FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D3
practices two hours a day, I’ll
practice eight.” Then he added
that if 12-hour days became
necessary, so be it.
The harder the hardest-
working star drives himself, the
more weight he puts on others.
When he arrived 25 years ago,
Tiger Woods was that man,
driving himself with Special
Forces-level training until his
body broke in several places but
not until he had 14 major titles.
Now, ironically, Woods, 44,
may be the golfer at this Masters
with the least baggage and the
most smiles Thursday, when he
also shot a 68. That’s because his
win here in 2019 not only
shocked everyone but removed
11 years of injury, controversy,
failure and self-doubt: a whole
baggage car of burdens,
unloaded with one win. Now he
has a lower back and left knee
shredded by surgeries, and
everyone is just happy when he’s
not gimping or grimacing. No
one asks whether he’s practiced
enough to be sharp in his old
way. He can’t even try.
Woods has played only six
times this year and not well. But
you never know what a light
heart and no pack on your back
can do to put youth in your step.
Few who have watched Tiger
struggle this year expect him to
approach what he did 19 months
ago. But in his 68, his swing was
fluid, he used all his shot shapes
and for the first time in
105 majors — dating back to the
2009 PGA Championship —
Woods posted a bogey-free
round.
Baggage, who needs it?
[email protected]For more by Thomas Boswell, visit
washingtonpost.com/boswell.the masters
They even get ahead of
themselves — a perennial, mean
golf trick — and speculate about
what winning would mean to
them before they have done it.
They tell us their dreams —
innocently — and then their
minds often play tricks on them
during Sunday’s final nine.
“Just the history, right? This is
the 40th anniversary of Seve
[Ballesteros’s] first win here,”
said Rahm, the world No. 2.
“... Five green jackets go out to
Spain. Hopefully I can be the
sixth.”
What is fine motivation, and
what is just more baggage?
The interrogations by others
and the inquisitions of self that
go on constantly at majors are
painfully lifelike, even for those
who will never play in a golf
tournament. Given my abilities,
my level of ambition and the
balance I want to maintain
between work and private life,
how excellent must I become —
and how much does that
excellence have to be reflected in
tangible success — for me to be
at peace? The answer is different
for everyone.
Right on up to Rory McIlroy,
who has won four major
championships but who, after a
dozen seasons in the golf
spotlight, often talks about
wanting to keep his
competitiveness sharp but also
have a full life.
So, Rory, when are you goingcareer.
The only current top player
with a longer no-major streak
(83 events) is Lee Westwood, 47,
who also stands high on the
leader board after an opening
- If he keeps playing well, he
will hear all about it — including
his three runner-up finishes in
majors. At times, it seems golfers
should get double credit for
dignity because they put up with
this arbitrary “why aren’t you
slightly greater” nag.
ESPN on Thursday showed a
graphic of the golfers with the
most major starts without a win,
also including Ian Poulter (65)
and Matt Kuchar (58). The
Masters leader board is littered
with some of the best players in
the world without a major win,
almost all of whom probably will
join the list of major winners but
not without first carrying the
weight of their “zero” around,
perhaps for years. Their cruel
sport only hands out four of
those darn major crowns a year.
Xander Schauffele (tied for
second after a 67), Hideki
Matsuyama (68), Jon Rahm and
Tony Finau (both with 69) are all
in the world top 20. But despite
their accomplishments and
wealth, all of them accept the
standard of their sport: that a
professional career, especially at
the top levels, is measured by
major wins.
BOSWELL FROM D1
T HOMAS BOSWELL
Waiting sure can feel like
the weight of the world
Back to the 13th: What
DeChambeau casually said about
getting back to under par on that
one hole — statistically the
easiest hole at last year’s
Masters, the second-easiest hole
in the history of the tournament
— is revealing. He has three
rounds to play it in 3 under. Is
that cocky or completely
reasonable?
“At the end of the day, I s hould
have been smarter and hit it out,
took my medicine and hit it on
the green,” DeChambeau said,
unconvincingly. “But hopefully
tomorrow I’ll hit it in the
fairway and have a different
opportunity for birdie — if not
eagle.”
Make double Thursday.
