Masters: Old names, new games

AUGUSTA, Ga. — They’re knee-deep in nostalgia at the Masters. The opening shots of round one Thursday were struck by guys in their 70s and 80s, former champions Gary Player, 87, Jack Nicklaus, 83, and Tom Watson, 73, who once shot in the 60’s.

Then after waking up the echoes, providing a few moments to recall how it was, the year’s first major steps back quickly to the way it is. To a new generation, to names like Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm, and straight from his self-chosen disappearance on the LIV Tour, Brooks Koepka. Big hitters, boomers, and big names. That’s usually been the case at the Masters, where the grass, with an exception, is short and the tee shots long, where you can score low.      

It was the late Tony Lema, who said in so many words, the U.S. Open, where the fairways are narrow and the hazards severe, is hard work, a struggle, but the Masters is a pleasurable bit of recreation, entirely almost predictable, and fully enjoyable.   

In golf and tennis, the fans want success for the favorites and at the Masters that’s what they get, Nicklaus won six times, Tiger Woods five, and Arnold Palmer four. 

Eighteen holes into the 2023 Masters, Hovland, Rahm and Koepka are tied at 67, five-under par. Koepka has won three majors but none since he took the money and fled to the Saudi-finance LIV Tour — LIV in Roman numerals is 40, the number of holes for that tour’s tournaments.    

Rahm has won a U.S. Open and for most of this season was No. 1 in world rankings. Hovland, the Swede, seemingly always is in the contest. Not an anonymous soul in the group, normal for a Masters. The event brings out the best of the best.  

No, Woods, tied for 54th or something like that after a two-over 74, isn’t up there, but, hey Tiger is 47 and dare we remind you again, only two years away from that car accident which, if it didn’t take his life, took away much of the strength in his legs. 

Of the three tied for the leader, Koepka may be the most surprising, to us, not to himself. He did it with back-to-back U.S.Opens and a PGA, but other than being mentioned as a footnote in the war between the PGA and LIV tours there’s hardly been a word about his play. There was, however, television coverage of his lifestyle in the Netflix series Full Swing.    

Koepka, whose swing is very full, was told in one episode of the show that his game appeared to be far away from a great Masters round.    

“Anytime with something like that,” Koepka insisted. “You don’t see everything right, a lot of it was injury-based. They (the doctors) told me after (knee) surgery it was going to be pretty much a year and a half; I mean getting out of bed takes 15 minutes.”

Then, asked if the LIV issue puts more pressure on him in the Masters than when he’d been on the PGA Tour Koepka said, “I don’t really think about things like that. It’s just a major.”  

Hard to imagine Jack or Tiger saying that.