Gary Murphy experienced the tension, drama and crackling atmosphere of The Masters from outside the ropes, and he feels that it’s something that permeates deep into the locker room.
I’ve never played in The Masters, but I spent a couple of years at Augusta State University, so I experienced the Masters buzz firsthand on more than one occasion. It’s infectious and inescapable.
You could compare it to Cheltenham or Glastonbury in the unique hype that surrounds it, the carnival atmosphere, and that it’s the focal point of the entire year for the local community.
And when I returned in 2015 as part of the media, it hadn’t changed and I found myself on the verge of getting emotional, such was the aura that the venue and the tournament provide.
And the players aren’t immune to this. Quite the opposite in fact. They feel it more than anybody. There are good reasons that caddies tend to fear Masters week. For one, it’s one of the toughest walks of the year with a 20lb weight slung on your shoulder, but more importantly, it’s because so many of the players are amped up and on edge.
For even the most experienced players, it’s a nine-month build up and expectations are always sky high. There’s this mythical thing about Augusta that the better you know it, the better you’ll do, and there is an aspect of truth to it – that Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979 was the last rookie to win it shows that – but you can do as many scouting trips as you like, and none of those will really prepare you for what you’re faced with when the tournament begins on Thursday.
I was lucky enough to play the course a month before the 1993 Masters, and as incredible an experience as it was, the fairways were soft, and the greens were slow relative to what you’d expect.
Through contacts at Augusta State and Masters players’ management teams, I was able to secure tickets to get into the tournament and, just a couple of weeks later, the golf course was just a different animal altogether.
The nuances are so fine, and when coupled with the hype, expectation and everything else, you regularly see top-class players blowing themselves out of contention early. That just wouldn’t happen to them at a regular PGA Tour event, because it’s not a regular PGA Tour event. It’s not even close.
As we all know, it’s the one major that continues to elude Irish players and Rory McIlroy in particular. Rory’s game is in as good a shape as it’s ever been coming into The Masters, but he’s still psychologically chasing it because of all it entails and the past disappointments. This, for me, makes Scottie Scheffler still the man to beat.
Scheffler’s won it twice which eases the pressure a little, and his record around Augusta is better than anybody in the current field. But last year’s Scheffler has yet to turn up this season, so even he is chasing things a little. Winning can become a habit, but like any good habit, when the cycle is broken, it’s never simple to just pick it up again.
What sets Scottie apart is the respect he commands from his peers – they’ll all be wary of him, especially at Augusta. His name will be the first that other players are looking for on the leaderboard, and if it’s somewhere near the top, it cranks the pressure valve a little higher. On the flipside, if he gets off to a slow enough start, he’s liable to get a little tetchy as we’ve seen in recent weeks.
Shane Lowry doesn’t quite have the external pressures that Rory has coming into the Masters, though he’ll be carrying his own expectations, and he knows that he’s more than good enough to win if he plays the way he can.
We’d all love an Irish winner, but luck always plays its part as well. A bounce here and a bounce there can have big ramifications and that’s something that players will have to deal with alongside hype, expectation and everything else that Masters week entails.
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