USADaily - Golf, as Rickie Fowler said earlier this week, is a four-letter word.
So is wind.
No doubt there were plenty more of the four-letter variety being tossed about Saturday, given the widespread carnage at the Masters.
"It felt more like a U.S. Open than a Masters today," Rory McIlroy said.
That, to be clear, is not a compliment.
Of the 57 players, only five managed to shoot under par. There was one round in the 60s. The scoring average of 75.719 was 0.70 higher than the second round — and that was with a pared-down field.
Scorecards were being whipped about at such a dizzying rate that Lee Westwood made his first appearance on the leaderboard 30 minutes after he’d finished playing, while Billy Horschel lost ground simply watching his ball. McIlroy got blown completely off the leaderboard.
“Go home, have a beer, sit on the couch and laugh at everybody else,” Kevin Kisner said when asked how you get over a day like this.
Rory McIlroy reacts after missing a putt on the 17th green during the third round of the 2016 The Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club.
Not much else you can do.
Augusta National officials take great pride in their golf course, and they don’t like to see anybody making it look as tame as the local muni. Nice as Jordan Spieth is, his record-matching 18-under last year just wouldn’t do.
No worries of Spieth — or anyone else — duplicating that this year.
Even before the week began, greens built to resemble ice rinks had been slicked up. Add in winds that gusted up to 30 mph Saturday, and the greens were almost unplayable and, in some cases, downright unfair.
Horschel had an 8-foot putt for eagle on 15 that would have moved him to 1-under for the day. But as he surveyed his putt, a gust of wind — "one of the biggest gusts all day" — came up and blew the ball. Horschel could only watch, helplessly, as the ball rolled onto a false front and plopped into the water.
Didn’t matter that he hadn’t touched the ball. Rules required him to take a drop, and his would-be eagle became a bogey.
Horschel got a little animated, shall we say, with the rules officials. But the damage was done.
"I just expressed that they wanted to get the course on a fine line and it's been — it's on a fine line today," Horschel said.
"Unfortunate situation, bad luck," Horschel added. "The golfing gods, I think they owe me one. Hopefully."
Wind at Augusta National is nothing new. Every year there’s a day it kicks up, drying out the greens and making a mockery of yardage books.
But this is the third day of windy conditions. And Saturday’s wind was exceptional because of its unpredictability. You never knew when the gusts were coming, and even a meteorologist couldn’t have told you from what direction.
"The first 18 holes, I think," 1987 Masters champion Larry Mize said when asked if one part of the course was more troublesome than the others.
It didn’t matter if it was a tee shot, approach shot or putt, iron or wood, there was equal luck with all of it.
And all of that luck was bad.
"Every shot is just guessing and hitting and praying," Kisner said.
The wind died down some in the mid-afternoon, but the havoc did not. McIlroy blew up with a 5-over 77, with some shots simply inexplicable. Spieth is still in the lead, but it’s far more tenuous than what he’s used to here.
More tenuous than it should have been, too, after two double-bogeys on the back nine. That’s as many double-bogeys as Spieth had in his previous 10 rounds at Augusta National.
But in conditions like this, you take what you get, call it a day and hope things are better Sunday.
They can't really get much worse.
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