf establishment denigrates his new league, he can play the Masters for life and, likely, other majors for at least five more years.“If you win one here,” Koepka said Friday, “it kind of ticks a lot of boxes, doesn’t it?”Indeed. It would also put him a British Open victory away from a career Grand Slam.Koepka approached the first tee on Friday sharing one-third of the lead with Viktor Hovland and Jon Rahm, who had also carded 65s on Thursday. With poor weather looming, he figured an early start would be an advantage. By the time Augusta National briefly suspended play for the first time on Friday, he was well past signing his scorecard, and Rahm and Hovland had not even made the turn. Rahm had not gained so much as a stroke after six holes, and Hovland had surrendered one after seven.Meanwhile, Sam Bennett, a 23-year-old amateur from Texas A&M University, had picked up four shots to move to eight under. His 68 on Friday matched Marvin Ward’s Masters record from 1940 for the lowest second round by an amateur. No amateur has ever won the tournament, first played in 1934.But Bennett, who trailed Rahm by a stroke after the world’s third-ranked golfer birdied the eighth and ninth holes, certainly outmaneuvered many professionals. Rory McIlroy, No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking, had a miserable Friday and was poised to miss the cut at the conclusion of the second round, which Augusta National officials hope to restart on Saturday.Although the cut line could shift and some were still playing, the past major champions Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio García, Louis Oosthuizen and Bubba Watson were all in significant danger of exiting the tournament. That would dent the showing of the LIV circuit that upended golf’s outward civility and turned players, in the minds of the league’s critics, into symbols of greed and a surreptitious Saudi quest to repair the kingdom’s tarnished reputation.For Koepka, who earned about $38 million in prize money on the PGA Tour, LIV has been his most prominent proving ground lately. He has won two of the circuit’s events, including a tournament in Florida last weekend.Koepka made birdie on the second hole.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Friday at the Masters, he scarcely waited to break the tie he faced at daybreak. He moved to the top of the leaderboard with a birdie at No. 2, one of those eminently gettable holes where a potential champion should make headway.He made par on the next five holes, and then he reached No. 8, the 570-yard par-5 that Rahm eagled on Thursday.After his drive, Koepka figured he had about 256 yards to the pin. A smear of mud encrusted part of the ball, leaving Koepka to wonder what it would do. He wanted to leave the ball short of the pin, clutched his 3-iron and took a swing that, he said, he could not have made not all that long ago, not with that uphill lie and a lack of power.The ball landed just short of the green, and then bounced onto it, rolling toward the right. A putt later, he, too, had an eagle at No. 8. Birdies at No. 13, which is playing 35 yards longer this year, and No. 15 sealed his 67, a bogey-free round on a day when McIlroy had four just on the front nine.“He drove it well, hit his irons well, chipped it well and putted it well,” said Gary Woodland, the 2019 U.S. Open winner who was grouped with Koepka on Thursday and Friday. “It was a clinic for 36 holes.”Such a show of force seemed improbable until only recently, and it was still so unexpected that Koepka being able to linger in a crouch at No. 13, which he birdied on Friday, was notable.For some time, he said afterward, he had been angry when he did something so simple and standard for a professional golfer, angry about how he had slipped at home and dislocated a knee — and burst a kneecap and tore a ligament when he tried to relocate the knee himself.Had he been healthy, he acknowledged Friday, the decision to join LIV, with its guaranteed money and 54-hole, no-cut tournaments, probably would have been a closer call. Around the time LIV’s first season ended in the fall, he said, he began to believe he was on the verge of a revival. By the end of January, he felt all but certain of it.Koepka, right, and Gary Woodland congratulated each other after finishing their round on the 18th green.Doug Mills/The New York Times“I’ve got a completely different knee, so the normal is a little bit different, but swing-wise, it still feels the same,” he said. “I’m able to do everything I need to, and the confidence is there. The confidence was lost just because of my knee and that was it.”Hovland, who was through 10 holes when play was suspended, and Collin Morikawa, who had finished his round, were tied for fourth at six under, just behind Rahm and Bennett.The nearest LIV player to Koepka’s score was Phil Mickelson, who trailed the