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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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      A New Twist for the Tradition-Bound Masters: The LIV Golf Era

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      LIV, Saudi Arabia’s breakaway league, split men’s professional golf. Now, the drama is coming to one of the sport’s most hallowed stages.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The mystery started in earnest last spring and lasted until autumn’s twilight. But Phil Mickelson — among the most famous frontmen for LIV Golf, the league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — insists that he believed he would be allowed to play the 2023 Masters Tournament, which opens Thursday.Never mind any discomfort, or how on-course rivalries had transformed into long-distance furies tinged by politics, power, pride and money. No, Mickelson reasoned, tradition would prevail at Augusta National Golf Club, surely among sports’ safest wagers.“The history of this tournament, the history of the majors, is about bringing the best players together, and it really needs to rise above any type of golf ecosystem disruption,” Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, said in an interview last month.“I wasn’t really worried,” said Mickelson, who spent the 2022 Masters in a self-imposed sporting exile after he effectively downplayed Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. But, he allowed, “there was talk” of exclusion from one of golf’s most revered events.Augusta National extinguished the talk on Dec. 20: If a golfer qualified for the Masters through one of its familiar pathways, like being a past champion, his 2023 invitation would be in the mail.The club’s choice will infuse its grounds through at least Sunday, when the tournament is scheduled to conclude, weather permitting. All of the customary narratives that surround a major tournament are bubbling: Will Scottie Scheffler become the first repeat winner in more than two decades? Might Rory McIlroy finally complete the career Grand Slam? Can Jon Rahm regain his dominant winter form? And, as ever, what will Tiger Woods do?But an undercurrent of ambition, curiosity and gentility-cloaked discord is present, too.Dustin Johnson, Mickelson and Harold Varner III, all LIV golf athletes, on the 18th green during a practice round on Tuesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFor LIV, the competition will be a breakthrough if one of its players dons the winner’s green jacket. For the PGA Tour, the Masters is an opportunity to showcase that its 72-hole approach to an ancient game is still king. And for Augusta National, the tournament is an opportunity to depict itself as skeptically above golf’s chaotic fray.“At the Champions Dinner, I would not have known that anything was going on in the world of professional golf other than the norm,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said Wednesday, the day after the traditional gathering of past Masters winners.He added: “So I think, and I’m hopeful, that this week might get people thinking in a little bit different direction and things will change.”It was virtually certain that this week would not descend into open brawling, and it has not. Some players have complained about a news media hyperfocus on any potential tensions — and acknowledged that they, too, had wondered about the vibe and contemplated the stakes for their tours.Cameron Smith, at No. 6 the highest-ranked LIV player, said PGA Tour players had greeted him with hugs and handshakes. Asked what, exactly, he had anticipated, he replied: “I wasn’t really sure, to be honest.”He seemed more certain that LIV could use a strong showing on the leaderboards around Augusta National’s hallowed stage.“I think it’s just important for LIV guys to be up there because I think we need to be up there,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter about these guys don’t play real golf; these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say the fields aren’t as strong. I’m the first one to say that, but we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf.”Cameron Smith, LIV’s highest-ranked player, said PGA Tour golfers had greeted him with hugs and handshakes.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMcIlroy, seemingly approaching sainthood in the eyes of PGA Tour executives for his steadfast defense of their circuit, said the Masters was “way bigger” than golf’s big spat and that he relished the opportunity to go up against 18 LIV players who are among the world’s finest golfers. Being around them again, he suggested, can build rapport, though he acknowledged restored proximity was not a guarantee of perpetual harmony.“It’s a very nuanced situation and there’s different dynamics,” McIlroy said. Referring to Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, the LIV stars and major winners, he added: “You know, it’s OK to get on with Brooks and D.J. and maybe not get on with some other guys that went to LIV, right?”For its part, Augusta National, whose private membership roster is believed to include at least two former secretaries of state, has sought to tamp down theatrics.Groupings for Thursday and Friday are about the most anodyne possible, at least in the PGA Tour vs. LIV context. Woods and Bryson DeChambeau, who recently suggested that Woods had all but excommunicated him, will not have a reunion at the first tee. Fred Couples, a PGA Tour loyalist who called LIV’s Sergio Garcia a “clown” and Mickelson a “nutbag,” is scheduled to play alongside Russell Henley and Alex Noren. McIlroy is grouped with Sam Burns and Tom Kim.And Ridley said that Augusta National had not invited Greg Norman, the LIV commissioner, to the club, where the leaders of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour have held court in recent days.“The primary issue and the driver there is that I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” Ridley said. He said he believed Norman had attended the tournament twice in the last decade, once as a radio commentator.Ridley also sidestepped a query about whether Augusta National had become complicit in “sportswashing” Saudi Arabia’s image.“I certainly have a general understanding of the term,” Ridley said. “I think, you know, it’s for others to decide exactly what that means. These were personal decisions of these players, which I, you know, at a high level, don’t necessarily agree with.”“I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWith tournament play scheduled to begin Thursday morning, the week’s emphasis is rapidly shifting toward the competition itself. The event’s American television broadcasters appear unlikely to dwell on off-course subjects unless they must.