AUGUSTA, Ga. — Defending champion Scottie Scheffler answered any doubts about his readiness to win one other inexperienced jacket by posting a bogey-free, 4-under 68 and sits close to the highest of the leaderboard in first-round play on the 89th Masters at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership on Thursday.
Scheffler had three birdies on the primary 9 holes, together with a 62-foot putt on the par-3 fourth. He added a 42-foot birdie on the par-3 sixteenth to seize a share of the early lead with Canada’s Corey Conners. Justin Rose has since carded a stellar 7-under 65 to take the clubhouse lead, a spherical that included eight birdies and only one bogey for the Brit.
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Scheffler is simply the fourth defending Masters winner to open the subsequent 12 months’s event with a bogey-free spherical up to now 30 years.
With sunshine and little wind, the morning wave of gamers loved pristine scoring circumstances, aside from the Augusta Nationwide greens, which have been quick and agency even after greater than an inch of rain fell on Monday.
“I had a sense the golf course was going to get fairly agency,” Scheffler stated. “The areas to hit your irons out listed here are fairly small, they usually get even smaller when the greens are agency, so there’s positively some problem to the golf course as we speak, and I am certain that’ll proceed because the week goes on.”
The world No. 1 golfer had a comparatively stress-free spherical within the opening 18 holes of his try to affix Jack Nicklaus (1963, 1965 and 1966) as the one golfers to win the Masters 3 times in a four-year span. Scheffler can grow to be solely the fourth golfer to win a inexperienced jacket in back-to-back years, becoming a member of Nicklaus, Nick Faldo (1989-90) and Tiger Woods (2001-02).
Scheffler now has 4 straight opening rounds within the 60s on the Masters, the second-longest streak within the event’s illustrious historical past, trailing solely Nicklaus, who completed the feat 5 straight instances from 1972 to ’76, in accordance with ESPN Analysis.
On the par-4 seventh, Scheffler wanted a pleasant up and down out of a greenside bunker to save lots of par. Then on the subsequent gap, the par-5 eighth, he smacked a 319-yard drive into the second reduce down the left facet. His strategy with a fairway wooden went proper of the inexperienced and landed in a deep divot.
“Simply a kind of offers — typically you get good and unhealthy breaks,” Scheffler stated. “Fortuitously, there was nonetheless a means I might play the shot. However, yeah, I used to be simply in a divot about that massive. Fairly deep.”
By some means, Scheffler chipped to 14 toes and made the putt for a birdie to get to three underneath.
“It was fairly difficult,” he stated. “I hit a extremely superior shot to get it to about 15 toes. I needed to put it at the back of my stance, stand near it, be certain that I acquired ball first, and I hit this sort of low skipper. [I] was lucky to have the ability to get some spin on it as a result of it was sitting so deep in that grass. I used to be shocked it did not hit the entrance of the divot when it got here out. That is how deep it was.”
On the par-4 seventeenth, he made one other deft pitch out of a greenside bunker and an 8-footer to save lots of par once more.
“I felt fairly good,” Scheffler stated. “Anytime you possibly can preserve a card clear out right here, it is a actually good factor. I struggled for what felt like two pars as we speak. I needed to make two actually good up-and-downs. However aside from that, the golf course was in entrance of me a lot of the day, saved the ball in play, did a variety of actually good issues on the market.”
The unhealthy information for the remainder of the sector is that Scheffler says he feels as ready for a event as he has all season. He missed the primary month after reducing his hand in a cooking accident on Christmas, which restricted his capability to follow.
He hit 11 of 18 greens, so there’s room to enhance over the ultimate 54 holes.
