Tiger Woods lurks — but Paul Casey leads — as a most unusual Masters begins at Augusta National

Masters officials halted first-round play on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. Eastern with 44 golfers still on the course, the end result of a 2-hour 45-minute weather delay that put a stop to things soon after the tournament began.

Paul Casey was the leader in the clubhouse after his 7-under-par 65. Webb Simpson and Xander Schauffele, who also had finished their rounds, were two strokes back, as was Justin Thomas, who had completed 10 holes. Tiger Woods, who also completed his round, was among eight golfers at 4 under par.

Only nine golfers had finished at least one hole before play was halted Thursday morning, and anyone who did not tee off before the stoppage had their tee times pushed back three hours.

Considering the tight window created by the limited November daylight, Thursday’s delay will create a ripple effect that will be felt through Saturday. The players who were still on the course when darkness fell Thursday evening now will finish their rounds first thing Friday morning, pushing back the start of the second round until later in the morning. Therefore, the second round is unlikely to finish on Friday, which would then delay the start of Saturday’s third round.

Of note on the television coverage: ESPN’s coverage of Friday’s action now will begin at 7:30 a.m. Eastern, instead of early in the afternoon.

Saturday was scheduled to be the most “normal” Masters day of the week, at least as far as tee times are concerned, with the top 50 players and ties (who will make the cut) likely hitting the course midmorning. That schedule would give tournament officials a few hours in the early morning to finish up the second round and get right to the third. It would make for a long day, but should allow things to get back on schedule, meaning we won’t see the first Monday finish since 1983.

Luckily, the weather for the rest of the weekend looks superb. Springlike, even.

Tiger Woods entered this year’s Masters as both the defending champion and a player struggling mightily with his game. Since his stirring triumph in April 2019, Woods has been a near-nonentity on the PGA Tour, with three missed cuts at grand slam events — including the most recent one, the U.S. Open in September — and a general malaise seeping into to his game (part of it injury related). Since a tie for ninth at the Farmers Insurance Open back in January, Woods has played in only seven tournaments, and his best finish was a tie for 37th.

Most recently, Woods could only muster a tie for 72nd at last month’s Zozo Championship. Only three golfers who made the cut finished worse.

But Augusta National has long proven to be the cure to what ails Woods, and Thursday’s Masters first round was no different. Woods shot a 4-under-par 68 to sit within shouting distance of the lead, tying his career low for a Masters first round. It was his first bogey-free round at a grand slam event since the 2009 PGA championship,

“There is a sense of ease when I come here, just because I understand how to prepare for this golf course,” Woods said after his round. When asked what most encouraged him in his round, he simply replied, “Everything.”

Woods simply was steady, hitting 15 of 18 greens and 10 of 14 fairways. His most dramatic shot of the day was a pretty pedestrian (for him) 15-footer for birdie at No. 1, his last of the day before he finished with eight pars.

“I put a lot of it together today,” Woods said. “It was good all around.”

In an era of big hitters, Larry Mize’s No. 64 ranking in driving distance might not seem that bad in the crowded world of professional golf.

Okay, so that’s 64th on the senior tour.

Out of 67.

So yeah, the 62-year-old Mize isn’t going to win any driving contests in his 37th Augusta appearance, and he likely does not have the distance to compete over four rounds at the Masters. But the 1987 champion, whose 140-yard chip-in for birdie in a playoff that year cemented his status in Masters lore, still had a pretty nice round on Thursday, shooting a 2-under-par 70 to station himself among the much younger golfers populating the top portion of the leader board. As of this writing, he was just five strokes behind early leader Paul Casey.

His best years well behind him — his last and only win on the senior tour came 10 years ago — Mize only gets to play the tournament as a past champion. Since finishing third at the Masters in 1994, the Augusta native has missed the cut in 16 out of 25 appearances. And when he does make the cut, Mize usually is among the earlier finishers on Sunday, with a 51st, tie for 52nd and solo 52nd on his Augusta resume since 2014.

For the record, Mize was averaging 258.1 yards per drive this season entering the Masters. Bryson DeChambeau, the leader on the main PGA Tour, was averaging 344.4.

They shot the same score on Thursday.

Xander Schauffele has a reputation for playing his very best at golf’s majors, not unlike Brooks Koepka, a fellow American of the same generation. The difference: Koepka has already won four majors, while Schauffele is still searching for his first.