“We’re not going to put our heads in the sand,” said Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports, which will broadcast the third and fourth rounds on Saturday and Sunday. “Having said that, unless it really affects the story that’s taking place on the golf course, we’re not going to go out of our way to cover it, and I’m not sure there’s anything that we could add to the story.”ESPN, which will air the tournament’s first two rounds, has suggested it is even less interested in golf’s geopolitical soap opera. Curtis Strange, the two-time U.S. Open champion who is now a commentator, said he didn’t “see us mentioning the Roman numerals at all.”“We have to give respect to the Masters Tournament,” he said. “The only way I could ever see anything coming up — and not even mentioning LIV — but some of these players haven’t played a lot of competitive golf. So how sharp can they be?”LIV golfers have said that they will be prepared for the rigors of the Masters, even though they have been playing 54-hole events, instead of 72, at courses that some doubt will have them ready for Augusta’s challenges.That dynamic will make this year’s tournament more of a proving ground than usual. But there is always next year: When Augusta National released its Masters entry criteria for 2024 on Wednesday, there were no changes that immediately threatened LIV players.Mickelson’s bet was still proving safe. More

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      2023 Masters: Rory McIlroy Looks to Make Up Ground as First Round Begins

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      Plus, N.C.A.A. champions will be invited to play the Masters, and Larry Mize and Sandy Lyle are preparing to say farewell to the tournament.AUGUSTA, Ga. — In the last five years, Rory McIlroy has spent 27 weeks ranked as the world’s best men’s golfer. He has earned nine PGA Tour victories, including at the Tour Championship and the Players Championship. He was on a Ryder Cup-winning team. In the final round of last year’s Masters Tournament, he carded an eight-under-par 64.But the last time he shot par or better in a Masters first round? April 5, 2018.2019: 73.2020: 75.2021: 76.2022: 73.At least the trend line is improving? It stands to reason that if McIlroy is to become the sixth modern player to achieve the career Grand Slam, he is very likely going to have to refigure out Thursdays at Augusta National Golf Club. (When he made his Masters debut in 2009, he shot a first-round par 72.)“It’s been tentative starts, not putting my foot on the gas early enough,” McIlroy said this week. “I’ve had a couple of bad nine holes that have sort of thrown me out of the tournament at times. So it’s sort of just like I’ve got all the ingredients to make the pie. It’s just putting all those ingredients in and setting the oven to the right temperature and letting it all sort of come to fruition. But I know that I’ve got everything there.”McIlroy is keenly aware that Augusta National, where he has lately played more than 80 holes of practice, is “a very difficult course to chase on.”“You start to fire at pins and short-siding yourself and you’re missing in the wrong spots, it’s hard to make up a lot of ground,” he said.Dottie Pepper, the CBS commentator and a two-time winner of women’s major championships, said she thought McIlroy had made some of the shifts necessary to contend, like switching putters and drivers. But Thursday, she said, may well reveal if it will be enough.“He has played himself out of the tournament year after year on Thursday, and all of a sudden, gets it in gear and it’s a gear too late,” she said. If he can sort out the first round, she predicted, “it could be a pretty spectacular movie come Saturday and Sunday.”McIlroy, who will play with Sam Burns and Tom Kim for the first two rounds, is scheduled to tee off at 1:48 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.A new pathway into the Masters: the N.C.A.A. titleGordon Sargent, the reigning Division I men’s individual champion, was invited to this year’s field before Augusta National announced that N.C.A.A. title winners would be automatically invited next year.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesAugusta National announced the entry criteria for the 2024 Masters, and although the standards did not change much for professionals, America’s male college golfers have a new incentive to win the N.C.A.A.’s Division I individual title: It now comes with a Masters invitation.“That is a major amateur championship, and I thought it was time that we acknowledged it,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said of the N.C.A.A. competition. Gordon Sargent, a sophomore from Vanderbilt University who is the reigning Division I champion, is in the 88-man field this week, having received an invitation from tournament organizers before the new policy was announced.“It really goes back to our roots, and that is that Bobby Jones was the greatest amateur of all time,” Ridley said, speaking broadly about the place of amateurs at Augusta National. “He believed in the importance of amateurs in the Masters. I had the personal experience of enjoying that on three different occasions, and I can tell you that it changed my life.”Past N.C.A.A. individual champions include Bryson DeChambeau, Luke Donald, Max Homa, Phil Mickelson, Curtis Strange and Tiger Woods.Sargent, who is from Birmingham, Ala., has reveled in the experience, even if he has been mistaken around Augusta National for, say, a participant in the youth Drive, Chip and Putt competition.“I’m walking around, and no one is with me,” Sargent said. “I don’t even know if I had my badge with me — I think I probably still had it in the car or something. I was like, ‘Can I have player dining?’ They’re like, I don’t know, player?”He eventually made it inside.“It was pretty funny,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Where are your parents? Like, did they send you by yourself?’ I was like, ‘No, they’re coming in. I can travel by myself sometimes.’”Ridley also said Wednesday that the winner of the N.C.A.A.’s individual women’s championship will be invited to play in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Stanford’s Rose Zhang, the reigning Division I champion, won that tournament over the weekend.Two past champions are ending their Augusta National careers.Larry Mize, the 1987 Masters victor, is the only Augusta, Ga., native to win the tournament.David Cannon/Getty ImagesRidley, ever diplomatic, did not identify Larry Mize as a reason Greg Norman was not invited to this year’s Masters. But it was Mize who hit a brilliant chip — from 140 feet away — at No. 11 in 1987, making Norman a Masters runner-up for a second straight year.Mize, 64, has played every Masters since, and this one will be his last. It will be also be the final Masters for Sandy Lyle, 65, who won in 1988.“Club head speed lowers down without you even trying sometimes, and then the course is getting longer and I’m getting shorter,” Lyle said. “Not a good combination. The young ones are so good these days that I can’t really compete against that.”Mize, the only Augusta native ever to win the Masters, has spent part of the week doling out counsel to newcomers.“Trust your talent, believe in it, and just let it go,” said Mize, who added, “You’ve got to respect this golf course, but you can’t fear it. You can’t play in fear out there, or it’s going to be a long week.”Mize, Lyle suggested, struggled to get through his remarks at Tuesday’s private dinner for past champions. He had figured Mize would be at ease. He was not.“He clammed up like a clam shell,” Lyle said. “He just stood up there and had a glass of water and another glass of water.” As it turns out, Lyle said, “He’s tough enough to win a Masters, but when it comes to that kind of emotional thing, we’ve all got feelings.” More

