Five Masters newcomers to watch
Jordan Spieth: Ranked 13th in the world, but only 20 years old. When he won the John Deere Classic last year he became the first teenager to win on the PGA Tour since Ralph Gudahl in 1931. Has three top-five finishes this year.
Patrick Reed: Ranked 22nd in the world. Qualified for the Masters with a victory in last year's Wyndham Championship and has won twice more this year, most recently at Doral. A homecoming of sorts for the player who led Augusta State to two national titles.
Jimmy Walker: Ranked 26th in the world. The hottest player in 2014, winner of three events in eight starts. Average finish in the four events since his last victory — 19th.
Graham DeLaet: Ranked 30th in the world. The Canadian who grew the hockey playoff beard for the Tour Championship figured to be one of top players to watch this season. Had back-to-back runner-up finishes at the Farmers and Waste Management Opens.
Harris English: Ranked 36th in the world. Currently second on Tour in greens in regulation, fourth in scoring average (first in total birdies), 20th in driving distance, the former Bulldog has much to recommend him for Masters contention.
Other pro newcomers in the field (with world ranking): Victor Dubuisson, 21; Stephen Gallacher, 37; Matt Every, 42; Joost Luiten, 43; Billy Horschel, 47; Chris Kirk, 52; Jonas Blixt, 54; Kevin Stadler, 59; Brendon de Jonge 79; Roberto Castro, 86; Derek Ernst, 168
His first Masters, 17 years and many fallen follicles ago, Stewart Cink was overmatched.
He drove up Magnolia Lane with less than a season’s worth of professional tournament appearances in his bag. And while Augusta is only about 140 feet above sea level, to Cink, it felt as if trying to breathe at Everest’s summit.
“I think I was pretty intimidated by the golf course and all the history and everything like that,” he remembered. He shot 75-78, and was asked politely not to return for the weekend.
What to expect, then, from 2014’s crowded rookie class, perhaps one of the more accomplished, promising horde of neophytes ever seen at a place that reveres tradition like no other? There are, entering this weekend, 23 first-timers on the invitation list, 10 of them among the top-50 ranked players in the world, seven among the top 20 in FedEx Cup points. Combined they have 17 PGA Tour victories.
“I’m not sure that these players are going to be very intimidated,” Cink said, “because these guys have played a whole slew of world golf championships, played against some of the best players in the world for some time now. I was just getting my feet wet. I think they are a little different crop of guys.”
They don’t make newbies like they used to. These guys don’t seem like scared fraternity pledges who will tolerate a bogey-filled hazing this week. And after 14-year-old Guan Tianlang made the cut last year, you can’t even dismiss the amateurs (there are six in the rookie class) anymore.
Jordan Spieth is the prodigy of the bunch, the 20-year-old who plays with the fierce expectation of shooting an 18 every round. He might even be that guy yelling “In the hole!” on the par-5 tee shots.
Jimmy Walker was threatening a bloodless takeover of the PGA Tour trophy ceremony, winning three events over a four-month period before discovering it’s really not that easy.
The Georgia connections are formidable and to be taken seriously. Augusta State’s Patrick Reed went on his tear and prematurely proclaimed himself a top-five player in the world. Meanwhile, two former Bulldogs — Harris English and Chris Kirk — and one Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket — Roberto Castro — decided it was time to play Augusta National under tournament conditions.
“All these guy’s games match up great with the golf course because they all hit it pretty far, they all keep it in play and they have magical short games and putting. It’s pretty hard to say that’s not a good combination for all kinds of golf. A Harris English, for example, will fit in well there,” Cink said, a one-time Tech player not afraid to give a Bulldog his due.
“Augusta National is the modern game, and these guys have it,” he added.
Some of this flood of newcomers who won’t be ignored is the doing of a guy who won’t be there this year. By his absence, Tiger Woods makes 2014 all the more wide open. By his presence all those years before, he planted big ideas with all the young players now committing them into action.
“We grew up watching Tiger,” Reed said. “We want to basically play the game how he has done it, in the (same) dominant fashion.”
Justin Rose played his first Masters in 2003. He finished 9 over, with the key word there being “finished.”
“I think the general rule is if you make the cut the first time going to Augusta, that’s a successful performance,” he said.
Still, you get the feeling that just hanging around through Sunday is not the first-timers’ top priority. Many of these guys have gotten in the habit of spelling out goals in capital letters.
The name Fuzzy Zoeller has a singular place in Masters lore — and not because of his stand-up routine on Woods’ champions’ dinner menu that caused such a stir. When he won in 1979 he was a champion by ambush, the only player to claim a Masters in his first appearance since the first two winners (Horton Smith in 1934, Gene Sarazen in ’35).
It long has been a code of Masters pools never to draft a rookie; it’s a wasted pick. But several among the gallery of this freshman class have the gall to say they can compete and the game to actually follow through on that claim.
Managing their emotions will be one of the keys to making good on the loftiest ambitions. As the rookies have solicited advice from those who have experienced April in Augusta, there has been one prevailing nugget: Try to treat this tournament like it was the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Good luck with that.
“It’s going to be different because that’s the one tournament I always watched growing up and always dreamed of playing when I was a kid,” English, who grew up in Valdosta, said. When he was just 10, his father took him on a pilgrimage to his first Masters practice round.
“It’s going to be a very surreal moment driving down Magnolia Lane, then standing on that first tee. It’s a dream come true.”
With their local connections, these Georgia fellows won’t be stumbling into unknown surroundings like sailors on leave walking into some port-of-call bar. Atlanta’s Kirk figures he’s played Augusta National at least 10 times, and that before last week’s practice rounds. He’s told the course plays much differently on Masters week than during a UGA outing.
“I guess I’m established enough out here that I’m not nervous on the first tee, but I’m sure I will be a little bit there,” Kirk said. “Anxious more than anything. Excited to get going. I think I’ll be fine.”
Woods won his first Masters at 21. Can we say with absolute certainty that Spieth is incapable at 20?
He has won in a playoff after canning a bunker shot on the 72nd hole. He has finished second in the ultimate all-star event, the Tour Championship at East Lake. This is a different kind of kid. “I don’t walk into these kind of tournaments feeling like a rookie anymore, and I think that helps me,” Spieth said. “I don’t know if it makes much of a difference but I have the experience of playing big tournaments, with elite fields.”
And if it is up to a mere pup to lay out the audacious mantra for his fellow first-timers, then so be it: “I’m going to have to play my butt off. I have to have my A-plus game there. If we go through the right preparation and I’m on my game, then I feel like I’ve got a good shot at it.”
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