AUGUSTA, Ga. The third round of the Masters tournament started on Saturday with a gust of wind that intoxicated the field and it looks like the solid, already crusty Augusta National Golf Club greens are faster and more difficult.
Then, just before 4pm, a downpour with the possibility of thunder and lightning scurried the golfers to the safety of the clubhouse. After a 78-minute suspension, players returned to a golf course that was much more forgiving with muted, significantly slower greens. The wind almost disappeared.
Many people in the field attacked the postponement.
Leader of the charge was Hideki Matsuyama of Japan, who shot a sparkling 65 by playing his last eight holes in six under par. Matsuyama, 29, will take an authoritative four-stroke lead in the final round on Sunday at 11 under par for the tournament. Four golfers are tied for second: Justin Rose, who led the first two rounds, Xander Schauffele, Marc Leishman and Masters rookie Will Zalatoris.
If Matsuyama, the 2017 PGA Tour champion and a runner-up to Tiger Woods at the 2019 Masters, can maintain his lead on Sunday, he will become the first Asian to win the Masters. He is the first Japanese player to take the lead at the end of any Masters round.
Matsuyama said he felt relaxed during the weather delay because the last shot he hit before the suspension – a ride from the 11th tee – was his worst turn in the round.
“I thought I could do nothing worse than that,” he said through an interpreter. “Maybe it relieved the pressure. I hit it well after the delay. ”
This is an understatement. Matsuyama, who ranks 25th in the world rankings, presented an excellent display of ball attacks that could one day form a large part of the highlight of the 2021 champions.
Matsuyama started with six consecutive pars on Saturday and caught Rose on the seventh hole with a birdie. He then cast it, starting with an approach to the elusive 11th green that resulted in a converted 12-foot birdie. The shot from Matsuyama to the difficult par-3 12th passed just eight feet from the pit for another birdie. After two consecutive parks, Matsuyama dug the par-5 15th hole when his second shot – a tower, exact 5-iron – landed four feet from the flagpole. His birdie hole on the par-3 16th was even closer, and Matsuyama hit it home with confidence. The 17th hole was more of the same after two extremely accurate strokes of the tee and the clean field.
The most nervous moment Matsuyama had on the back nine was when he flew his second shot 20 yards over the 18th green, but a clever hump-and-hard pitch left a tap-in par-put.
After the rainstorm, Matsuyama admitted that he ‘hit almost every shot exactly as I wanted to do’.
If Matsuyama wins on Sunday, it will be the second victory for a Japanese golfer on the course in the last eight days. On April 3, 17-year-old Tsubasa Kajitani, who hails from Okayama, won this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur Tournament.
“It was fantastic,” Matsuyama said of Kajitani’s victory. “I hope I can follow in her footsteps and make Japan proud.”
Matsuyama has won seven PGA Tour and European tournaments from 2014 to 2017. He said there were various reasons why he had been undefeated over the past few years, but noted that he had started traveling with a Japanese coach, Hidenori Mezawa, this year, which he called a ‘big advantage’.
“Things I felt in my swing, I could talk to him about it, and he gives me good feedback,” Matsuyama said. ‘It’s like having a mirror swing for me. Hopefully it all starts to come together now. ”
Before the delay, most leaders in the second round struggled contradictory or straightforward. Rose, who started Saturday with a one-stroke lead at seven under par, opened with birdies on the first two holes, but in the fourth and fifth places he got a knock. Rose crowded together to even shoot the rest of the way. Brian Harman, who trailed Rose by one stroke to start his round, dropped to a 74 that left him at four down for the tournament.
Jordan Spieth, who moved to within two strokes of Rose in the second round, submitted the outing with the most eight-lanes. On the seventh hole on Saturday, Spieth sent his approach over the green, then hit a chip and hit an overly aggressive bunker shot that resulted in a double bow.
He had even more problems in the next hole when his shot went so far to the left, he almost seemed to be playing the seventh. Buried in the woods, Spieth lifted an iron shot over a tall stand of pine trees that landed three feet from the eighth hole for an easy birdie. A foot kicked in on the tenth hole followed, as well as another on the 15th, but the successes were offset by the setbacks, and Spieth completed a round of 72 and Matsuyama trailed by six strokes.
Zalatoris looked the most comfortable when the third round started with a string of pars and a handy birdie on the par-4 third hole. But Zalatoris (24) does not seem to be adapting well to the slower green speed after the rainstorm, and he missed several birdie attempts on the back nine to shoot 71.
Corey Conners, with a hole in one on the sixth hole, made the biggest early move on the leaderboard on Saturday to finish at six below par, just behind the gaggle that tied for second place.
Schauffele, who was grouped with Matsuyama, shot an impressive 68 and still had time to exchange a repartee in Japanese with his playmate. Schauffele’s maternal grandparents lived in Japan, and he said he took up some of the language.
Or as Matsuyama said of his conversation with Schauffele: “We did not get the chance to talk much, but when we did, we exchanged some good Japanese jokes and had a good laugh.”
Matsuyama and Schauffele are back together for the final round on Sunday, and they will kick off at 14:40 Eastern time.