His yellow lanyard bore a single, precise word in black ink: PLAYER. The player himself requires no introduction. The silver hair, the white trainers masquerading as golf shoes, the tanned, ungloved left hand. Fred Couples had a first-round 71 in his pocket, and he was feeling chipper.
He was feeling chipper, his caddie was feeling chipper, his wife was feeling chipper. Other caddies, other players, other players’ wives, every last green jacket, assembled journalists — Fred Couples posting a solid first-round score in his 40th Masters was certain to spread cheer, and it did. There’s something about the chap. There always has been.
“I’m 65,” Couples said. He gains some weight, he loses some weight, his back aches, his back is alright, his caddies change, his swing does not.
“I don’t feel 70, I don’t feel 50. Friday, you know, could blow, it could rain, it could be difficult,” Couples said. “But I don’t feel like I’m going to go out there and forget how to play.”
He will never forget how to play. (He started as a parks-and-rec golfer in Seattle.) He will never forget that the Seattle Mariners won 116 games in 2001. (The Seattle Pilots were once his team.) He will never forget what Raymond Floyd said to him about how to play par-5s: Hit your second shot somewhere on the green. Floyd, Tom Watson, and Lee Trevino are three of his golfing role models.
Couples was playing with two youngsters who could drive it 30 and 40 and 50 yards past him, who won this event in 1992 when (all together now) his ball stayed up on the bank over the creek on 12. But it was Fred who holed out from 185 for an eagle on 14 for a 2. It was Fred who had the honour on 15, 16, 17, and 18. It was Fred who capped the threesome’s day by sinking a 4-footer for par.
Couples knows you don’t have to be perfect to excel at golf. You don’t need to hit 393 shots on the range. You don’t need a two-minute chinwag with your caddie before playing a slice 6-hybrid from the rough. It’s just not that complicated.
“Hybrid, rescue, whatever you want to call it,” Couples said after his round, standing at a lectern, chatting with reporters. It wasn’t as though he had turned back time, though he’s been doing press conferences like this forever. He holed out on 14 for an eagle with a 6-rescue, 6-hybrid — whatever you want to call it. It’s his 185-yard club.
Into the hole from 191 yards. Fred Couples eagles No. 14! #themasters pic.twitter.com/5KD2bMUKv6
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 10, 2025
You might recognise this routine: the male golfer of a certain age, at a cocktail party, aiming to say something profoundly insightful, declares, “I just find I can relate some much more to what the women do on that LPGA circuit.” Well, Fred is leaning in that direction. That is, our direction. He plays a yellow ball.
His bag, from longest club to shortest: driver, 3-wood, 5-wood, 3-hybrid, 4-hybrid, 5-hybrid, 6-hybrid, 7-iron, 8-iron, 9-iron, sand iron, pitching wedge, gap wedge, sand wedge, putter. Yes, conventional putter. He needed only five putts over the last five holes, with a spectacular up-and-down from the greenside, pondside bunker on 16. The bunker shot was half-fat. The downhill, slicing 4-footer for par was nothing but net. His Houston Cougars lost the NCAA basketball title to Florida on Monday, but life goes on.
He played a nine-hole, back-nine practice round on Tuesday with Brooks Koepka, Adam Scott, and Justin Thomas. Three current stars and one from yesteryear. Three generations of fans from a farm in South Dakota were soaking up the scene, each attending for the first time: Papa and Nana, their daughter Natalie, and Natalie’s daughter Olivia, a high school golfer. They watched Koepka, Thomas, and Scott. They couldn’t take their eyes off Fred.
“There’s just something about him,” Natalie Braun, a nurse practitioner, said. People, women and men, have been saying that forever. “He doesn’t walk too fast, he doesn’t walk too slow. He has his own pace, his own way of doing things. He came off 18 and people are cheering for him and clapping for him and he’s waving but looking down.”
It’s a sharp observation. Fred Couples dislikes attention and loathes being fussed over. He’s a listener and an observer, and little escapes him. Couples played with Harris English and the Canadian golfer Taylor Pendrith, a long-hitter who shot 77 in his first round at the Masters. A journalist asked Fred about Pendrith’s game, and this is what Couples said:
“I watched. He hit a lot of really, really good shots. Sounds like you know him, like you’re going to talk to him. He’s going to tell you he gave away four strokes with nothing really bad.
“Did he drive it bad here and there? Of course he did. But he hit two beautiful shots on 15 and three-putted from a brutal spot. That green is so fast and hard. He’ll be fine. He could shoot 69 tomorrow no problem.”
Those sentences reveal much about Pendrith, and something about Fred, too. Do you know how long Pendrith’s three-putt on 15 is likely to linger in Fred’s mind? Probably forever. Anyway, he’d rather discuss someone else than himself.
Fred is a listener. He’ll talk, but he’d rather listen, and he can listen in multiple directions simultaneously. At dinner, if the conversation to his left is about modern art and drivable par-4s to his right, he can engage with both. Tiger Woods, at least in some settings, is much the same. Much of their conversation revolves around playing golf and watching baseball. Fred loves playing with Tiger, and vice versa, though they rarely get the chance.
Where he plays, and with whom, matters greatly to Fred. On Thursday, he played Augusta National with Harris English and Taylor Pendrith. He enjoyed his playing partners, the tournament they’re in, and the course it’s played on every year. He’ll very likely be back next year. There had been some chatter, and some confusion, about whether this 89th Masters would be Fred’s final one. There’s no reason to believe it will be.
“I just love this place,” Fred said. “I love coming here.”
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