2016 MASTERS: Ups and downs as Spieth still shows the way

BY STEVE KEIPERT AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL

THE roller-coaster ride that is the 2016 Masters took more wild turns than a rally-car race in round three and shapes as a memorable final-day shootout tomorrow at Augusta National.

How else can we reason that so many enticing storylines exist? In the mix are the defending champion, potentially the oldest major winner in history, maybe Japan’s first major champion or the first guy named Smylie to win a Grand Slam championship. Throw in the World No.1, a new father and an ultra-talented player who’s seen no luck on Sundays at majors and you have a recipe for high drama.

Jordan Spieth continues to lead, as he has now for a record seven straight rounds at this tournament spanning last year and this, but now only by a stroke. He sits just clear of Smylie Kaufman, a Masters rookie who won on the PGA Tour last October to earn his first start. The ageless Bernhard Langer and Hideki Matsuyama are two behind, with Jason Day and Dustin Johnson three behind at even-par along with Danny Willett.

Jordan Spieth was at his erratic yet effective best during the third round of the Masters.
PHOTO: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

So far, Spieth knows nothing other than the final group on Sunday at the Masters. He was there with Bubba Watson in 2014, showed Justin Rose a clean pair of heels last year and is there again this time with Kaufman. A result sheet of T2-1-1 beckons for the ‘Teflon Kid’ – for now matter what’s thrown at him, nothing appears to stick.

Multiple times on Saturday and all week he suffered setbacks only to not let them affect him. His 73 today included two double-bogeys – including one at the 18th – that merely served as inspiration to rebound. And he’ll need to do more of it tomorrow to keep the chasing pack away.

“I played better than I scored today,” Spieth said. “But I certainly felt better last year on Saturday night than I do right now. I had a four‑shot lead and everything was going right. Just came off a great up‑and‑down on 18. Yeah, I felt much better about my position last year than I do right this second, just because of what happened in the past 40 minutes. But at the same time, I feel that if I can get to the range, I straighten the ball out tomorrow, I get back to the same routine I was just in, I certainly think that down the stretch I’m better prepared now than I was at this point last year.

“It’s hard for me to say that because we just answered every statement made on the golf course last year on Sunday. So I can’t rely on the putter the way I did today. I’ve got to strike the ball better. That’s what leaves me a little uneasy compared to last year. I was at a four‑shot lead and we were, what, 16‑under. I relied on my putter on Sunday last year and it came through. Can’t do that every single round, so I’ve got to put myself in better positions tomorrow.”

Masters rookie Smylie Kaufman is the player closest to Spieth’s lead after 54 holes.
PHOTO: Harry How/Getty Images

The third round mirrored Friday’s 75-plus scoring average with only Kaufman breaking 70. Players were routinely flummoxed by the wind and even completely devastated by it. Billy Horschel stood lining up his eagle putt on the 15th green when a gust of wind started his ball trickling at first, then rolling, all the way into the water hazard fronting the green. The American protested, annoyed but seemingly oblivious to the fact the ball could just as easily have blown nearer or even into the hole, but that’s ‘rub of the green’. He dropped, making a bogey six when a birdie or eagle called.

Still, it can’t have been too hard as two of the three over-50s competitors who made the cut indicated. Firstly, 57-year-old Larry Mize started his third round with three birdies in a row, while later in the day fellow senior Langer shot two-under for the round in a vintage display.

Langer, who won the Masters in 1985 and ’93, last won at Augusta three months before Spieth was born. At 58, he can break both the age record for the Masters and all of golf’s majors with a third triumph tomorrow.

“I believe I can [win]. Obviously it depends how the others do,” Langer said. “If I play my best, I can shoot four‑ or five‑under tomorrow, I think, if the conditions are a little bit better. But so can Jordan Spieth or any of the others on the leaderboard, so it all depends how the rest of the other 15 guys in contention or 20 guys, how they do. So I can only play my game and see how that holds up.

“It would be one for the old guys,” Langer said of a third green jacket. “Tom [Watson] almost had it once … he was extremely unfortunate not to win that tournament, but it’s just how it ended up. Sooner or later, it’s going to happen; one of the over‑50s is going to win a major. We have guys right now, Davis Love, Vijay Singh, Fred Couples, these guys are still long enough to compete on any golf course.”

