Soggy Augusta boosts McIlroy’s bid for elusive Green Jacket

There is always a spoiler at the Masters, even if that spoiler doesn’t win (Chris DiMarco, Len Mattiace and Danny Willett come to mind recently), but it would be fantastic to see a 2002-like final round with all the names hoping to etch their name in history with a chance to steal this green jacket from one another.

Masters 2017 unfolds this week at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga.

“That pitch I think is the hardest in golf”, Bann, who coaches several tour players and is a director at the Bann-Lynch-McDade instruction school in Australia, told Reuters.

The current crop of major champions from Jordan Spieth to Rory McIlroy to Dustin Johnson will parade this week through a brand new interview room that puts every other briefing stage in the world to shame.

Heavy rain and storms are predicted to batter the Augusta National course, handing a potential advantage to the Northern Irishman whose four major titles have all come at tournaments afflicted by adverse weather conditions. He won in 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964 to account for the majority of his seven PGA Tour majors.

“A lot of my stuff, the reason we do that is to protect the back – the fade movement helps with the pain on the back and helps me move without putting the back under too much stress”. “If you top it up and throw a baby in the mix, there’s not a great deal of time off in there to relax and have some downtime to chill out”. It’s something that happened.

“It’s not a course where a phenomenal putter is going to run away with it because you’re going to have to play 50 feet from the hole on a putt that breaks 20 feet. It’s there and it always will be”. He goes into the tournament in reasonable shape, with his best finish on the PGA Tour this year being a third place in February’s Phoenix Open.

But the road to the Green Jacket will lead through Johnson, who ticks all the boxes as the man to beat.

Nobilo, meanwhile, will be back in the TV tower, wondering what drama will unfold this year at the hole named Golden Bell.

McIlroy tied for eighth place in 2014 and shot a closing 66 to finish fourth in 2015, six shots behind champion Jordan Spieth.

“Same thing with me, once I got past the 10th hole in 2012 and the first round, it was me, I was done. I hit the ball well, just didn’t get the kicks or the bounces that I needed to, to make the putts and make more birdies and less bogeys”.

“I certainly I wasn’t firing on all cylinders in Houston but it was more about getting Steve up to speed with where my game’s at, he hasn’t seen it since December”, said Scott”.

The Queenslander missed the cut before the duo headed to Augusta, Georgia to begin preparation for the Masters starting Thursday (Friday NZT).

However, McIlroy remains second-favourite to win his first Masters title at the ninth time of asking behind world No 1 Dustin Johnson.

If you’re feeling patriotic then Brit Matthew Fitzpatrick is worth a shot. “It hurt and stung (Spieth) at the time”. It’s not 90/1, but 50/1 is still pretty good for an Open champ who is overdue for a second major. I knew everything that happened at Augusta that went wrong.

Unlike 10 years ago, when fans and media alike took a crash course in Johnson’s biography after he shot a final-round 69 to win the Masters by two shots, he now is a familiar face.

“You’ve got to realise it’s a very, very small percentage unfortunately of people that aren’t very positive about things”, Willett said.