Hey, Augusta National: You Can’t Control Everything, Even the Weather

AUGUSTA, Ga.—Saturday was the kind of relentlessly cold and wet day that could make you miserable if you had absolutely no knowledge of actual suffering in the world. For golf fans and golfers, Augusta National usually feels as much like an amusement park than a course, with 18 rides that seem imagineered and every blade of grass looking like it was individually combed. This felt like seeing Mickey Mouse with his mask off, drinking a can of Busch Light and smoking a heater. There were many worse places to be, but many better days to be here.

Maybe there are no bad days at Augusta, but go tell that to Justin Thomas. He stood in the 11th fairway Saturday morning, hoping to get moving day started early. Thomas was two under par midway through his rain-delayed second round. He had every reason to believe he could make noise, but the next one he made was a splash. Thomas hit an unseemly hook that landed in front of the green and showed up early to its scheduled appointment with Rae’s Creek. He made double bogey at 11 and bogey at 12, then hit a wedge at 15 that landed near the pin, shook its hand, and spun back so far it almost went into the water.

Thomas played the last eight holes in six over par and missed the cut, an unspooling that moved the cut line from two over to three over and allowed Thomas’s buddy Tiger Woods make the cut for a record-tying 23rd consecutive time. It’s still not clear whether Woods should thank Thomas or yell at him. Tiger had to drag his collection of aging and replacement body parts out for an afternoon round that featured British Open conditions and member-guest stakes. He was six over through seven holes and nine over for the tournament when the third round was suspended due to inclement weather conditions.

Augusta National made everybody play for as long as possible for the purest of reasons: television. The club doesn’t need CBS’s money, but it wants CBS’s Sunday audience. The Masters has not finished on a Monday since 1983, which was so long ago that the greens were not even equipped with custom underground dryers. I am sick just thinking about it.

When the third round resumes Sunday morning, Brooks Koepka will hold a four-stroke lead with 30 holes to play. The sensible next step for Koepka is to block Greg Norman’s number, but a) Norman is Koepka’s boss, and b) Koepka might have blocked him already. As we wrote after Round 2, Koepka might enjoy the Saudi Arabian royal family’s money but he does not even pretend to share Norman’s vision for the LIV Tour. Koepka plays only for Koepka.

The forecast for Sunday is clear and sunny with a strong chance of Norman being obnoxious on Fox News. Norman would love to use a Koepka win to dig at the PGA Tour, and he surely enjoyed watching Thomas and Rory McIlroy, arguably the two PGA Tour players who have been most openly critical of LIV, miss the cut. Never mind that. Thomas and McIlroy played poorly in Augusta’s perfect landscape but remain correct about golf’s flawed one. Norman remains wrong on more levels than he is capable of counting.

Jon Rahm lurks four strokes behind Koepka, a deficit that seems larger than it is. Seven par-fives remain. Rahm has more than enough time and game to win this.

Anybody else trying to catch Koepka probably needs help from Koepka. U.S. Amateur champ Sam Bennett is in third place, at six under. Bennett, who plays for Texas A&M, will try to win a championship without getting paid, which makes him the exact opposite of Jimbo Fisher. Behind Bennett is a pack of major champions both former (Justin Rose, Collin Morikawa, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Phil Mickelson) and possibly future (Viktor Hovland, Cam Young). This could be an exciting tournament if Koepka lets it become one.

We will remember this Masters primarily for whatever happens Sunday. But the shortened prelude has been interesting. Scoring conditions were as easy as you’ll ever see here Thursday and Friday morning. Three trees fell during high winds Friday afternoon; thankfully, nobody was injured.

Then came Saturday’s rain mixed with rain with long stretches of rain. The temperature dipped below 50 degrees early and stayed there. In just a few minutes, I saw one man on a small scooter topple on the first hole, and another wipe out while walking along a path near No. 2. It was all a reminder that even Augusta National cannot control everything. The question for Sunday is whether Brooks Koepka can.