And yet the 27-year old again finds himself right near the top of a major leader board, firing an opening round 5-under-par 67 on Thursday, tying him with Webb Simpson for the second-best round of the early wave, behind only leader Paul Casey. Schauffele finished tied for second — with Koepka and Dustin Johnson — at last year’s Masters, and he’s continued his strong play in majors in this strange season, finishing tied for 10th at the PGA Championship and fifth at the U.S. Open in September. With those results, Schauffele has now finished in the top 10 in more than half of his 13 major appearances.

He opened his round Thursday with three straight birdies and closed with another, finishing with seven birdies on the day. That puts him in far better position than he was at Augusta a year ago, when he started with a 73 but put himself in contention with a brilliant second round.

“I’m not known to get off to the hottest of starts in my career, so it wasn’t like it was unfamiliar territory that I was chasing,” Schauffele said in the run-up to this tournament. This time, his start was plenty hot, and the world’s eighth-ranked player could be in the mix over the weekend.

Looking to shake his reputation as one of the best golfers to never win a major, Paul Casey shot a 7-under-par 65 Thursday to take the lead into the clubhouse during the first round of the Masters.

Starting on the back nine, Casey birdied four of his first eight holes and then eagled the par-5 second hole. Should his lead hold through the rest of the first round, which will end Friday morning because of Thursday’s rain delay, the 43-year-old Casey would become the oldest first-round leader at the Masters since 50-year-old Fred Couples led after 18 holes in 2010.

Casey’s 65 was his lowest-ever opening round at a major and the lowest Masters opening round since Charley Hoffman’s 7 under in 2017. It was one off Jordan Spieth’s 64 in 2015 and two off the course-record 63s shot by Greg Norman (first round, 1996) and Nick Price (third round, 1986).

The Englishman, who sits 22nd in the Official World Golf Rankings and is playing in his 66th major, has five top 10 finishes at the Masters, including a run of T-6th, T-4th, 6th from 2015 to 2017.

The thinking was that, at age 47, Lee Westwood was done contending for (but never winning) majors. The Englishman had played in only four of the 10 grand slam events that preceded this year’s Masters, missing the cut in one of them and finishing in a tie for 61st in another.

But a tie for fourth at the 2019 British Open earned him a spot in the Masters for the first time since 2017, and Westwood is taking advantage so far this year at Augusta. On Thursday, he shot a 4-under-par 68 to establish himself near the top of the leader board.

After the morning’s rain delay, Westwood quickly jumped out to a strong start with birdies on five of his first nine holes. His only blemish on the day was a bogey at the par-13 12th, when he found the greenside bunker on his tee shot and sent his sand wedge well past the hole.

Westwood has finished in the top 10 in 19 majors but never has won one since the start of his professional career in the mid 1990s, 12 times finishing in the top 5 and nine times finishing either second or third. He’s twice finished second at the Masters: In 2010, he had the lead entering the final round but faltered to finish three strokes behind Phil Mickelson, and in 2016 his final-round 69 was bettered by countryman Danny Willett, who finished three strokes better.

Westwood’s 31 on the front nine Thursday tied his career low over those nine holes. He also shot a first-round 5 under par on the front nine during his previous appearance in 2017, finishing the tournament in a tie for 18th.

In his first seven Masters appearances, Webb Simpson missed three cuts and finished no better than a tie for 20th. He also had a pedestrian start to last year’s tournament with an even-par 72. But since then, Simpson finally has found his footing at Augusta National: He completed his final three rounds in 2019 at 11 under par to finish in a tie for fifth, and in Thursday’s first round he continued his strong play with a 5 under 67, which was two shots behind leader Paul Casey when Simpson finished his round.

Simpson had three birdies, an eagle at the par-5 second and zero bogeys on the day.

“I think I was just not respecting the golf course enough,” Simpson told ESPN after his round, when asked about his previous struggles at Augusta. “I got to the point that I got tired of barely making the cut or making the cut by one, so I just made up my mind to respect the course more.”

The 2012 U.S. Open champion has only three other top 10 finishes at majors in his career, but at 35 he’s in the midst of a renaissance. He finished in a tie for eighth at the U.S. Open earlier this year and has scored two wins in 2020, rising to No. 7 in the Official World Golf Rankings.

Simpson’s 67 on Thursday was his lowest opening-round score at a major since his 66 at the 2011 British Open.

Fans aren’t allowed on the course at Augusta National this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, but some members of the club are apparently watching the action live. And that’s given defending champion Tiger Woods a fairly high-powered audience as he continues to play his first round.

