AUGUSTA - Like any major championship worth its sterling, Augusta National annually demands execution of each of the game’s skills. On Saturday, the Masters might have added a new criteria: the Australian Crawl.
With the greens turned to ponds by hours of steady rain, the Masters was forced to suspend play midway through the third round, even as leader Brooks Koepka profited by swinging in the rain. His four-shot lead with 12 holes to complete the third leaves him in strong position to secure one of the two major championships he lacks, though Sunday’s 30-hole finale promises for a unique finish on a spongy track and gusty conditions.
“I’m not too concerned about playing 29 holes or however many holes we’ve got left,” said Koepka, who was treading water on the seventh green when play was halted. “It’s part of the deal. I’m pretty sure I’ll be up for it, considering it is the Masters.”
Sunday’s forecast calls for clearing skies with a 63-degree high and winds hitting 25 mph. It could all make for a decent Navy SEALs training video. Third-round play resumes at 8:30 a.m. while the final round is slotted for 12:30 p.m. with the field going off both No. 1 and No. 10 tees.
The rest of the field will need to refind its footing. Behind the leaders, Patrick Cantlay, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland all stood eight shots back. A group of six, including majors champions Justin Rose, Phil Mickelson and Jason Day, were all 4 under, nine shots behind with defending champion Scottie Scheffler trailing by 10.
It had already been a long day when the horns blew at 3:15 p.m. Earlier that morning, 39 players had to finish their second rounds in a chilly drizzle, after which Koepka maintained a two-stroke lead on Jon Rahm and a four-shot edge on amateur Sam Bennett, who has resurrected memories of Ken Venturi 67 years ago, when he contended deep into the weekend as an amateur.
Never before had two players opened a Masters third round under par by double-digits -- Koepka at -12, Rahm at -10 -- but it was clear as the rain picked up that no one was going to scale the leaderboard this day. Only four players in the top 14 picked up strokes to par in the afternoon and that Koepka had one birdie all day -- an up-and-down from four feet on No. 2 -- and still increased his lead by two shots should be no surprise.
Rahm sloshed into a pair of bogeys -- an errant sand shot on No. 4 and a three-putt from 88 feet on No. 5 -- and later implied it might have been worse. Koepka answered with two pars and doubled his lead.
“So,” Rahm said, “very happy with the way I finished.”
He might get a stroke back, perhaps two, right away Sunday. Koepka’s first shot will be an 11-foot putt for a sand save on No. 7 while Rahm will have a nine footer for birdie. If Rahm was happy, Koepka sounded relieved just to get off the grounds.
“It’s obviously super difficult,” Koepka said. “Ball’s not going anywhere. You’ve got rain to deal with and it’s freezing cold (low 40s). It doesn’t make it easy.”
The tournament committee was stuck with two onerous options. It was to either push the field through a few more extra holes in worsening conditions or risk the possibility of not having enough daylight to complete the tournament on Sunday. It has been 40 years since the Masters needed an extra day, clearly the lesser option.
“Obviously when we walked up to the 7th green it was clear to us that that green had been wet for a while,” said Rahm. “They had been squeegeeing it for a while. I understand they’re trying to push us to play as many holes as possible, but it was very apparent when they tried to get the water out, that it just wasn’t going to happen in our case.”
If there was an opening for Bennett to advance his chances, they floated away with a bogey-bogey start. This was a far cry from his opening aria, when he began play on Thursday at birdie-eagle.
“I’m just trying to enjoy it,” he said. “I feel comfortable out there. The bogeys on 1 and 2 weren’t because of nerves. They were simply just bad swings.”
Koepka has never been in a better position to win here. He was tied for the lead after 36 holes in 2019, when Tiger Woods broke through with a 67 on Saturday to win a most memorable Masters despite Koepka’s closing 69-70. He had to settle for a second-place tie with Dustin Johnson and Xander Schauffele at one shot back. But on this day, the worse it got, the bigger his lead became.
“I didn’t think about it at all,” Koepka said.”It would be a helluva lot easier just playing normal than it was there, but it was getting ... I mean, that 7th green was soaked.”
It won’t be, come sunrise Sunday.
“So we’re going to have good weather conditions,” Rahm said, “and most likely a soft golf course.”
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