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      The 5 Players to Watch at the Masters

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      An impressive Scottie Scheffler is in good position to repeat, and Tiger Woods is capable of making another run.The best players in the world will assemble again this week at Augusta National Golf Club for the first of the year’s four major championships.Will a marquee name come through and add to his legacy? Or will an unheralded player emerge? It’s happened before at the Masters Tournament and will likely happen again.Here are five players to watch.Scottie SchefflerScheffler, 26, the defending champion and No. 1 player in the world, is on quite a roll.He has ended up in the top four in four of his last five starts, including two victories. The one occasion he didn’t record a high finish was in February when he tied for 12th at the Genesis Invitational in Pacific Palisades, Calif.His performance in last month’s Players Championship was especially impressive. He seized a two-stroke advantage with a seven-under 65 on Saturday. On Sunday, Scheffler made five consecutive birdies starting at the eighth hole to pretty much put the tournament away.“I knew the conditions were going to get really hard late,” he said, “and I did a really good job of staying patient and not trying to force things.”Scheffler was in position for another win two weeks ago at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in Texas before he fell to Sam Burns. If he were to prevail again at Augusta, he would become the first consecutive champion since Tiger Woods in 2002.Tiger WoodsRyan Kang/Associated PressTiger WoodsSpeaking of Woods, how can he possibly not be someone to keep a close eye on?As he’s made clear, from here on we’re likely to see him at only the four major championships and perhaps another tournament here and there. Which is similar to the type of limited playing schedule Ben Hogan maintained after his car accident in 1949. Woods, 47, has played in only one event, the Genesis Invitational. He tied for 45th.It might be easy to assume Woods won’t be a factor this week.It might also be a mistake.In 2019, he surprised the golfing world by winning his fifth green jacket, second to the six won by Jack Nicklaus. And if there is anyone who knows Augusta National, it would be Woods.One of the keys will be how the leg he injured in a car accident in 2021 holds up. He started last year’s Masters with a more than respectable 71 before ending up in a tie for 47th.However he fares, it will be fascinating to watch.Rory McIlroyMike Mulholland/Getty ImagesRory McIlroyEvery year, it becomes more difficult to comprehend how McIlroy, one of the most talented players in the game, has failed to pick up a major title since the 2014 P.G.A. Championship.The Irish star was 25 when he prevailed that year by a stroke over Phil Mickelson. The victory gave him four majors.He is now 33.It looked like the drought might end in last year’s British Open.Heading into the final round, he was tied with Viktor Hovland, both up by four over Cameron Smith. Except McIlroy recorded only two birdies on Sunday, while Smith had eight in firing a 64. McIlroy, who could manage no better than a 70, finished third, two shots back.A victory at Augusta would make him the sixth player to capture the career grand slam (winning all four majors) the others being Ben Hogan, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen. He would also atone for what happened in the final round of the 2011 Masters. Up by four strokes entering the day, he fell apart with an 80.With his talent, McIlroy is destined to win another major sooner or later.Jordan SpiethDustin Safranek/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJordan SpiethSpieth, 29, is another star who has experienced a drought in the majors that wasn’t expected.Go back to the summer of 2017 when Spieth, 23 at the time, rallied to win the British Open. That gave him three majors.He’s still stuck at three.Each round seems to provide an assortment of errant shots and magical recoveries. How he will fare from day to day, from shot to shot, remains a mystery.Spieth has played some of his finest golf at Augusta National. Since he captured the title in 2015 with a record-tying score of 18-under 270, he has finished three times in the top three (2016, 2018 and 2021).He will also have the calendar working in his favor. On Easter Sunday in 2021, Spieth won the Texas Open. On Easter Sunday last year, he won the RBC Heritage in South Carolina.The final round of the Masters this year falls on Easter.Jason DayRichard Heathcote/Getty ImagesJason DayDay, from Australia, is looking more and more like his old self, and now he’s coming back to a course where he has enjoyed success.A former No. 1 player in the world, Day, 35, has finished in the top 10 in five of his last six starts. At the match play event, he defeated four opponents before Scheffler rallied to knock him out in the quarterfinals.Still, it was another encouraging week.“It was a great step in the right direction,” Day said. “It opens my eyes to the fact that I have a few things I need to work on, short-game-wise, putting-wise.”Day has been plagued by health issues over the years, and he has won one major, the P.G.A. Championship, in 2015. At the Masters, he tied for second in 2011 and finished third two years later.He is trying to become the second player from his country — the other was the 2013 champion, Adam Scott — to win at Augusta National. More

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      2023 Masters: Fred Couples Talks About Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy

