This month Compleat Golfer’s playing editor, Louis Oosthuizen, tackles The Masters, a tournament steeped in history.
If you aren’t mentally fresh for The Masters, you’ve got no chance. If you arrive and make that drive up Magnolia Lane with any doubt – be it with your swing or your mind – I’d say it’s practically impossible to win.
The week off before Augusta plays a massive role in preparation for the championship. It’s almost as important as all the work done in the three months leading up to that first tee shot on Tea Olive – yes, we know all the names of the holes, just like the fans watching on television around the world.
I take two days off from golf completely and do what I need to do to recharge my batteries because golf is almost all-consuming for the next 10 days or so. I think it will be impossible to pick a winner this year, there are just so many talented young guys out there. Then you add the experienced ones and you can see just how tough it is to win a tournament, let alone the Major everyone wants.
South Africa has obviously gone through a dry spell at Majors but I don’t feel the burden of pressure from the home support base. Trust me, I put enough pressure on myself to try to get it done in those four events. The rise of guys like Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm, to name just two, means that even if you are playing well and arrive feeling great, winning takes something special across all four days. It’s just so much harder to win a Major with these fields than it was five or 10 years ago.
And it’s got a lot harder now that Tiger’s back. It’s great to see him playing well and pain-free; he’s hitting some shots that remind me of the ‘old Tiger’ and that’s great for the game. Everyone, including a lot of the pros, has been watching his comeback with anticipation because of the impact he has on the tournaments he enters.
I think he knows it won’t be the same as it was for him 10 years ago. Even a player like Tiger will feel the effect of the current strength – these young players feel like they can take him on and say they’ve beaten Tiger Woods.
One thing Tiger has working for him is that so few who will be lining up at Augusta know just how good he was. If he puts himself in the frame on Sunday, he’ll be hard to beat. Very few in the world have his knowledge of the course and it’s so important on those greens, that if he can get it in position off the tee it’ll be ‘all systems go’.
The controversy over apparent plans to ‘roll back’ the modern golf ball, which has been in the headlines for some time, doesn’t really come into play at The Masters. Augusta National is a second-shot course; it’s forgiving off the tee and there are a few trees in some areas, but not a lot of rough. It’s all about placement – whether it’s an 8-iron or a sand-wedge, there’s a premium on where you leave yourself.
Sometimes, because of where they put the pins, it’s better to take a two-putt par rather than risk missing it where they want you to. The intricacies on the greens and how you see the surface from your second shot is something you can’t pick up from watching on TV.
The greens are the only defence – the slopes on and around the greens – but they are as big a defence as the longest and tightest course we could ever play. You just won’t see someone running away with it, like Tiger did in 1997, and shooting the lights out.
There’s only one player who could do it on that course and it will probably be a once-in-a-generation performance. The Masters remains the one on top of my list and I’m pumped to try to go one better than I did a few years back.
– Louis Oosthuizen writes a monthly column for Compleat Golfer