The ebb and flow of this Masters still makes it a can’t-miss affair. Witness Matsuyama, who stood over an eagle putt from the fringe of the 15th green today to wrest the outright lead from Spieth. Instead, he three-putted for par, then three-putted the 16th for bogey, dropped another shot at 17 and now trails by two.

MASTERS LEADERBOARD  |  FINAL-ROUND TEE-TIMES

Saturday’s much-anticipated showdown between Spieth and Rory McIlroy fizzled as the Northern Irishman made zero birdies in a 77 and lost four strokes to the leader after beginning only one adrift.

The pair eschewed the notion of this Masters coming down to a head-to-head contest, although the final grouping inevitably turned into some sort of match. And it was Spieth who earned the points decision on the front nine, scrapping and scrambling his way to par after par as McIlroy repeatedly let him off the hook. Several times the Texan appeared to be in trouble only to have the Ulsterman release the pressure valve when he could have tightened it. The perfect illustration came at the 7th hole. With Spieth bunkered and running his par putt seven feet past the cup, McIlroy was in handy position behind the hole. He then sent his birdie putt beyond and missed the comebacker to card a soft bogey, giving Spieth the lift he needed to hole his bogey putt and effectively halve a hole he could have lost by two. The defending champion then birdied the next as he distanced himself again, clipping McIlroy by three strokes on the front half.

A bout of the hooks plagued McIlroy around the turn, with drives to the left costing him one stroke at the 10th hole and two more at the 11th when his punch-out second dribbled into the greenside pond. After three dropped shots in the first ten holes, the double-bogey was a killer blow. Seven finishing pars did little to make inroads, but he remains upbeat about a career Grand Slam-completing Masters victory.

Rory McIlroy was dusted comprehensively in the final pairing with Spieth.
PHOTO: Harry How/Getty Images

“To be honest with you, I would be feeling a lot worse about myself if I hadn’t have just seen what Jordan did the last two holes,” McIlroy said. “I sort of take a bit of heart from that, that I’m still in this golf tournament.”

“But I just need to go out there tomorrow and be aggressive. I’ve got nothing to lose. Today was my bad day and hopefully I can go out there and make up for the lack of birdies today and make double the amount tomorrow.”

Every player remaining in the field is hinging their hopes on what Mother Nature serves up tomorrow. All week in Augusta, the weather forecast for Sunday has looked perfect and that remains the case. The school of thought that this demanding, frustrating edition of the Masters will open up to a birdie-a-thon to close is looking wide of the mark, though. The wind may at last abate but the greens firmness and speeds will remain, making precise iron play and deft putting difficult to suddenly summon overnight. The player who can will almost certainly become the champion.

SEEN & HEARD

* ELLIE Day and Lisa Swatton, the wives of Jason and his caddie/coach Col, were among the spectators watching the reigning US PGA champion in the third round of the Masters. Things didn’t start well when Day’s second shot to the 1st hole was struck during a lull in the wind and sailed well over the green. The pair followed his group at a distance throughout the round and rode the emotional highs and lows of championship golf – all without being able to influence the outcome one iota.

* WITH an odd number of players making the cut, 53-year-old Augusta member Jeff Knox reprised his oft-used role as a non-competing marker for the first player out, who this time was two-time champ Bubba Watson. Knox, a plus-one handicapper, is widely considered the club’s best golfer and once shot 61 here from the members’ tees. Those counting say he carded approximately 80 against Watson’s 76 today, including binning a 40-footer for birdie on the 13th. One wonders why the club doesn’t occasionally let Knox start the tournament on Thursday when the field numbers allow it, if for no other reason then to see how well he’d go over four rounds.

* IN RECENT weeks, footage has re-emerged of a supposedly illegal drop 1987 Masters champion Larry Mize took during his winning year at Augusta in which he famously chipped in to beat Greg Norman in extra holes. The footage shows Mize hurriedly dropping from a water hazard with his arm nowhere near high enough for it to be considered a legal drop. So the theory becomes that, had a penalty been applied to Mize’s score, Norman would have won when fellow play-off participant Seve Ballesteros bowed out at the first hole of sudden death. There’s a flaw to that thinking, though, as the drop took place in full view of a supervising rules official, upon whom any blame falls rather than the player. Penalty strokes also cannot be applied retrospectively once a tournament is completed. Now 29 years on, Mize made the cut in 2016 and began today’s round with three consecutive birdies, shooting 78 to sit 11-over.