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      Jordan Spieth is looking for his first major victory since 2017, and the weather forecast for the Masters Tournament is becoming less encouraging.AUGUSTA, Ga. — One of the pleasures of the Masters Tournament can be finding Fred Couples, the 1992 winner, in an expansive mood.And so it was on a particularly brisk Monday, after he had played part of the course with Tom Kim, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods. Few players have had as many close looks at Woods in recent years: The men routinely play practice rounds together, with Couples filling a role approximating that of court jester. And even if his analyses sometimes prove off the mark, they can be telling glimpses of Woods’s potential.“He’s strong enough to hit it a mile,” Couples said of Woods. “He’s not hitting it as far as Rory — I don’t think many people are — but he’s hitting it really strong and solid, and he looks good.”Woods has played only four rounds of tournament golf this year, logging an average driving distance of 306.3 yards, about 20 yards behind McIlroy. But the challenge for Woods, as ever these days after the car wreck that nearly cost him a leg in February 2021, is walking 72 holes over four days of competition. Asked Monday whether Woods was moving differently from the way he had around this time last year, Couples replied, “Probably not.”“The leg — I guess this is what it is,” he continued. “I don’t know how much better it’s ever going to get.”Woods and Couples talk as they walk along the 14th fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Couples did not talk exclusively about Woods. In McIlroy, who is seeking a victory at Augusta to complete a career Grand Slam, he sees a player with all of the potential in the world to capture a green jacket.“Is it surprising he’s never won this?” he said. “Of course it is, the way he plays and the way he putts and how high he hits it and how far he hits it. But it’s not that easy.”And not long after he had drawn headlines for bashing LIV players — Phil Mickelson was a “nut bag” and Sergio García a “clown” — Couples said he had merely wanted them to avoid criticizing the PGA Tour.“They don’t bother me,” he said. “They really don’t. They’re golfers. I’m a golfer. I respect them all. On my show, I’ve told everyone Sergio is one of the top 10 players I’ve ever seen hit a ball, but if he’s going to make comments about the tour that I play, I’m going to make a comment back — and if it’s offensive, I apologize, but they’re on another tour. Go play and have a good time.”Jabs aside, he was not bothered by their invitations to the Masters: “I think they deserve to be here.”— Blinder‘It’s definitely not going to be on any nutritionist’s plan.’Scottie Scheffler, the defending Masters champion and the world No. 1.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNearly all of the living Masters winners (as well as Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman) are expected to convene Tuesday evening for their annual dinner. Scottie Scheffler, the reigning champion, picked the menu and will pick up the tab.The appetizers include cheeseburger sliders and firecracker shrimp. A tortilla soup will be on offer, and guests can pick between a Texas rib-eye steak — Scheffler, after all, is essentially a product of Dallas — and blackened redfish. Side items include macaroni and cheese, jalapeño creamed corn and brussels sprouts, and the dessert will be chocolate-chip skillet cookies topped with milk-and-cookies ice cream.The menu’s development began with a conversation among Scheffler; his wife, Meredith; and Blake Smith, his agent. The trio kicked around Scheffler’s favorite foods and narrowed the list before consulting with an Augusta National chef to nail down the menu.“It’s definitely not going to be on any nutritionist’s plan,” Scheffler said last month. “But we’re going to have fun. We’re going to eat some good food.”The menu should appeal to plenty of former winners, a traditional bunch that has sometimes been alarmed by selections like haggis (Sandy Lyle) and kidney pie (Nick Faldo). Some were skeptical in 2001, when they arrived to a Vijay Singh-commissioned menu of Thai delicacies.“I’m sure Charlie Coody didn’t try anything,” Tommy Aaron, the 1973 winner, recalled of the 1971 victor. “I had never had Thai food, and it was fantastic.”But the dinners, Aaron said a few years ago, always feature one practice: “They pour that wine like it’s going out of style.”— BlinderEvery day is like Sunday.Jordan Spieth, a PGA Tour golfer who won the Masters in 2015.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFirst-time visitors at the Masters tournament are always obvious. For starters, they tend to walk slowly with their eyes wide. As famed as Augusta National Golf Club is, to a newcomer parading around the grounds, the landscape is a bevy of surprises that no television broadcast — however technologically advanced and exhaustingly thorough — can grasp.For example, every Masters first-timer is stunned that the vertical drop from the 10th tee to the 10th green is a stunning, and difficult to traverse, 85 feet. It’s one of many discoveries. And as Jordan Spieth, the 2015 Masters champion, said on Monday, even veteran players know that there may be another revelation awaiting them each time they arrive at the site of the tournament.Players fret and worry that their games may not be ready for the exacting test that awaits.Taking note of a packed practice range on Monday, Spieth waved a hand toward the scene and said: “Have you ever seen this many people practicing this hard on a Monday? Typically, you take Monday off.”Annual tweaks to the course, like the substantial lengthening of the 13th hole this year, only add to the tension. As Spieth added: “You know, you’re just anxious. More anxious than nervous.”Asked if the mental preparation for the tee shot on the pivotal first hole tended to change considerably from Thursday’s welcoming opening round to Sunday’s tense final, Spieth shook his head side to side. “I don’t feel that it changes,” he answered.He continued: “It’s one of the only places it doesn’t change for me, regardless of the position I’m in. It feels like it’s a Sunday — a first tee shot in contention each day.”— PenningtonCameron Smith arrived with trepidation.Cameron Smith, a LIV golfer and the 2022 British Open champion.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesIt’s not just golf fans and reporters who have been wondering how the stalwarts of the PGA Tour and the renegade LIV golfers would get along when having to mingle at the Masters tournament for the first time this week. Cameron Smith, who bolted for the Saudi-backed LIV circuit a month after winning last year’s British Open, conceded on Monday that he had approached the Augusta National Golf Club practice area with trepidation.“I really wasn’t sure what to expect walking onto the range, but it was good to see some familiar faces and a lot of smiles,” Smith said with a wide grin. “It was just a really nice experience.”But Smith, who is hardly known for pointed remarks, also insisted that the 18 LIV golfers in the 88-player 2023 Masters field were intent on having a visible presence at the top of the leaderboard when at the tournament’s conclusion. And, he said, the LIV cohort is aware of the shade that has been thrown its way by its one-time colleagues on the PGA Tour.