leader by eight strokes. For the embattled league, that gap is almost beside the point. Koepka’s surge at Augusta is perhaps the circuit’s most welcome reprieve after months of setbacks, including legal defeats, a miserly television contract in the United States and, according to a court filing from LIV, revenues of “virtually zero.” (A federal judge in California ruled Friday that a trial in the acrimonious litigation between the PGA Tour and LIV would not begin in January 2024, as had been planned. The judge did not immediately set a new trial date.)LIV’s detractors and rivals, particularly the PGA Tour, have reveled in its troubles and pined for its demise. At the same time, many in the golf establishment fretted over the possibility that a LIV player could soon enough prevail at one of the sport’s grandest competitions.At last summer’s British Open, a reporter asked the R&A’s chief executive whether a LIV player hoisting the claret jug would amount to the governing body’s “worst nightmare.”After all, the executive, Martin Slumbers, had just lashed LIV’s model as “not in the best long-term interests of the sport” and “entirely driven by money.”“Whoever wins on Sunday is going to have their name carved in history,” Slumbers replied then, “and I’ll welcome them onto the 18th green.”The sport’s leaders came only so close to such a scene last summer. One like it might now be only two rounds away — once, of course, the second round actually concludes. More

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      Masters Leaderboard: Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka Tied on Top

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      Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka all shot 65s in the opening round of the first Masters of the LIV Golf era.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. He is tied for the lead with Jon Rahm and the LIV Golf player Brooks Koepka. “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.Hovland closed his round with four straight pars.With those conditions, Hovland was almost certainly not going to end Thursday as a runaway solo leader, and he did not. Rahm, who endured a frustrating March after winning three PGA Tour events in January and February, overcame a double bogey on the first hole to also finish at 65. And Koepka, who won a LIV Golf event over the weekend, birdied the last two holes to earn a share of the lead, lending the second-year circuit a dose of the credibility that it might require and crave in equal measure.“It’s full focus on this and trying to walk out of here with a green jacket,” said Koepka, one of the headliners of the LIV circuit funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to considerable condemnation and skepticism.Koepka, a four-time major tournament winner, drew attention Thursday evening from the tournament’s Competition Committee, whose chairman said that officials had “questioned” Koepka’s caddie and others “about a possible incident on No. 15.”“All involved were adamant that no advice was given or requested,” the chairman, James B. Hyler Jr., said in a statement. “Consequently, the committee determined that there was no breach of the rules.”Beyond Koepka, LIV, whose 54-hole competitions provoked wide debate over whether its players would be ready for the rigors of 72-hole major tournaments, had a mixed day. Cameron Smith, the reigning British Open champion, opened with a tee shot that stopped closer to the ninth fairway than the first. When sundown came, though, he had signed for a two-under-par 70. Phil Mickelson, a three-time Masters champion, was one under par, as was Dustin Johnson, the 2020 winner.Brooks Koepka viewed his early tee time for Friday, with rain in the forecast, as an advantage.But Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters winner who has missed Augusta National’s cut only once in his career, bogeyed or worse on six holes to score a 77. Louis Oosthuizen put together a 76, and Bryson DeChambeau, who had a six-shot U.S. Open victory less than three years ago, finished at 74.Still, for all of the embittered theatrics that have seeped into men’s golf as LIV stormed onto the scene last year, much about the inaugural Masters of the LIV era seemed like most any other one.Fans — pardon us, patrons — clutched plastic cups that sweated more conspicuously than some of the players. A woman dozed at the base of a tree close to the 11th fairway, and just a bit deeper into Amen Corner, Larry Mize, the 1987 champion playing his final Masters, approached the 12th tee box to gentle applause. Woods, the 15-time major winner was, as usual, an attraction, by design or happenstance.