If the Thursday winds at Augusta National were a talking point, then Friday’s gusts, combined with a rapidly firming golf course meant chaos was the order of the day in round two of the 2024 Masters tournament.
Only eight of the 89 players broke par, and none of these were the leading 36-hole trio of Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and Max Homa, with the latter pair set to form the final pairing on moving day by way of finishing their rounds earlier, while Scheffler remains the man to beat having completed his level-par second round in the heaviest winds.
It was a day where Tiger Woods carved out another slice of history by becoming the first player to make 24 consecutive cuts at the Masters, where Shane Lowry hung tough to get into the clubhouse at +3, and where Rory McIlroy laboured to a five-over 77, slipping ten shots back and, in all likelihood, seeing his career grand slam hopes put on ice for another year.
A little off from the start, McIlroy opened with four pars before dropping his first shot at the fifth and then giving another one away on seven with a poor approach, chip and putt all combining for the resulting bogey. Good birdie chances at nine and 10 went awry, and then disaster struck on 11 as his approach into the wind hooked hard left and found the hazard, resulting in a double-bogey six.
The only other bogey on the way home came on 14 after a wayward tee shot, and he’d make good par saves at 17 and 18 to finish two shots above the cut mark which eventually settled at +6.
“I won from 10 back in Dubai at the start of the year,” McIlroy said afterwards. “But obviously the Dubai Desert Classic and the Masters are two very different golf tournaments.
“We’ll see. Hopefully the conditions are a little better tomorrow. Yeah, I still think I can go out tomorrow and shoot a low one, get back into red numbers, and have half a chance going into Sunday.”
“Tough day, really tough day,” he added. “Just hard to make a score and just sort of trying to make as many pars as possible. I felt like I did okay. I made that bogey on 14, and even just to par the last four holes and get in the clubhouse and have a tee time tomorrow, I’m sort of pretty happy with.
“Yeah, just a really tough day. Scoring was very difficult. Yeah, just one of those days that couldn’t — I mean, most of the field couldn’t really get anything going. It was just a matter of trying to hang in there as best you could.”
It was a round without a single birdie for the Holywood man, and his par-5 scoring leaves a lot to be desired, covering the eight so far in level par, an extremely poor return for a man who typically feasts on the longer holes.
Scheffler will be joined in the penultimate group by Masters debutant Nicolai Hojgaard who lies solo fourth at -4, with Cameron Davis and Collin Morikawa a shot further adrift at -3. Another Masters debutant in Ludvig Aberg sits at -2, and these seven are the only players more than a single shot under par through 36 holes.
Among those to make the cut are 58-year-old dual Masters winner Jose Maria Olazabal who had a late double-bogey from Hideki Matsuyama to thank for seeing weekend action, while another two-time winner in 61-year-old Vijay Singh matched Olazabal’s 73 to ease in at +4.
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