Not only is William McGirt tickled to make the cut in his first Masters, thanks to a steady 73 in gusting, swirling winds he is 2 under for the tournament and near the leaders at Augusta National.
“I don’t know that you could write this in a script and have it come out any better, unless it was about a 10‑shot lead,” he said.
McGirt was in the first group off at 8 a.m. He and playing partner Rod Pampling played the course in 4 hours, 15 minutes. McGirt said if they didn’t have to stop on most shots to decipher the winds, they likely would have finished in 3:30. It took them more than five hours to play their first rounds.
“I mean, conditions don’t warrant zipping around right now,” he said.
McGirt, whose appearance with his long, blond hair and a bit of a belly make it seems as if he could be walking around as a patron rather than a contender, said he wants more of the type of weather the field has fought in its first two days, rather than the nice conditions that are forecast.
“A lot of my prep work has been done under these conditions,” he said. “Now, it was much gustier the last two days than what I’ve been down here for, but it wasn’t a shock to me. I know some guys have only been down here when it’s calm and they kind of don’t know what to expect, but this is what I played under in practice. I don’t know what to do when it’s calm out here. I have never played it calm.”
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