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Around Augusta

Conventional wisdom has long held that there are two keys to playing the Augusta National Golf Club successfully; a golfer must possess great length and, perhaps more importantly in an era when everyone is long, the ability to reliably move the ball right-to-left.  Toss in a sense of shotmaking imagination to counter Augusta’s unique undulations and green contouring and you have…Bubba Watson.  Indeed, of all the events in professional golf’s rich international spectrum, The Masters would seem the one most ideally suited to Watson’s distinctive brand of power/finesse golf - and for the second time in three years, he proved this point emphatically by cruising uneventfully home on Sunday to claim his second career Green Jacket.  On a Sunday which offered the prospect of seeing a youngest-ever Masters champion (20-year-old Jordan Spieth) or an oldest-ever Major champion (50-year-old Miguel Angel Jimenez – or even 54-year-old Fred Couples), the usual slew of Masters contenders first had to be worked out of the mix.  The first to fall by the wayside was Rickie Fowler, who began the day two back, roared out of the gate with an opening birdie, then promptly three-putted from eight feet for a bogey at the 2nd to lose all his momentum.  He would later bogey the 10th and 11th, birdie the 14th and post a 73, good enough to tie for fifth.  Also starting fast was Matt Kuchar, who trailed by only one through 54 holes and, after birdies at both the 2nd and 3rd to look like a very serious contender.  But a four-putt double-bogey at the par-3 4th scuttled his charge, and while Kuchar would linger on the edge of contention for much of the afternoon, bogeys at the 17th and 18th dropped him to a 74, and a tie with Fowler.  While Couples electrified the crowd with early birdies and the 1st and 2nd before eventually falling back to a 75, Jimenez struggled early (three bogeys in his first five holes) but came home in 33, his 71 good enough to claim solo fourth.  And then there was Sweden’s Jonas Blixt, who twice got it to six-under-par, most meaningfully with a birdie at the 16th.  But a crucial bogey at the 17th dropped him back to minus five and a tie for second – his second straight Major top five dating to the 2013 PGA Championship.  So in the end, as for much of the day, it came to Watson and the phenom Spieth, who began Sunday tied for the lead at five-under-par.  And indeed, Spieth got the better of the action in the early going, making birdie at the 2nd to move one in front, extending the lead to two when Watson bogeyed the 3rd, and keeping it there by spectacularly holing a long bunker shot for birdie after Watson had stiffed his approach at the par-3 4th.  A Spieth bogey at the 5th was quickly offset by fine birdies at the 6th and the demanding 7th, but the young man from Dallas then lost the lead with a three-putt bogey at the 8th and another bogey at the 9th, all while Watson birdied both to suddenly grab a two-shot lead.  Spieth briefly closed the gap with a par at 10 (to Watson’s bogey) but aside from a scrambling bogey after hitting his tee shot into the water at the 12th, the rest of his day was a story of missed putts, with meaningful opportunities squandered at the 11th, 13th and 15th.  By this time, Watson had logged a two-putt birdie at the 13th to extend his margin to three and, save for a brief nervous moment when Spieth nearly holed a difficult chip at the 17th, it was smooth sailing for Bubba from Bagdad (Florida) thereafter.

Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2014 at 09:26PM by Registered CommenterDaniel | Comments Off