Koepka, Brooks

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      Brooks Koepka Surges to the Lead at P.G.A. Championship

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      After his second consecutive four-under-par 66, the LIV golfer Koepka will be in the final pairing on Sunday at Oak Hill Country Club.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Four years ago, less than a week before he won his second consecutive P.G.A. Championship, Brooks Koepka allowed the world inside his swaggering mind.“One hundred fifty-six in the field, so you figure at least 80 of them I’m just going to beat,” he said at Bethpage in 2019. “You figure about half of them won’t play well from there, so you’re down to about maybe 35,” he added. “And then from 35, some of them just — pressure is going to get to them. It only leaves you with a few more, and you’ve just got to beat those guys.”Keep in contention long enough, he reasoned, and “good things are going to happen.”He returned to the mix last month at the Masters Tournament, where he surrendered his lead to Jon Rahm during the final round. And now he is in the mix this weekend at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, where he fired a field-best four-under-par 66 on a rain-soaked Saturday, giving him a one-stroke lead over Corey Conners and Viktor Hovland with a round to play. He had also scored a tournament-leading 66 on Friday, after a 72 on Thursday.All of that is rumbling forth from a man with a wrenching medical history, a man who last year was trying (and failing) to shatter car windows at Augusta National Golf Club after a missed Masters cut, a man who just on Thursday played a round that he said was “the worst I’ve hit it in a really long time.” He finished that day tied for 38th, a day after he declared the try-and-beat-me algorithm he detailed in 2019 still worked just fine.Maybe he was right, though.Sunday, of course, will have pitfalls. With its often firm and narrow fairways and a rough whose verdant hue makes it appear more appealing than it actually is, Oak Hill has been a devilish test since the first tee shot on Thursday. After two rounds, only nine players were below par. After three, that figure had shriveled to seven.Conners held a lead that crawled as high as two strokes for much of Saturday, helped along by a front nine that passed without a bogey and made the possibility of his first major championship victory all the more real. Born in Ontario, not all that far from Oak Hill, he has been a favorite of the galleries, energized by an April victory at the Texas Open and confident in his putting, a welcome status for a player with a reputation for expert ball striking. But a double-bogey on the 16th hole sent him tumbling out of the top spot.And Hovland again lurked at and around the top of the leaderboard throughout Saturday. He has been there before: Since the start of last year’s British Open, he has been in the top-10 at the end of every major tournament round. His afternoon darkened quickly, with bogeys on two of his first five holes, before a spree of three birdies left him poised to take the lead on the 14th hole. A sand wedge from about 75 yards brought him just inside the green’s edge, but he missed a birdie putt, settling for par. He missed another birdie try at No. 16.Viktor Hovland on the 18th green waiting to putt. He lurked at and around the top of the leaderboard throughout Saturday.Six pairings ahead, Hovland’s playing partner in last year’s final round at St. Andrews, Rory McIlroy, rediscovered some of the form that eluded him at the Masters and beyond. (Neither Hovland nor McIlroy won that Open, which Cameron Smith left with the claret jug.) McIlroy, often drenched, shot a 69 for the second consecutive day, taking him to one under and putting his ambition to win his first major since 2014 not fully out of reach.“I probably hit it a little better off the tee today than I did the first couple of days, but I think this tournament and especially in these conditions and on this golf course, the nonphysical parts of the game, I think, are way more important this week than the physical parts of the game,” McIlroy said Saturday. “And I think I’ve done those well, and that’s the reason that I’m in a decent position.”Koepka has not gone as long as McIlroy without a major victory, though he has been more battered with injuries these last few years. He began to gain ground early on Saturday, with birdies on the fourth and fifth holes. At No. 5, christened Little Poison, his 179-yard tee shot landed neatly on the green, setting up a putt for birdie. Unlike plenty of other past major champions, including McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau, on Saturday, he avoided a bogey at No. 6, a havoc-inducing par-4 that has been playing closer to a 5.A second shot at No. 13 landed in the rough, leaving Koepka 96 yards from the hole. His next stroke put him on the green, setting up a birdie putt from roughly 18 and a half feet. That putt, though, seemed puny at the 17th hole, when Koepka rolled one in from about 47 feet.One of the central questions entering the tournament at Oak Hill was whether Koepka would much resemble the player who punished almost the entire field at Augusta. Playing in the LIV Golf league afterward, he had assembled a middling performance in Australia, a third-place finish in Singapore and a sixth-place outing last weekend in Oklahoma.Before that tournament near Tulsa, he had mused over how he enjoyed the rigors of the majors: “the discipline, the mental grind that comes with it all, the focus.” In the hours after his letdown at Augusta, he said this past week, he did not sleep, that swaggering mind suddenly left looking for answers. The answers took shape within days.He said on Saturday that he had learned that he should “never think the way I thought going into the final round.”Koepka on the fourth fairway. A victory on Sunday would give him his fifth major tournament championship.“I won’t do it again the rest of my career,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t go play bad — you can play good, you’ll play bad, but I’ll never have that mind-set or that won’t ever be the reason.”A victory on Sunday would give him his fifth major tournament championship, and his first since that heady week at Bethpage in 2019.Others are not so well positioned. Rahm, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, shot two over on Saturday to bring his tournament score to six over. Justin Thomas, the winner of last year’s P.G.A. Championship, and Phil Mickelson, who has won the event twice, were five over on Saturday, moving their scores to 10 over.“This golf course, with how difficult it is, it all starts by putting the ball in the fairway,” Rahm said. “It’s not an easy task. It’s very, very difficult. If you can do that, then you can maybe give yourself some chances and it all starts with that. A little bit of it is trying to keep the club head dry and manage it but again, there’s an element — there’s only so much you can control — so a bit of an element of luck.”With the wet conditions forecast to clear, players expected the tees to be moved back for Sunday’s final round. The P.G.A. of America, the three-time major winner Padraig Harrington noted, is deeply skilled at setups.“If they want us to go out there and shoot a good score, being 68, they’ll set it up that way,” he said. “They could if they want set it up for a low one for sure, but that wouldn’t suit the leader. The leaders always want a tough challenge on Sunday so they can play safe and the chasers get caught out.”But the universe of chasers is a small one. Again, its members are pursuing Koepka.The field will chase Koepka in the final round on Sunday. 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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      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

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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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      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