“You’re just in time: You can see Tiger tee off,” a gallery guard at the No. 7 crossway told an elderly man sporting a hat from the 2007 P.G.A. Championship. (Fittingly, Woods won that tournament.)He saw Woods, yes, his journey to a two-over-par 74. But he also glimpsed the handiwork of Hovland and Schauffele, who would end at four under on a day when he felt he had exacting command of his ball.Hovland’s lurch toward the top of the leaderboard began on the second hole, the 575-yard par-5 that played as the easiest hole at last year’s Masters. His tee shot thundered to the middle of the fairway, leaving him about 209 yards from the pin, by his estimate. He gripped his 6-iron and expected his ball to crash around the green’s front edge.Tiger Woods had five bogeys and three birdies in his round.It went much farther, landing close enough for Hovland, who has sometimes struggled to conquer the intricacies of the short game, to putt for eagle. He later birdied five holes, including the newly lengthened 13th, and had no bogeys.“Around here, there’s never just a normal golf shot except maybe on the par-3s because everything is all different lies,” said Patrick Reed, the 2018 winner.“Because of that, you have to have full control over what your club’s doing, especially what you’re trying to do through impact,” added Reed, a LIV player who shot a 71 on Thursday. “I feel like Viktor has always done that really well. If he gets going and his putter starts working, he’s going to go out and do what he’s doing on this golf course right now.”Rahm summoned similarly consequential magic on the eighth hole, the one christened Yellow Jasmine that demands 570 yards.Rahm stood in the tee box and hit, in his estimate, “about as hard a drive as I can.” He figured he had about 267 yards left to the hole and pictured hitting a draw 4-iron. The right bounce, he thought, might position him around the back of the green.Then he hit it lower than he wanted.“It carried about 8 on and obviously on a perfect line and released all the way to 3 feet,” he said. “I would hope I would get that close, but being realistic, it doesn’t usually happen that often. I’m happy it did. I mean, it was a really good swing, and for that to end up that close is a huge bonus.”Hovland shot par or better on every hole.Eagle. The leaders will take a two-stroke advantage over Cameron Young and Jason Day, who were tied for fourth, into Friday.Augusta National may not be so relatively easy in the days ahead. The tournament’s official forecast warned that rain would threaten for much of Friday, when thunderstorms could upend afternoon play. Saturday’s outlook was even more miserable, with up to two inches of rain and wind gusts of 25 miles per hour expected.Koepka said his 8:18 a.m. Eastern time appointment at No. 1 — 30 minutes earlier than initially planned — could be his greatest advantage on Friday.“I think I might be able to squeak out a few more holes than everybody else before it starts dumping,” he said.Plenty of people will be chasing.Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer and last year’s Masters winner, missed a birdie putt at No. 18 and ended his day at four under. Rory McIlroy shot a 72, the first time since 2018 he had played a first round at Augusta to par or better.The cut will happen Friday evening, weather permitting, with the line being the top-50, plus ties, leaving DeChambeau, Watson and Woods more vulnerable than most after their showings in the first round.“Most of the guys are going low today,” Woods said. “This was the day to do it.” More

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      Forecast for the Masters: Water, Water Everywhere

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      Plus, Mike Weir had to figure out the back nine by himself, and Will Zalatoris got yet another dose of terrible luck.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Augusta National Golf Club was warm and sticky on Thursday. It might be the best run of acceptable weather at the Masters Tournament for a while.Friday is looking gloomy enough that tournament officials moved tee times 30 minutes earlier. And Saturday’s forecast calls for up to two inches of rain, with winds possibly gusting to 25 miles per hour. Rain showers could stretch into Sunday, Augusta National’s official forecast said, “before drier conditions finally return Sunday afternoon with a few peeks of sunshine.”The Masters has not finished on a Monday since 1983, so most of the 88-player field is in new territory. But there was a consensus around the course on Thursday that anyone with a low score from the first round was in a far more advantageous position than he might ordinarily have been.