“It’s just important for LIV guys to be up there, because I think we need to be up there,” Smith said on Monday. Referring to the occasional derisive comments directed at the LIV circuit by PGA Tour players, officials or members of the golf media, he added: “I think there’s a lot of chatter about how these guys don’t play real golf; these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say, the fields aren’t as strong. But we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf.“I think we just need a good, strong finish.”Smith was also asked about whether the LIV golfers had discussed having a joint celebration on the 18th green if one of them were to win this year’s Masters, which was suggested recently by Greg Norman, the LIV Golf Commissioner.“There definitely hasn’t been a conversation with me — I definitely got left out of that one,” he said, laughing. “I guess we’ll see how the week unfolds. For sure, I’d love to see one of us guys get up to the top of the leaderboard and really give it a nice shot.”Lastly, Smith, whose world golf ranking has slipped to sixth from second at the end of the 2022, reiterated that he had no regrets about joining LIV Golf.“I’ve made my bed, and I’m very, very happy where I am,” he said.— PenningtonKeep an eye on the weather.There’s a good chance for rain at Augusta National on the weekend.Doug Mills/The New York TimesYes, it is early in the week. Yes, weather forecasts can change. But no, the outlook for this week is not great. The team assembling forecasts for Augusta National has pegged the chances of rain at 60 percent or higher on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.“Shower and thunderstorm chances increase Thursday afternoon as a weak frontal boundary approaches,” the tournament said in one of its official forecasts on Monday. “The front is expected to stall to the south Friday into Saturday with a northeast wind pushing much colder air into Georgia. Waves of upper-level energy moving along the front are forecast to produce periods of rain that could be heavy at times through Sunday.”All of that scientific speak could make this Masters a delight for Rory McIlroy, who has sometimes thrived in abysmal weather at major tournaments, and a nightmare for the organizers.The Masters last had a Monday finish in 1983, when Seve Ballesteros won his second green jacket. That year, the second round — the Friday round — did not end until 8:30 a.m. on Sunday.But Augusta National is accustomed to dealing with poor weather more recently. If a round is upended in the coming days because of inclement conditions, this will be the fifth consecutive year in which tournament organizers have had to grapple so explicitly with meteorological misfortune.— Blinder More

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      2023 Masters: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson Are Back

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      Players set out for official practice rounds ahead of the first men’s golf major of the year although more than a few have tested the course recently.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Augusta National Golf Club will be thick with spectators Monday, as one player after another sets out for official practice rounds before the Masters Tournament, the year’s first men’s golf major.But plenty of them have tested the course recently, making special jaunts to Georgia to size up the grounds in advance of the crowds, cameras and ropes — practice rounds for the practice rounds, if you will.They have the potential to inspire confidence: Rory McIlroy made the trek and played 54 holes, and in one round, he apparently recorded an otherworldly 19 putts across 18 holes.“Look,” he said recently, “I had two good days.”More critically, the rounds before the clamor give players chances to take the measure of changes to the course under less stressful conditions. The 13th hole, for instance, will play 35 yards longer this year, so Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 champion, has been sketching how his strategy might change.“I used to hit 3-wood there because I can sling hook a 3-wood,” Scheffler said last month. “I can’t sling hook a driver on purpose. The ball just doesn’t spin enough. I can do it on accident, but I can’t quite sling it on purpose because I like to fade my driver more off the tee, and so when it comes to that tee shot and hitting a hard hook with the driver, it’s not really a shot that I’ll try just because it’s not worth the risk for me.”Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 Masters champion, waited to greet winners of the Drive, Chip and Putt competition on Sunday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesScheffler, appearing far more comfortable than he usually is before reporters, went deeper into overthinking No. 13.“That hole was one where I’d hit the same shot I hit on 10,” he said. “The 3-wood, it has enough spin where the ball can actually stay in the air. With the driver, when I hook it, the ball doesn’t have enough spin to where it can stay in the air and hook that much. It kind of nose-dives. But the 3-wood, I can sit up there and it will just be like a boomerang. But that’s really the biggest change for me. Now I’ll just hit driver kind of out toward the corner and try and use more of the contouring to get the ball that way versus before.”And for players making their Masters debuts, the spins through Augusta National can be a chance to stamp out at least some jitters.“I got the bug out,” Tom Kim, the 20-year-old PGA Tour player, said. “Once I get there, I can kind of just play.”Not that the veterans shun practice. Tiger Woods, ahead of his 25th Masters, was around the course on Sunday afternoon, striking balls and practicing his putting. He has not played a tournament round since February, when he tied for 45th at the Genesis Invitational. But everyone knew that he was largely using Riviera Country Club as a laboratory to prepare for the Masters.He essentially said as much himself: “After this event, we’ll analyze it and see what we need to do to get ready for Augusta.” He finished 47th here last year.Remember Phil Mickelson? He’s back, too.Phil Mickelson at the second tee during a LIV Golf event at Orange County National last week.Reinhold Matay/USA Today Sports, via ReutersPhil Mickelson’s Masters hiatus lasted only a year.Mickelson, a three-time winner at Augusta National, skipped the 2022 competition amid the international uproar that began after he acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s “horrible record on human rights” but said he was open to aiding LIV Golf, its emerging league, because it could force the PGA Tour to change its economic structure.