You want a group to follow? Try No. 14, which went out at 10:34 Thursday morning with a couple of former U.S. Open champions and a 22-year-old Brit who looks 15 and has yet to win anything on this continent.
So which one was leading the 81st Masters? Jordan Spieth? Martin Kaymer? Nope. Matthew Fitzpatrick, who was atop the leaderboard at No. 18 until — oops — he wasn’t anymore. With a double-bogey 6 on the closing hole, Fitzpatrick settled for a 1-under 71, a score that that felt a lot lower, but kept him on the leaderboard.
No trio in the Masters better exemplified the vagaries of the first round, when Augusta National nullified shots even when the wind seemed still and yardage felt right. Though he finished a couple of hours before Charley Fitzgerald posted his 65, Fitzgerald spoke for all of group No. 14 when he admitted the course has asked some questions they couldn’t always answer.
“You just got to be so patient and every shot, you got to think about it,” he said. “You got to think about how you’re hitting it and how far you’re hitting it, and you always got to be switched on.”
Kaymer seemed switched on all right through the front side. But he opened the back with a double-bogey and then banged out five more bogeys in a row, losing seven shots to par in six holes. While the 2014 Open champion has never played particularly well at Augusta National, his 78 was among his worst rounds in his 10 years here, and he is posed for a Friday-night exit.
As for Spieth, it may not have been on a Sunday and it may not have been on a short hole, but he got another quadruple-bogey, this one on the par-5 No. 15, where he laid up and still knocked it in the water. That led to an unseemly 9, which led to a 3-over 75, though he sounded like it was only a flesh wound.
“The weekend looks like there’s going to be no wind,” Spieth said before Hoffman torched the back nine. “It looks like single-digits (under par) might win this tournament. And I certainly can post single-digits under par at this point. Got three rounds to go.”
After Fitzpatrick chipped in for a birdie on 14 and then carded a two-putt birdie on No. 15 to drop to 3 under, he was alone with the lead in mid-afternoon. While Justin Rose and William McGirt, both playing behind him, caught up later in the round, he was bound to be the leader in the clubhouse when he went to the 18th tee.
Then he started worrying that somebody was going to get hurt.
“Just didn’t really feel comfortable over the tee shot,” he said. “My low (tee shot) is lower than everyone else’s so I can actually kill someone at head-high, so I didn’t feel comfortable with people sort of poking their heads round. Should have backed off it and got everyone to move.”
But he didn’t and pinched his swing, driving the ball deep into the trees on the left. Trapped, he could only punch out into a bunker, which led to a three-putt 6 and a share of the lead. He is grouped with a herd, including Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose, six shots behind Hoffman.
The same threesome goes off at 1:41 Friday afternoon, and the galleries will be as big as they were in the first round. Fitzpatrick, who turned some heads here last year with a 67 on Sunday that left him with a share of seventh place, hasn’t had much experience with big crowds at the majors.
“It was fantastic,” he said. “I’m good friends with Martin as it is, and I played with Jordan only once before in 2013, when I was an amateur. But I would probably be bold enough to say he’s America’s favorite golfer, so it was fantastic to play with crowd like that.”
It was, for a while.
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