“Any week, you want to get off to a good start,” said Adam Scott, the 2013 Masters winner. “But we just don’t know what’s going to happen and how the weather might affect the rest of the week. So if you’re hanging around right from the start on a week like this, it’s probably helpful.”Scott sure hopes so: He shot a four-under-par 68, good for a tie for sixth.Mike Weir’s latest Masters riddle: How to play alone.Mike Weir played the final nine holes of his first round without a partner after Kevin Na withdrew from the tournament.Mike Blake/ReutersAsk any Masters champion about Augusta National, and he will tell you the course and the tournament are always poised to throw in a new twist. For Mike Weir, the 2003 winner, the new challenge came when his playing partner, Kevin Na, withdrew at the turn on Thursday, leaving Weir to play the back nine by himself.And since Na and Weir were the first players to head out Thursday morning, it fell to Weir to set the pace and, he acknowledged afterward, slow himself down.“I told my caddie I didn’t want to overthink and be too slow,” Weir said. “You kind of get in a routine, and you don’t want to take too much time and overthink things.”Thanks to a few frustrating putts, he shot a 37 on the back nine, bringing his Thursday score to a par 72 to finish tied for 37th. Part of the challenge, he said afterward, was that he had found himself without a valuable source of intelligence: the other guy’s play.“You do pick up on speed of greens,” he said of a typical round with another player. “You see how the ball’s flying through the air. When you’re trying to figure out the wind, you pay attention to ball flight and things like that — not so much on tee shots, but approach shots into the greens and around the greens, you see how the green’s reacting and things like that when you’re playing with somebody else.”Weir, 52, is hardly accustomed to playing alone in competition: Thirty-one years after he turned professional, he could not remember the last time he had played as a single.“The biggest thing is just getting the pace right of your walk and not kind of getting too caught up in my own game and just kind of having a laugh with my caddie and just kind of enjoying it,” he said. “That’s the approach I took: Let’s just enjoy this back nine. It’s beautiful out here. Let’s just have a good time, and then when we get ready to hit, let’s get dialed in.”A run of bad luck goes on for Will Zalatoris.Will Zalatoris finished second at the 2021 Masters in his debut, but had to pull out of this year’s tournament on Thursday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTwo years ago, Will Zalatoris made his Masters debut and nearly won: At the tournament’s end, he trailed the victor, Hideki Matsuyama, by a lone stroke. But his quest to actually win a major tournament — he has been a runner-up three times — is on hold until at least next month’s P.G.A. Championship after his withdrawal from the Masters before his tee time on Thursday because of an injury.The illness-and-injury scourge has hit Zalatoris harder than most lately. In August, he withdrew from the BMW Championship during the third round after hurting his back, an injury that also kept him from the Tour Championship and, quite likely, the Presidents Cup. Then a stomach bug chased him from the World Golf Championships match play event in Texas last month.“I’ve never had anything like that,” Zalatoris, who is eighth in the Official World Golf Ranking, recounted this week. “I lost about seven pounds in a week — feel great now. Kind of reset the system.”His best finish this year came in February, when he placed fourth at the Genesis Invitational.A three-time Masters winner gets subdued support.Phil Mickelson received muted applause when introduced.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersPhil Mickelson approached the first tee to begin his opening round at the Masters on Thursday just as Tiger Woods was making the turn from the front nine to the back nine about 40 feet away. Almost all eyes were on Woods, but once he had walked onto the 10th tee, several hundred fans diverted their attention to Mickelson.When he was introduced, Mickelson received muted applause, the kind produced by no more than 20 sets of hands. It was nothing like the enthusiastic ovations and zealous cheers Mickelson would have heard two years ago, when he last appeared at the Masters. In 2022, ahead of joining the LIV Golf tour, Mickelson took a leave of absence from competitive golf, including the Masters, which he has won three times.Thursday, after Mickelson hit his opening shot toward the first fairway, there was again very faint clapping. Mickelson, like most if not all of the LIV-affiliated golfers at this year’s Masters, was largely being given something akin to the silent treatment. As he walked off the tee toward his ball, three young men called out in unison, “Let’s go, Phil.” No one else in the gallery joined in, and Mickelson walked through a corridor of fans who stared at him but hardly made a sound.All around Augusta National this week, LIV golfers have not been shunned, and if there has been heckling, it has been rare or muffled. Augusta National galleries are nothing if not polite. But in a quiet way, it has also been a crowd that has seemed eager not to endorse those who defected to LIV.— Bill Pennington More

