I know, I know – it seems obvious, but you couldn’t fail but be impressed with the Ulsterman’s opening Masters round.
The scorecard read 65 but it could’ve been so much better, with a couple of golden birdie chances shaving the hole.
He now needs to back it up with a solid second round and not capitulate like he did when leading The Open at St Andrews last year. That seems unlikely with the Augusta weather unlikely to be offering any advantage to early or late starters today. McIlroy himself has also talked candidly about learning from that experience.
If he putts like he did yesterday all week he will be hard to catch.
Carlos Quirós is a big threat
We shouldn’t be surprised that Quirós has come good at Augusta so far this week – when you can bomb drives to 340 yards and leave yourself a six iron into a par five you are always gonna be a threat around here.
He has talked about not understanding the Augusta greens in the past, but he seems to have learnt fast.
Luke Donald still looks the form man
An odd thing to say after such a disappointing start – he was +3 through 13 holes – but Donald showed why he came into this Masters as the form man.
A birdie-eagle-birdie run through 14, 15 and 16 saw him get into red figures, with his beautiful putt at 15 for eagle, in particular, a sign of things to come.
Phil Mickelson is the new Seve
We kind of knew that already, of course, but Mickelson’s first round suggested his Champions Dinner in honour of Seve earlier this week had inspired him to play like the great Spaniard.
Wayward off the tee on numerous occasions, he frequently left himself in all sorts of awkward spots. But, as he showed last year, he loves it when his back is against the wall and his ball is against a tree. Time and again he made par when he had no right to, and his -2 round was the stuff of champions.
Sergio is back
Fresh from a sabbatical of football and little else, it was great to see Sergio back on a golf course doing what he does best.
The long game looked as good as ever, but the putting heebie-jeebies were prevalent as he snagged a couple of putts not much longer than four feet.
A win this week for him this week would be incredible, but looks unlikely – he will need to hole many putts to do that. Instead, just enjoy having the charismatic Spaniard back where he belongs.
No comments:
Post a Comment