AUGUSTA - Right from the very start of Masters play Thursday morn, tradition was bumping up against mutation.
On the first tee, the venerated threesome of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson loosened joints that somehow have seen them through a combined 243 years and 35 major championships. Their ceremonial tee shot is a little piece of reanimated history, like Michael Jordan shooting a free throw inside a packed United Center once a year.
At the same time, on the practice green just to their rear, Kevin Na plunked down his bag adorned with the logo of the Ironheads, the name given one of the “teams” within the new LIV golf tour. These LIV guys,18 of them to start the week, have been doing all kinds of ambush marketing here, flaunting the designs of their rival tour all around the Augusta National property. Think Pepsi vendor working the World of Coke.
The universe quickly served a reminder that Na wasn’t at Crooked Cat, site of last week’s LIV event in Orlando, anymore. First off after the ceremonies were done, and the first LIV player to hit the Masters beachhead, Na deposited his drive in the pines left of the fairway. More butchery ensued. After punching out of the wood, he flew the green, then chipped 60 feet past the pin and two-putted for double bogey. Unlike any LIV event, here when you mess up, people notice.
Citing illness, Na would withdraw after nine holes. So, not a great opening statement for a subset of this Masters field aching to make the same point Glen Close did in “Fatal Attraction” – “I’m not going to be ignored.”
Harold Varner III perhaps spoke succinctly for the LIV rebels earlier this week, declaring, “Everyone thinks we suck now, so I want to play great. It’s not like Space Jam where they took our talents away.”
Phil Mickelson, who next to Greg Norman is a founding face of the breakaway Saudi-backed tour, had definite hopes coming in. “It would be nice to validate the amount of talent that is over there on LIV,” he said.
The now 17 surviving LIV players banned from the PGA Tour but qualified for this Masters represented a mixed bag after the first round.
Apparently life in the 54-hole, guaranteed-riches LIV world doesn’t necessarily rob a man of his will to commit serious golf. Maybe they all haven’t spent the last year lounging about smoking a hookah, comparing their contracts and occasionally amusing themselves with a bit of recreational play.
Brooks Koepka told us coming in that he was healthy and ready to get back to the business of hammerlocking majors, and darn if he didn’t get off to a great start. He’s tied with Viktor Hovland and Jon Rahm for the lead after a Thursday 65.
As the only LIV-er to shoot in the 60s Thursday – 14 PGA Tour players and one amateur managed as much – Koepka is carrying the banner now for the controversial circuit. They’ve got one strong messenger when his knees aren’t mashed potatoes.
Better yet, to his credit, Koepka didn’t walk around Thursday in officially licensed rebel wear, going the corporate route instead. “Yeah, I have a (LIV) team, but I’m sponsored by Nike,” he said, explaining his choice of logo this day. On his breast, great battles for commercial dominance are fought.
In total, six of the 17 LIV players in the Masters field broke par. They played to a stroke average of 72.41, and finished a composite 7 over. The overall field average Thursday was 72.34.
Hard for the LIV guys to get noticed on a leaderboard that is overstuffed with proven winners. They’ve put together a Who’s Who PGA Tour directory, and it’s called the 2023 Masters.
One of the interesting, LIV-related sidebars to Thursday was the return of Mickelson from self-imposed exile.
His scorecard had a familiar look to it, especially those small integers connected to Augusta National’s par 5s. Doesn’t look like Mickelson is eating much these days, but he still does feast on these particular holes. Birdies on all four par 5s enabled him to shoot 71. Wild tee shots that found water on Nos. 11 and 16 blocked him from doing better.
So much else about Mickelson’s Masters seemed just a little different Thursday.
In days of yore, he drew fans like no one else here, save Tiger Woods. A three-time champion with ample manufactured charm, he gathered large galleries even in years he didn’t contend.
Cut Thursday to the par-3 fourth hole, and one perplexed fan who had worked this corner of the course since the mid-1990s.
“So weird. You think this is weird?” wondered Chris King, in from Greenville, S.C.
“You never see those seats that empty,” he said, nodding to the stands around the 4th green, which indeed were a largely vacant backdrop to Mickelson’s approach.
Has the relationship between the Masters and Mickelson cooled? Is there a LIV backlash at work? Hard to quantitatively measure such a thing, but understandable if true. He was compelled to stay away in 2022 due to some controversial blather he put out before going to LIV. He hasn’t played worth squat since. His 25 lost pounds have radically redefined his profile (I miss sloppy Phil). He’s wearing some hieroglyph on his shirt that they say is a LIV HyFlyers logo. So, yeah, maybe we don’t exactly know what to make of him now.
Mickelson certainly was glad to be back, explaining his thoughts on the first tee thusly: “This is an awesome day no matter what I shoot – just trying to enjoy the day and not put so much pressure on myself.”
A year ago at Masters time, as Mickelson put it, “I was skiing and watching Scottie Scheffler play some great golf.” Now he is on just the first leg of a Masters comeback tour, trying to slowly win back his fans one fist bump at a time.
As the great past champion who helped birth an alternate tour, Mickelson also is very much the embodiment of the conflict between tradition and mutation that will be one of the dominant storylines of this tournament.
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