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      in Golf

      Tiger Woods, On One Good Leg, Struggles in First Round at the Masters

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      AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods saw where his golf ball came to rest after his tee shot on the last hole Thursday and knew he was in big trouble.What happened next would likely determine whether he had any chance to remain a contender at this year’s Masters Tournament.It was bad enough that Woods’s ball was inches away from the edge of a deep bunker left of the fairway, demanding a very awkward stance for his next shot. The fact is that in every moment of Woods’s daily life since his right leg was rebuilt with a steel rod and metal screws following his 2021 car crash, practically any uneven surface had become awkward.But this instance carried with it higher than usual stakes. In one of the closing sequences of his Masters opening round, he would have to position his left leg on a grassy rise outside the bunker as he dug his reconstructed right leg into the sand several feet below the golf ball. The irregular posture had shoulders, arms and legs akimbo. All he had to do from there was shift his weight from leg to leg during a high-speed swing and make contact solidly enough to advance the ball more than 100 yards toward the uphill 18th green.As usual, Woods drew a lot of attention from fans.Nothing to it.As Woods conceded afterward, if he let his unbalanced stance over the ball distract him he could have easily shanked his ball to the right and onto an adjacent hole. From there, he would have almost certainly made a double bogey, or worse. And to that point, Woods had not played well enough — one over par through 17 holes — to survive such an ugly number on his scorecard. He would be staring at elimination from the Masters after two rounds, something that has never happened to him as a professional golfer.But since he’s Tiger Woods, he had an escape plan, albeit a risky one. And since he’s Tiger Woods, he did not choke under the pressure of the moment nor did he allow the infirmity of his right leg to affect the outcome. Woods somehow made crisp contact with an iron and the ball rose on a line drive toward a bunker just to the right of the 18th green.Then came the hard part.At two over par, Woods was nine shots behind the leaders.Just as he appeared ready to topple backward into the sand, Woods quickly yanked his good left leg back into the bunker and simultaneously took all weight off his damaged right leg, deftly lifting it above the sand as he hopped on his left leg four times.Woods’s play-by-play analysis of the sequence went like this: “Hop on the left leg, so it’s fine. If I did it on the other one, not so fine.”Up near the green, Woods would blast from a routine lie in the bunker and need two putts to finish the hole but it was, in golf parlance, a good bogey. His round of 74 was disappointing but not ruinous after all. Afterward, Woods noted that rainy, windy weather had been forecast for Friday and Saturday, and with those troublesome conditions he thought he could get himself back into the tournament. Experience in changing weather always matters at Augusta, and Woods is playing in his 25th Masters.“If I can just kind of hang in there, maybe kind of inch my way back, hopefully it will be positive towards the end,” he said.“I didn’t hit my irons close enough to the hole today,” Woods said, blaming those miscues for a subpar putting round. It would be an extraordinary comeback against very long odds — especially with so much of the field posting low scores on a sunny, pleasant Thursday — but Woods was willing to dream.“I didn’t hit my irons close enough to the hole today,” he said, blaming those miscues for a subpar putting round (32 putts). He drove the ball reasonably well, hitting 10 of 14 fairways.As has been the case for many years now, it is Woods’s physical capability that remains the biggest variable — and the one with the most influence on his scores. Thursday, he was limping more and more on his right leg after about nine holes. He also winced often, which is not surprising for a 47-year-old golfer who has had multiple, intricate back surgeries along with several operations on his lower legs.Through 13 holes, Woods was three over par and laboring up and down Augusta National Golf Club’s precipitous hills, which regularly feature elevation changes of at least 30 feet. Sweat soaked his shirt and his expression was pained. But then on the par-5 15th hole, Woods sank a curling 25-foot, left-to-right putt for birdie. On the par-3 16th hole, the scene of so many spectacular Woods heroics that have led to five Masters victories, his