“They execute people over there for being gay,” he told the journalist Alan Shipnuck. “Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”Mickelson soon after defected to LIV, which Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolls. He played in two major tournaments last year, missing the cuts at the U.S. Open and the British Open.Now, he will try his hand at the major course that has been more favorable to him than any other.“I don’t have any expectations,” he said in a brief interview last month in Arizona. “I’m grateful we get to play because we were told — or there was talk — a year ago that you might not be able to play the majors. And now we can play the Masters; we can play in all of the majors.”Pressed, though, on whether he is anticipating this week to carry the feel of the other Masters he has entered, he replied, “I do, yeah.”At the 2021 Masters, not long before his P.G.A. Championship victory made him the oldest major winner, he finished in a tie for 21st.From Winter Garden, Fla., to Augusta, Ga.Brooks Koepka won the LIV Golf Orlando event at Orange County National on Sunday.Doug Defelice/Liv Golf, via LIVGO, via Associated PressThe PGA Tour players who are most likely to contend at Augusta National were off last week, when the circuit spun through T.P.C. San Antonio for the Texas Open. LIV golfers had no such respite: They played a tournament in Winter Garden, Fla., near Orlando, over the weekend, when Brooks Koepka emerged as the class of the field.Whether the schedule will make a difference at the Masters is anyone’s guess, or simply in the eye of the beholder.Bubba Watson, who won at Augusta National in 2012 and 2014, said LIV’s calendar had thwarted the approach he had employed for years: arriving on Friday; attending the Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Saturday before practice on the driving range; and usually logging a round on Sunday afternoon.Ordinarily, he said, he avoided playing the week before a major so he could take a mental break before facing the challenges of elite competition. But maybe, he confessed, a pre-Masters tuneup would prove helpful: “Maybe I need to gear up for it and see where I need to work or where I don’t need to work.”Other LIV players insisted that their schedule was compatible with their customary preparations.Mickelson, for example, stuck with his custom of visiting Augusta for part of the week preceding the Masters. If anything, he said, LIV’s three-day format offered him the option of more practice time in Georgia.And take Dustin Johnson, a two-time major winner. He last played a tournament the week before the Masters in pandemic-disrupted 2020, when he tied for second at the Houston Open and then stormed into Augusta, posted the lowest score in Masters history and claimed his first green jacket. Although Orange County National Golf Center is hardly Augusta National — Johnson earned his PGA Tour card when he played a qualifying school event there in 2007 — he said that any competition is good to have before a Masters.“That’s really good preparation,” Johnson said in an interview. “Any time you’re playing going into a major, it’s always good to get some rounds under you.”Zhang wins the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.Rose Zhang after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament in a playoff on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHow breathtaking was Rose Zhang’s play across the first 36 holes of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur? She shot four over par in Saturday’s final round and still won the tournament.It was not easy — she had to outlast Jenny Bae, whose Saturday scorecard had her two under on the day, in a sudden-death playoff, as well as a weather delay — but a grip change during the round allowed Zhang to unlock her swing just in time.“When things matter the most and you have a big lead but the job’s not done, it definitely puts a lot of things into perspective,” Zhang, 19, said. “I tried to stay as composed as possible, but at the same time, I was a little tight the first couple holes. I just felt like my swing wasn’t comfortable, and I really just tried to stay in the moment. I figured out a little trigger point in my golf swing, and from then on, it was kind of smooth sailing, grinding from there.”Zhang had arrived for Saturday’s final round, played at Augusta National, with a formidable cushion built up during the competition’s first two days at nearby Champions Retreat. Her first-round score there, a six-under-par 66, was a tournament record. The new standard lasted until the end of Zhang’s second round, when she signed for a 65.“I really, really do love this golf course,” she said of Augusta National. “Sometimes, it’s just interesting that I never really get my A-game when I’m out here. When I was out at Champions, it felt so easy to me. Everything just came to me. I was making putts. I was hitting greens.”Zhang teed off on the 13th hole during the final round of play.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA single mistake at Augusta National, though, “is magnified,” she said.“I think that just being able to kind of get back on track, that was my biggest feat” on Saturday, Zhang said. “I was able to have the outcome that I wanted while staying in the moment.”With her victory at Augusta National, Zhang, a Stanford sophomore, has achieved what amounts to a career Grand Slam for women’s amateur golf; she had won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior and an individual N.C.A.A. championship. Another Stanford golfer recorded a similar feat.You’ve probably heard of him, since his name is Tiger Woods.Wise withdraws: ‘I need to take some time away.’Aaron Wise, the PGA Tour’s 2018 rookie of the year, will miss this year’s Masters.Douglas P. Defelice/Getty ImagesAaron Wise, the PGA Tour’s 2018 rookie of the year, has withdrawn from this year’s Masters.“Golf is just as much a mental game as it is one of physical skill, and the mental piece of it has been a struggle for me recently,” Wise, 26, wrote in an Instagram story on Friday. “I don’t take the significance of playing at Augusta lightly, but know that I need to take some time away to focus on my mental health so I can get back to competing at a level I am proud of.”Wise has appeared in seven tour events so far in 2023, with his best finish a tie for 18th at the Tournament of Champions in January. Since then, he has missed four cuts and did not advance beyond his group at the match play event in Texas last month. He competed in one previous Masters, taking 17th place in 2019. More

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      Forged After a Tumultuous Era, World Golf Championships Fade in Another