Expect eagle Friday. That’s a
mind that’s programmed to go
for it on top of a body that can
pull off feats others can’t.
DeChambeau didn’t blow the
Masters in those bushes
alongside the 13th on Thursday.
He brought patience to the
course and will rise Friday ready
to attack again.
[email protected]For more by Barry Svrluga, visit
washingtonpost.com/svrluga.the fairway.
And then DeChambeau
absolutely obliterated one up the
left side. When it landed, he
strode straight to the clubhouse,
something of a walk-off homer.
Westwood and Wallace were left
to go find the ball, which they
did — some 60 yards beyond
Westwood’s, just a yard into the
rough. Shake your head in
disbelief, except he will do it all
week.
“There was a couple of them
that were reality checks,” Rahm
said Thursday after his own 69.
Take the third, which plays as
a 350-yard par-4 and has a steep
slope in front of the green that
prevents shots from bouncing
up. On Thursday, DeChambeau
ripped at his driver, then
squinted down the fairway.
“Short,” he muttered. “God, I
hit it so high on the face.”
Whatever the disappointment,
there’s always an explanation.
Yet as they walked off the tee,
Rahm appeared perplexed.
“Can you reach, Bryson?” he
asked.
“Yeah,” DeChambeau said. “I
got there yesterday.”
And if he can, he will — or will
at least try.Tiger, drawing more eyeballs —
from media and photographers
because there are no fans — than
Woods himself.
“What Bryson has done has
been absolutely incredible,”
Woods said before the
tournament began.
“I think Bryson DeChambeau
is a huge asset to the game of
golf because we have a lot of
people talking about what he’s
doing,” three-time Masters
champ Phil Mickelson said. “He’s
thinking outside the box, and
he’s willing to put in the work to
accomplish it.”
So as this package continues
to be unwrapped, there is both
growing respect and remaining
curiosity. On Wednesday
morning, after he had finished a
nine-hole practice round at 18,
he walked up to the first tee,
where Englishmen Lee
Westwood and Matt Wallace
were preparing to start their
round.
“Do you guys mind if I hit just
one ball?” he asked. Westwood
gestured: Please, go ahead.
Wallace hit his tee shot short of
the fairway bunker on the right.
Westwood hit a fine drive even
with the bunker in the center ofcourse was delighted to receive
such patience. There was,
indeed, a lot to admire in how
DeChambeau handled himself
after his adventure at 13. He hit
so many trees early in his round,
he seemed more arborist than
golfer. At 14, as he approached
his tee shot in still more pine
needles, he looked in
befuddlement at how far he
remained from the green and
asked whoever was around,
“Caught a tree, obviously, right?”
Obviously, because how else
could he have been that short?
DeChambeau transformed his
body over the past year by
adding weight — weight that
would translate to so much
clubhead speed, which in turn
would translate to so much
distance — and he arrived with
the credentials of a six-stroke
victory in the most recent major,
the U.S. Open in September. But
in some ways, this pandemic-
delayed Masters is his official
coming-out party. Out-hyping
Woods at Augusta is nearly
impossible. Yet here was
DeChambeau, with the
awkward-looking, single-plane
swing and the prodigious length,
playing three groups ahead ofdown. So the worst-case scenario
— playing his fifth shot over the
creek into the green — was
avoided. Still, the result after a
chunked chip and two-putt:
double bogey.
But here’s the thing: He would
do it again. Not because he’s
some sort of reckless daredevil.
Rather because, by his
calculations, the odds say it’s the
right thing to do. DeChambeau
knows that, over time, regardless
of the situation, going for it >
holding back — for him. It’s not
just a mind-set. It’s math.
“You’ve got to take risks to win
tournaments,” DeChambeau
said. “And albeit I made double
from it, I still think over the
course of four days, I can get that
back to under par.”
Which he did with his round,
albeit adventurously. He started
at the 10th hole, dropped to
2 over with the double at 13, then
grinded it out to finish birdie-
birdie and post a 2-under-par 70
that was well down the leader
board on a day when scoring was
exceptionally easy.
