AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sometime on Sunday night — climate allowing, as a result of all the pieces throughout this Masters Tournament appears to be like that — Brooks Koepka or Jon Rahm or one in every of 52 different gamers will get to put on the jacket they really need to throughout this journey to Augusta National Golf Club.
It’s inexperienced.
Saturday’s climate threw the match into fastidiously managed havoc, with the third spherical scheduled to renew at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. Koepka, Rahm and Sam Bennett had been to attempt to end the seventh gap, which they had been enjoying in the 3 p.m. hour on Saturday when circumstances grew to become too poor to proceed. If all goes based on Augusta National’s plan, the remaining spherical will tee off at 12:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, with the 54 gamers paired up and enjoying from the first and tenth tees.
Augusta National, searching for to keep away from its first Monday Masters end since 1983, used a comparable strategy in 2019’s fourth spherical, when climate led teams of three to start out from two tees.
Tee instances, in fact, are solely a part of Augusta’s climate battle plan. The membership additionally has a extremely refined, sort-of-secret weapon: a huge, subterranean system often called SubAir that attracts moisture away from the golf course’s greens and fairways. The system has many features, together with pumping contemporary air to help with the root construction of the grass. But when heavy rainfall strikes, it might siphon rainwater away from the central areas of the course to locations on the property which are extra more likely to be out of play.
Players love the SubAir system as a result of it might maintain the velocity of a course’s devilish greens constant regardless of a downpour, in addition to make fairways drier, which results in tougher touchdown surfaces and longer drives off the tee. The system emits a low hum, a sound the high gamers have come to understand.
“They just turn it on,” Viktor Hovland marveled final yr, “and overnight it’s a completely different golf course.”
Fred Couples — sure, 63-year-old Fred Couples — made the minimize.
Let’s be sincere: It is just about sure that Fred Couples won’t win the Masters this yr. He may even end final, or near it. But Fred Couples, the 1992 champion, continues to be in the subject, which is greater than a few of his (a lot) youthful counterparts can say.
At 63, he’s the oldest participant ever to make the Masters minimize.
“There really isn’t a secret,” Couples stated. “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 enjoying privileges at the Masters because of his 1992 win, final performed the third and fourth rounds in 2018, when he completed in a tie for thirty eighth. His final top-10 end got here in 2010, when he positioned sixth.
“I am excited to make the cut,” he stated. “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 is aware of he’ll compete solely a lot. He is ok 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 stated.
A number of notable scores to date in the interrupted third spherical.
There continues to be loads of third-round golf to play, however the spherical has not delivered as a lot of the motion that gamers need: 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 rating by one.
Phil Mickelson stays at 4 below par for the match after bogeying two of the final three holes earlier than play was suspended on Saturday. Justin Rose began the spherical at 4 below, received to 6 below and was again to 4 below when everybody headed indoors.
Dustin Johnson, who gained the match in 2020 with the lowest rating in the competitors’s historical past, is six over for the spherical, placing him in a tie for 51st at 5 over.
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