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      A match play event in Texas may be the last W.G.C. event, ending an international competition that preceded golf’s high-rolling present.AUSTIN, Texas — It was not all that long ago — Tom Kim, after all, is only 20 years old — but before Kim emerged as one of the PGA Tour’s wunderkinds-in-progress, he would watch the World Golf Championships.“For sure, 100 percent,” Kim cheerfully reminisced as he clacked along this week at Austin Country Club, the site of the championships’ match play event. “There was W.G.C. in China. There was Firestone before. You had Doral. You had this.”Had, because once one man wins on Sunday, the championships appear poised to fade away. An elite competition forged, in part, because of another era’s tumult has become a casualty of this one’s.“Everything runs its course and has its time,” said Adam Scott, who has twice won W.G.C. events. Barring a resuscitation, which seems improbable given the PGA Tour’s business strategy these days, the W.G.C.’s time was 24 years.The W.G.C. circuit was decaying before LIV Golf, the Greg Norman-fronted league that is cumulatively showering players with hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, cleaved men’s professional golf last year. Two W.G.C. events vanished after their 2021 iterations, and a third, always staged in China, has not been contested since 2019 because of the coronavirus pandemic.And as the PGA Tour has redesigned its model to diminish LIV’s appeal, even the Texas capital’s beloved match play competition has become vulnerable to contractual bickering and shifting priorities.“We’ve had great events and great champions, but the business evolves and it adapts,” Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, said this month, when the tour reinforced its decision to wager its future on “designated events” that should command elite fields and, in some cases beginning next year, be no-cut tournaments capped at 80 players or less. (LIV, whose tournaments always have 48-man fields and no cuts, responded with a wry tweet: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future.”)With a $20 million purse, doubled in size from five years ago, the match play competition that began on Wednesday is a designated event under the 2023 model. Next year, though, it will not be on the calendar at all, winnowing the W.G.C. to one competition. And Monahan has said it would be “difficult to foresee” when his circuit’s schedule might again include the HSBC Champions, the W.G.C. event in China that will be the last remaining event formally existing in the series.The Chinese tournament’s website has had few updates in recent years, and an inquiry with the event’s organizers went unanswered. HSBC, the British banking powerhouse that is the tournament’s title sponsor, declined to comment.But the PGA Tour’s freshly calibrated distance from the Shanghai competition is fueling what looks to be an unceremonious end for the W.G.C., which were announced to immense fanfare in 1997, when the tour and its allies were smarting over Norman’s failed quest to start a global circuit for the sport’s finest players. The events, which debuted in 1999 with a match play event that sent some of the game’s best home after the first day, were intended to entice and reward the elite without challenging the prestige of the four major tournaments, as well as to give men’s professional golf a greater global footprint.It worked for a spell, and five continents hosted W.G.C. events, many of which Tiger Woods dominated. With the exception of the Chinese tournament, though, the circuit had lately been played in North America.“The ‘world’ part of the World Golf Championships wasn’t really in there,” Rory McIlroy, the four-time major tournament winner whose W.G.C. résumé includes a victory in the 2015 match play event, mused in an interview by the practice putting green.McIlroy, among the architects of the tour’s reimagining as Norman’s unfinished ambitions proved more fruitful this time around, said he had also worried that the W.G.C. events had come to lack “any real meaning,” even as they had been “lovely to be a part of, nice to play in and nice to win.” The tour’s emphasis on select tournaments, many executives and top players like McIlroy believe, will lend more consequence to its season and make it a more appealing, decipherable and concentrated product that can fend off the assault by a LIV circuit bent on simplifying — its critics say diluting — professional golf.“Your casual golf fan knows the majors, the Ryder Cup and maybe the events that are close to their hometown,” said McIlroy, who is among the players devising a new weeknight golf competition that is expected to start next year. “I get it: Professional golf is a very saturated market with a ton of stuff going on, and people have limited time to watch what they want to watch.”The Austin tournament’s end will, at least for now, reduce match play opportunities on the circuits that have been aligned with the W.G.C. Though the Austin event — which has three days of group-stage play, followed by single-elimination rounds — has a field of only 64 players, less than half of the size of last year’s British Open, it has been larger and more accessible than other signature match play tournaments.Rickie Fowler hits from the rough during the first round of W.G.C. match play.Eric Gay/Associated PressBut given the format’s popularity, it will linger, if a little less, on the international golf scene. The Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup will remain fixtures — the Solheim will be contested in Spain in September, with the Ryder decided soon after in Italy — and more modest events, such as the International Crown women’s tournament that will be played in May, still dot the calendar.Some players this week appeared more mournful than others about the erosion of the W.G.C. and the decline of match play. Scott said he hoped the tour’s new system would be able to accommodate the next generation of ready-for-stardom players from around the world, as the W.G.C. did, even as he said he was not insistent that match play be a staple.“We don’t play much match play, so the kind of logic in me questions its place in pro golf, but also we’ve got to entertain as well, and if people like to see it and sponsors want to see it, yep, I’m up for it,” Scott said.He grinned.“Maybe we should have some more, get a bit more head-to-head and see if guys like each other so much after,” he offered mischievously. “The year of match play!”The PGA Tour has not ruled out a return to the format, though it would assuredly be limited. LIV could also eventually try to tap into interest. At an event in Arizona last week, Phil Mickelson, a LIV team captain, said that match play was “certainly something that we are discussing as a possibility for the season-ending event.”But the W.G.C. appear effectively finished. Kim, the youngest player this week, was delighted that he had arrived just in time.“I played once before it all goes away,” said Kim, who has six top-10 finishes in his early tour career and expressed confidence in the circuit’s direction. “I played once in my life.”He wandered off to practice. A round against Scottie Scheffler, the reigning match play champion and the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, loomed soon enough. More