“I’m very happy with the
patience I delivered to the
course today,” DeChambeau said,
and we’re quite certain theaugusta, ga. —
As he rustled
through the
azaleas high to
the left of the
13th green at
Augusta National
Golf Club, half his
body submerged
in the shrubs, the small search
party surrounding Bryson
DeChambeau lacked only a Saint
Bernard with a barrel around its
neck. Right then, DeChambeau
would have been better served
by a pair of 4 8-inch hedge
clippers than a 48-inch driver.
Five men looked for one ball,
and after weeks of buzz,
DeChambeau threatened to
fizzle out before he had
completed the fourth hole of his
Masters week.
“I got greedy,” DeChambeau
said later, by way of explanation.
And here, he has set up not just
the rest of this week — the first
November Masters in history —
but also the rest of his career.
Every shot is an evaluation, a
battle between aggressiveness
and, to put it kindly, wimping
out. DeChambeau’s foray into
Augusta National’s finest flora
showed the path he took in the
first round of the Masters, the
path he will take 99 times out of
100.
Tiger Woods is the defending
Masters champion, and
somehow DeChambeau —
idiosyncratic and iconoclastic,
prepared to wrestle this place to
the ground through brute force
even as it shows that can be
unwise — entered as the central
character. And after three holes
of his Masters, his drive at the
par-5 13th didn’t draw around
the corner at his command but
instead ended up through the
fairway in the needles at the
base of a cluster of tall pines.
The choices: lay up short of the
tributary of Rae’s Creek that
guards the front of the green
(smart) or go for it (fraught).
For most of the field, the
former is a no-brainer. For
DeChambeau, so is the latter. He
is not here to throw away his
shot, thanks very much. So he
lashed at it with a 7-iron, danger
be damned. The ball started left
— and drew farther left.
“Is that in the bushes?”
DeChambeau called ahead to
Louis Oosthuizen, one of his
playing partners. Oosthuizen
pointed left. Indeed, it appeared
dead.
“Sometimes I can get a little
greedy, and I like taking risks,”
DeChambeau said.
It’s fair to ask: Sometimes?
This risk resulted in
DeChambeau dropping another
ball in the pine straw, saying
quite loudly, “Provisional,” and
then whacking that shot in the
water in front of the green. That
potential disaster made it
imperative to find the first ball,
which Oosthuizen and fellow
playing partner Jon Rahm
helped him do. Eventually, Tim
Tucker, his caddie, tracked it
Augusta National calls for strategy. DeChambeau is opting for strong-arm math.
Barry
Svrluga
MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS
“ You’ve got to take risks to win tournaments,” said Bryson DeChambeau, who rebounded from a double bogey on his fourth hole to finish the first round at 2-under-par 70.right, Rory? Light as air?
Long before my time, golf was
already a sport full of obsessives
and workaholics. Bobby Jones,
who created the Masters, was
well known for saying that
practice was important but in
sensible moderation. “Don’t
practice longer than you can
maintain complete focus,” he
said.
A few years after Jones left the
scene, Ben Hogan — Bantam
Ben, the Wee Iceman — arrived,
hardscrabble and broke,
proclaiming that “you find your
game in the dirt [of the practice
range].... If someone elseMickelson “won his first
major after knocking on the
door for a long time. I’m not
quite in that scenario, but I’m
looking for my first here,”
McIlroy said. “I’ve always felt I
had the game to do well around
here. It’s just a matter of getting
out of my own way and letting it
happen.
“But... you can’t just rely on
people saying you’re going to
win one. Greg Norman never
did. Ernie Els never did.... A lot
of great people have played this
game that never won a green
jacket. I have to go earn it.”
So no baggage this week,to win the Masters and complete
the career Grand Slam?
There are some people in this
world, perhaps even wise ones,
who would answer by saying:
“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. I’ll
try hard. I want it. But don’t ask
me to be miserable if I don’t.”
However, great golfers, great
athletes in general, seldom
speak or think that way.
“Nothing’s given in this game,”
McIlroy said this week, adding
that he might sit down and have
a chat on the subject with Phil
Mickelson, who never won any
major until he was 34 and who
has still not won a U.S. Open.MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS
Rory McIlroy has won four major championships, but he’s still seeking his first victory at the Masters.