iron approach stopped 10 feet from the hole and Woods made that putt as well to lower his score to one over par.Woods on the 13th green. He was three over par after the hole.Anything seemed possible at that moment and the massive gallery that had followed him throughout his round grew boisterous. With a birdie on the 18th, an even par score was in the cards, which would have been a meaningful comeback. Then his drive from the 18th tee, which was heading for the center of the fairway, took an unlucky bounce to the left and cozied up next to a yawning bunker.But hopping on one leg in a timely fashion, keeping his equilibrium in more ways than one, Woods survived to chase a sixth Masters victory for another day.Woods hoped variable weather conditions Friday could help him get back into the tournament. More

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      in Soccer

      If Arsenal win the Premier League, Pep’s decision to sell rivals Jesus and Zinchenko will be the costliest own goal ever

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      PEP GUARDIOLA doesn’t do regrets. Like football’s Edith Piaf, he refuses to cry about past events.But if Arsenal win the Prem, he still might want to get out the flux capacitor and revisit last summer’s decision to sell Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko.
      Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko have spearheaded Arsenal towards the titleCredit: Alamy
      With the benefit of hindsight, that one is shaping up to be the costliest own goal since, well, let’s not go there.
      Not because the absence of the Brazilian striker and the Ukrainian full-back has weakened Manchester City. It hasn’t.
      But the £75million duo have given the Gunners such a powerful leg up they are now odds-on favourites to snatch City’s throne next month.
      It’s a scenario which Guardiola couldn’t possibly have imagined when he banked Arsenal’s cheque for two men who had been bit-part players for much of their Etihad spell.
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      Hell, even Mikel Arteta didn’t see this one coming.
      Selling Raheem Sterling to Chelsea seemed to be a far greater risk at the time.
      But ask anyone at the Emirates for the spark behind this season’s success and they will all point to the arrival of Jesus and Zinchenko.
      They are constantly cited for their winning mentality and it’s noticeable that whenever the Arsenal players gather for their pre-match huddle, it’s usually one of those two issuing the rallying call.
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      Zinchenko has allowed Arteta to take a leaf straight out of the Pep playbook by pushing his left-back into midfield.
      And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, just look at the number of goals Arsenal now score from two yards out after ripping the opposition to shreds in the channels.
      Jesus’ return from injury could not have come at a better time to re-energise a team with a reputation for choking in the final reckoning.
      He’s only got seven goals this season while his City replacement Erling Haaland has 42. So, there’s no comparison on that front.
      HOW TO GET FREE BETS ON FOOTBALL
      Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola may regret selling Jesus and ZinchenkoCredit: Rex
      But you could argue that Jesus’ influence on his team has been even greater than the Norwegian powerhouse because of what he brings to the dressing room and the training ground.
      He might have won four league titles during his five years at City but  most of that time he played second fiddle to Sterling and Sergio Aguero.
      It was the same for Zinchenko, whose opportunities were restricted by Benjamin Mendy and Joao Cancelo.
      So, now they are relishing the responsibility of being the main men and will be absolutely crucial in the horrible games to come at Anfield, the Etihad and St James’ Park.
      Those are the fixtures which are going to decide this season’s title race.
      And having already collected more Prem medals than he knows what to do with, you suspect that winning another would probably mean less to Guardiola than it would to Arteta.
      But those former  glories won’t take away the pain of being the unwitting architect in his own downfall.
      Nottingham Forest are still standing behind manager Steve CooperCredit: PA
      Evan help him
      WHEN your manager is  feeling the pressure and needs an arm around the shoulder, who better to deliver that reassurance than Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis?
      The big softie has moved to “end the speculation” about Steve Cooper’s future by warning: “Results and  performances must improve immediately.”
      It’s probably the most intimidating vote of confidence in the history of football.