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      USGA and R&A Propose Changes to Golf Balls to Limit Driving Distance

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      Driving distance has been steadily increasing, and a proposal on Tuesday by the U.S. Golf Association and the R&A could affect elite players within three years.Elite golfers, who have increasingly used head-turning distances on their drives to conquer courses, should be forced to start using new balls within three years, the sport’s top regulators said Tuesday, inflaming a debate that has been gathering force in recent decades.The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A, which together write golf’s rule book, estimated that their technical proposal could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Although golf’s rules usually apply broadly, the governing bodies are pursuing the change in a way that makes it improbable that it will affect recreational golfers, whose talent and power are generally well outpaced by many collegiate and top amateur players.But the measure, which would generally ban balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour, among other testing conditions, could have far-reaching consequences on the men’s professional game. Dozens of balls that are currently used could become illegal on circuits such as the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, as the European Tour is now marketed, if they ultimately embrace the proposed policy change.That outcome is not guaranteed — on Tuesday, the PGA Tour stopped well short of a formal endorsement of the proposal — but the forces behind the recommendation insisted that the golf industry needed to act.“I believe very strongly that doing nothing is not an option,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said in an interview. “We want the game to be more athletic. We want it to be more of an elite sport. I think it’s terrific that top players are stronger, better trained, more physically capable, so doing nothing is something that to me would be, if I was really honest, completely irresponsible for the future of the game.”The U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, Mike Whan, sounded a similar note in a statement: “Predictable, continued increases will become a significant issue for the next generation if not addressed soon.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. In the current season, drives are averaging 297.2 yards, and 83 players’ averages exceed 300 yards. The typical club head speed — how fast the club is traveling when it connects with the ball — for Rory McIlroy, the tour’s current driving distance leader at almost 327 yards, has been about 122.5 m.p.h, about 7 m.p.h. above this season’s tour average. Some of his counterparts, though, have logged speeds of at least 130 m.p.h.At the sport’s most recent major tournament, the British Open last July, every player who made the cut had an average driving distance of at least 299.8 yards on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. When the Open, an R&A-administered tournament, had last been played at St. Andrews in 2015, only 29 of the 80 men who played on the weekend met that threshold.Jordan Spieth during a practice round at the Players Championship earlier this month. Dozens of golf balls currently in use could become illegal on the PGA Tour and other circuits.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesThe yearslong escalation, spurred by advanced equipment and an intensifying focus among professional players on physical fitness, has unnerved the sport’s executives and course architects, who have found themselves redesigning holes while also sometimes fretting over the game’s potential environmental consequences.When the Masters Tournament is contested at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia next month, for instance, the par-5 13th hole will be 35 yards longer than it was last year. The hole, lined with azaleas and historically the course’s easiest, will now measure 545 yards; the full course will run 7,545 yards, up 110 yards from a decade ago.Faced with the distance scourge well beyond Augusta, golf’s rule makers considered a policy targeting club design. They concluded, though, that such a reworked standard would cause too many ripples, with multiple clubs potentially requiring changes if drivers had to conform to new guidelines.“If you don’t, you’ll end up with a 3-wood that could go further than a driver, and that was a very good point, and that could have affected three or four clubs in the bag,” Slumbers said. Instead, after years of study and debate, the U.S.G.A. and R&A settled on trying to urge changes to the balls that players hit.The rules currently permit balls that travel 317 yards, with a tolerance of an additional 3 yards, when they are struck at 120 m.p.h., among other testing conditions. The existing formula has been in place since 2004, and Whan has said it is not “representative of today’s game.”The proposal announced Tuesday is not final, and its authors will gather feedback about it into the summer. Although some members of the game’s old guard have openly complained about modern equipment and the governing bodies’ response to it — the nine-time major champion Gary Player fumed last year that “our leaders have allowed the ball to go too far” and predicted top players would drive balls 500 yards within 40 years — the executives are bracing for resistance that could prove pointed.“We have spoken to a lot of players, and as you can imagine, half of the world doesn’t want to do anything and half of the world thinks we need to do more,” Slumbers said.The PGA Tour, filled with figures who believe that fans are dazzled by gaudy statistics and remarkable displays of athleticism, did not immediately support the proposal. In a statement on Tuesday, the tour said it would “continue our own extensive independent analysis of the topic” and eventually submit feedback.The tour added that it was “committed to ensuring any future solutions identified benefit the game as a whole, without negatively impacting the tour, its fans or our fans’ enjoyment of our sport.”The debate may be more muted in some quarters than others, but the surges in distance have not been confined to the PGA Tour. Between 2003 and 2022, the R&A and the U.S.G.A. said Tuesday, there was a 4 percent increase in hitting distances across seven professional tours. Only two of the scrutinized circuits, the Japan Golf Tour and the L.P.G.A. Tour, posted year-over-year declines in driving distance in 2022. More