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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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      The Trophy Masters Winners Get Along With Their Green Jacket

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      So personalized that they include the signatures of every player in a Masters Tournament field, the trophies shipped to winners are deeply cherished but barely known.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Last year, in the months after he won the Masters Tournament for the first time, Scottie Scheffler heard a parcel was coming his way from Georgia.“I didn’t know exactly what it would be,” Scheffler recalled over the winter. “They have the trophy in the clubhouse, but it’s, like, really big.”That trophy, made of about 900 pieces of sterling silver and weighing at least 100 pounds, did not leave Augusta National Golf Club. A smaller, if similarly exacting, sterling silver trophy did.Engraved in Britain, packaged in a felt-lined box befitting a head of state, and so painstakingly personalized that it includes the signatures of every player in that year’s Masters field, the trophy featuring Augusta National’s clubhouse is far less renowned than the green jacket the winner earns. But because players traditionally take their blazers away from Augusta National only during the years in which they are reigning winners, the trophy is the dazzling centerpiece that a Masters champion actually gets to keep.“It’s a real talking point at the house, I must say, because people are shocked to realize there is a trophy,” said Adam Scott, who won the tournament in 2013. “And then you get to have a good look at it and the detail in it is fantastic — the clubhouse and then things like the signatures.”This year’s competition, three decades after Bernhard Langer became the first winner to receive a replica trophy, is scheduled to conclude Sunday, weather permitting. The process of preparing one prize, though, has already begun: When players arrived for the tournament, organizers collected the signatures that will wind up on the trophy.Fred Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, right, with the 2022 winner Scottie Scheffler. The trophy that remains on club grounds weighs at least 100 pounds.That Augusta National awards a trophy is not unique in golf, a predominantly individual sport with archives filled of photographs of champions rejoicing with their hardware. At last summer’s British Open, Cameron Smith estimated that two cans of beer would fill the claret jug he had earned and had his name engraved on minutes after the tournament’s end.But the claret jug is a symbol of the Open, much as the Wanamaker Trophy is an emblem of the P.G.A. Championship and the U.S. Open Championship Trophy remains the fixture it has been in the game since 1895. At the Masters, though, the trophy is essentially an afterthought to the green jacket — however ironically, given the winner’s limited time with the sartorial prize.“As a kid and as an adult, you focus on one thing, and that’s the green jacket,” said Bubba Watson, who won at Augusta in 2012 and 2014. “You don’t know about the other stuff that comes with it. You don’t think about the trophy. You don’t think about the gold coin. You don’t think about privileges of being able to play there. As a kid, as a 10-year-old, as a 12-year-old when I was dreaming about making putts, it was all about the green jacket.”Phil Mickelson, who recorded the first of his three Masters victories in 2004, said he had “figured” there was a trophy for the victor but knew little about it before he started receiving the clubhouse reproductions, which he concluded neatly captured the tournament’s heritage.“It brings about feelings of Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts and them creating this event and creating this special club, so it actually has a lot of very subtle undertones to it,” Mickelson said.Signatures are collected on these sheets to then be engraved on the trophy.In addition to money — last year’s purse was $15 million — Augusta National offers players a range of prizes for assorted feats. In 2022, Rory McIlroy received a silver medal and a sterling silver tray for his runner-up finish and a pair of crystal highball glasses for making an eagle; Sungjae Im got a crystal vase for shooting the first round’s lowest score; and Stewart Cink earned a crystal bowl for a hole in one at No. 16.“I have a lot of goblets from Augusta,” Mickelson said, referring to the prize the club used to present for eagles. (He also copped to having a bathrobe “that I wear quite often” from a long-ago stay in the Crow’s Nest, an apartment in the clubhouse’s attic that is available for amateur golfers.)But the trophy, because of its scarcity and comparably low profile, is quite often a novelty. Watson recalled his first thought was “a lot of silver.”“When you open that up and you see the trophy, it hits you,” said Patrick Reed, the 2018 winner. “And then it becomes, ‘Where do I put it where everyone can see it but also everyone doesn’t touch it?’”It is a relatively recent conundrum since, by the standards of the mystique-laden Masters, an event first played in 1934, the replica trophy is a relatively new tradition. Organizers have mailed printed invitations from the start, a ritual that continues today. The private dinner for past champions began in 1952, and the 11th, 12th and 13th holes picked up the Amen Corner moniker from Sports Illustrated in 1958.In between the dinner’s beginning and the corner’s christening, in 1955, Augusta National began presenting winners with silver cigarette boxes engraved with the autographs of players. Six years later, the club debuted the permanent trophy that stuns players for its enormity: a striking silver reproduction of the clubhouse, with its features rendered in such vivid detail that there are 24 louvers per shutter. An engraver added the names of the champions and runners-up to the base’s bands each year, but winners themselves received a bas-relief replica and the cigarette box.“Not all of them are legible, of course, and some you have to guess at, but it is a nice touch,” Adam Scott, the 2013 winner, said of the player signatures on the trophy.In 1993, though, Augusta National embraced the idea of a replica trophy and abandoned the cigarette boxes and bas-reliefs. Tournament organizers decided that the replica trophy would look much like the one on display in the clubhouse. Reflecting the cigarette box tradition, though, they also decided its base would include the signatures of the field. Organizers collect the signatures when players arrive for the tournament.“You’re at Augusta, so you always make sure you do a nice signature, and I’m sure if it wasn’t nice, they’d probably have you redo it,” Dustin Johnson, the 2020 winner, said with a laugh. If only, Scott suggested: “Not all of them are legible, of course, and some you have to guess at, but it is a nice touch.”Mickelson has his Masters trophies, along with the prizes from other major tournaments, together. Watson has installed his first trophy at his office, and his second is at the University of Georgia, his alma mater. When Scott is away from his Australia home, his parents usually keep his. Reed had his in a living room before moving it to an office.“That thing shines like no other,” he said. “It’s a reminder of all the hard work, how it’s paid off. But it’s also a reminder that you want that feeling again, so I actually use it as motivation to try to practice harder and try to get back to that point.”And it turns out that people do not try to touch it. He sometimes does, though.Phil Mickelson, a three-time winner, said he felt the clubhouse reproductions captured the heritage of the tournament. 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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      Masters Leaderboard: Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka Tied on Top

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

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      Forecast for the Masters: Water, Water Everywhere

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

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      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 Major Players Behind LIV Golf: From Trump to the Crown Prince

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      Diagram of the major investors, fixers and political allies and patrons that are connected to LIV Golf. Public Investment Fund Trump World Performance54 LIV Golfers PLUS 45 OTHERS CONSULTANTS McKinsey & Company Public Investment Fund Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan White & Case M. Klein & Company Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Majed al-Sorour Newcastle […] More