      And with Forest’s next five opponents all in the top half of the table, Cooper can take great comfort from the knowledge that his boss is right behind him . . . with a bloody great axe.
      Amir Khan has been hit with a two-year ban from boxingCredit: Reuters
      Khan’t do you good
      AMIR KHAN has been hit with a two-year ban from boxing after testing positive for ostarine following his grudge match with Kell Brook.
      Not sure what ostarine is supposed to do — I thought it was an eyewash — but judging by the state of Khan after his sixth-round battering, it was clear the drugs don’t work.
      Rafa still no gaffer
      THERE have been 13  managerial vacancies in the Premier League this season and, so far, Rafa Benitez has not managed to land any of them.
      That would suggest he’s not quite as sought after as he thinks, although there is now talk of him replacing Brendan Rodgers at Leicester.
      But even if he doesn’t get the nod there, he needn’t worry too much.
      Because the way things are going, there are bound to be a few more jobs coming up in the next week or two.
      Rafa Benitez is still without a job despite many Premier League dismissalsCredit: AP
      Happy to LIV a little
      OF all the major sports, golf is the one I care least about.
      Still, I’ll be keeping an eye on  this year’s Masters because the 18 LIV participants are all threatening to invade the 18th green if one of their number wins the Green Jacket.
      They need cheering up after a ruling effectively banned them from  the Ryder Cup.
      Which  makes them . . . rebels without a course.
      Eight to break it
      THE FA  plan to appeal  Aleksandar Mitrovic’s eight-match ban for shoving ref Chris Kavanagh as they don’t think the punishment is tough enough.
      Read More on The Sun
      What’s the point of sending disciplinary issues to an independent  commission?
      The FA can’t rely on outsiders to deal with offenders then moan when they don’t like the verdict. More

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      in Golf

      European Tour May Punish LIV Golfers, Arbitrators Rule

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      The decision by a panel in London was an early test for the Saudi Arabia-backed circuit, which is also facing legal battles in the United States.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Golf’s European tour may punish players who defected to the rival Saudi-financed LIV Golf series, an arbitration panel in London ruled in a decision released on Thursday, the first day of the Masters Tournament.With litigation in the United States possibly years from a conclusion, the panel’s decision about the European series, the DP World Tour, was the subject of immense anticipation and anxiety among players and executives. All sides saw it as a crucial test of whether long-established tours could easily discipline players who joined LIV, the league bankrolled with billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.The ruling in Europe will have no effect on the Masters, where 18 LIV players are in the field. But it was a blow to a rebel league that had hoped the days of tournament play would deliver a springboard to greater credibility, not renewed discussion about its appeal and risk to big-name pros.The decision is also likely to shape the European roster for the Ryder Cup, the wildly popular U.S.-vs.-Europe competition that will be held in Italy this fall. To be eligible for the European team, players must be members of the DP World Tour.The case before the arbitrators in London involved a narrow issue: the conflicting events policy of the DP World Tour, formerly known as the European Tour, which bars players from participating in certain tournaments without approval. In their ruling, announced after a five-day hearing in February, the arbitrators concluded that rebel players had committed “serious breaches” of the tour’s rules.The arbitrators found that the violations “increased the likelihood that commercial partners would be tempted to terminate or limit relationships with the tour.” Citing “the scale and importance of the potential harm” to the tour, the panel said that Keith Pelley, the tour’s chief executive, had “acted entirely reasonably” when he turned down the players’ requests to appear at LIV events.In a statement hours before the start of the Masters, Pelley embraced the ruling.“We are delighted that the panel recognized we have a responsibility to our full membership to do this and also determined that the process we followed was fair and proportionate,” Pelley said.LIV did not immediately comment on the decision.Even though the case dealt only with a specific tour policy, many sports lawyers predicted that its outcome could shape ambitions to create alternatives to marquee leagues, tours and federations. A victory for the tour, that thinking went, would lend fresh support to the kinds of rules leading sports organizers have created to protect their television rights agreements and market power. A ruling for the players might have encouraged athletes — and not just in golf — to weigh more seriously overtures from start-up leagues and competitions offering richer paydays.The subject has bubbled up repeatedly in recent years, with particularly fraught cases involving soccer, speedskating and swimming, and could become more common as athletes assert greater autonomy and as wealthy Persian Gulf states look to invest more heavily in sports. The women’s golf world, for example, has been rife with speculation that Saudi Arabia will eventually underwrite a women’s league similar to LIV, a competition that has fractured the men’s game.That split became conspicuous last June at a course near London, when longtime tour players like Ian Poulter, Charl Schwartzel and Lee Westwood appeared at LIV’s first event. The tournament offered early glimpses at just how much money golfers stood to make if they shunned traditional tours in favor of the Saudi-backed circuit: Schwartzel won $4.75 million at the three-day event, thanks to his individual and team performances. He had earned close to 17.7 million euros, or more than $19 million, over his tour career, where his first win was in 2004.Tour officials, wary of allowing individual golfers to undercut their multimillion-dollar television contracts and sponsorship arrangements, responded with suspensions and fines. Poulter, though, was among the players who won a stay of the punishments, pending the arbitrators’ ruling. This week’s decision ultimately covered 12 players — four others had abandoned their appeals — who competed in the LIV event in Britain or a subsequent one in the United States, a group that included Poulter, Westwood, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and Patrick Reed. Schwartzel and Sergio García were two of the players who had withdrawn from the case.García, Reed and Schwartzel, all of whom are past Masters winners, are among the LIV players competing this week in Augusta.LIV’s skeptics routinely see the circuit, with its 54-hole, no-cut tournaments, as promoting a diluted version of golf and as a way for Saudi Arabia to put distance between itself and its human rights record. LIV executives insist they are only trying to electrify and repopularize a sport they judge stagnant, and the league’s players, many of whom signed contracts that guaranteed them tens of millions of dollars, see themselves as independent contractors who should be free to compete when and where they choose.“There is no difference whether I’m on the PGA Tour or on LIV: I’ve always played two tours,” Reed said in a January interview at a DP World Tour event in Dubai, where he was wearing a LIV hat on a driving range. “So all these guys saying that you can’t basically double-dip, you can’t — What’s that cake phrase they love to use? Make your own cake and eat it, or something like that? — well, Rory, myself, all these guys have played on multiple tours.” (Rory McIlroy, a star of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, has been among the most outspoken opponents of LIV.)In their decision, the arbitrators said pointedly that the independent contractor argument was “overplayed.”“Individual players have to accept some limitation on their freedoms inherent in tour membership,” the panel said. No player, the arbitrators noted, “suggested that he had given up his independence by signing up to onerous (albeit remunerative) obligations to LIV.”The tour, the arbitrators ruled, had not broken laws governing competition or the restraint of trade.“It is no part of competition law to require incumbents to offer no resistance — they are entitled to react and retaliate, even if dominant,” the panel added.The ruling by the arbitrators is unlikely to have a direct effect on the legal battles in the United States, where LIV and the PGA Tour are mired in bitter and expanding litigation. The American dispute will not go to trial before next year.The British newspaper The Times had reported on Tuesday that the arbitrators had ruled in the DP World Tour’s favor, triggering a wave of chatter around Augusta National’s grounds. With the text of the ruling then still unreleased, McIlroy largely deferred comment but said, “If that is the outcome, then that certainly changes the dynamic of everything.”If LIV players resign from the tour, their prospects of making the Ryder Cup team will vanish under the eligibility rules. Sticking around might not guarantee a place on the roster, either.“I can only do what I can do, and that is to play the tournaments I can play, try to play them the best way possible, and then everything else is out of my hands,” García said on Tuesday. “So the decisions if we can get picked or will get picked or anything like that, it’s not going to come down to me.”Instead, he said, his Ryder Cup fate could be settled by whether the European captain, Luke Donald, “thinks that I’m good enough. We’ll see.” More