Though Augusta National keeps its membership rolls under wraps, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning reportedly are members, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred was, too.

Augusta members also receive green jackets similar to those that are given to the tournament’s winners, and they typically wear them while walking the course during the tournament. But the members reportedly are foregoing that tradition this year without fans on the course.

“This year with no fans, they don’t want to stick out like sore thumbs,” golf podcaster Andy Johnson said last week after getting a tip.

After 10 holes, Woods sat at 4 under par, two strokes off the lead.

After starting the tournament with three straight pars, defending Masters champion Tiger Woods carded his first birdie of the day at the par-5 13th hole.

After finding the second cut of rough with his tee shot, Woods could only find the front edge of his green with his approach. His 45-footer for eagle was close enough, and Woods tapped in for his first birdie of the tournament.

Getting through Amen Corner at 1 under par will put a spring in anyone’s step, but Woods’s next tee shot at No. 14 went left into the woods.

Bryson DeChambeau’s first par 5 was one of the more anticipated tee shots of Thursday’s first round, with the golf world waiting to see just how far the bulked-up U.S. Open champion would clobber the ball down the fairway at the 510-yard 13th hole (he started on the back nine). But things went immediately awry for the PGA Tour’s driving distance leader, his tee shot going into the pine straw down the right side.

Things only got worse from there. DeChambeau hit his second shot into the bushes behind the green, and his provisional from the pine straw found a tributary of Rae’s Creek (it was his second provisional of the day). So began a search for DeChambeau’s ball.

Forced to drop, DeChambeau flubbed his chip only a few feet forward. By the end of the hole, DeChambeau had carded a double-bogey 7. He was the first player (of 14 to finish the hole) who made a score over par at No. 13. That made the tournament favorite 2 over par through four holes. DeChambeau did, however, recover with birdies at Nos. 15 and 16 to get back to even par.

Still, a double bogey on a par 5 is an ominous sign. Fox Sports’ Shane Bacon notes that no Masters winner has carded a 7 on a par 5 since 1972, when Jack Nicklaus double-bogeyed the par-5 15th in the second round.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Among the missing at this unique Masters: blooms on the azaleas, ropes to rein in the crowds, lines for pimento cheese sandwiches, roars that rattle through the Loblolly pines, buzz around the putting green, business under the clubhouse’s 150-year-old oak tree, kids caddying at the Par 3 Contest and, come Sunday at sundown, anyone remaining on the course at Augusta National Golf Club because the tuh-na-mint, as they say in these parts, will have wrapped up hours earlier.

Take one of those essential elements away, and maybe no one would notice. Swipe them all, turn an event that normally signifies the arrival of spring into an appetizer for Thanksgiving, and the 2020 Masters will have an entirely unprecedented feel, a pandemic-enforced flavor and visuals all its own.

“I don’t know if it’s the look that I’ll miss,” said Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland, again one of the pre-tournament favorites, “or if it’s the atmosphere. It’s the buzz; it’s the excitement; it’s the anticipation.”

The stakes are the same. The vibe just isn’t. The visuals in person are so striking, it’s hard to say where to start. The azaleas that line, among other places, the 13th hole would be an obvious choice. But there have been springs where that hasn’t happened, too. So where else?

AUGUSTA, Ga. — He is both a legend who can sit in a rocking chair at Augusta National Golf Club telling stories about late icons no longer with us and the defending champion of the Masters. Tiger Woods simultaneously walks in both worlds. His surgically repaired body limits him. His unparalleled mind opens all possibilities. A quarter-century after his first Masters, he is here both as a contender and a curiosity who conjures the simplest question: Can he do it one more time?

“Do I expect to contend?” Woods said Tuesday. “Yes, I do.”

Simple and succinct, as almost all of his answers have been for 25 years.

What we have here with Woods, though, is a leading man in transition, and it’s impossible to pin down where he is on his own arc. He began his Tuesday news conference at Augusta recalling two events. The first was last year’s victory, his fifth Masters title and 15th major, a memory at which he teared up — pretournament moistness that would have been unimaginable from the autotron of most of the 2000s. The second was a joyful recounting of his debut here as a 19-year-old Stanford freshman — “a little punk college student,” he said — playing a practice round with none other than Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, 10 green jackets between them.

Woods began his first round shortly before 11 a.m. on Thursday.

The most peculiar of Masters weeks boasts the most peculiar of leading men, a character who looks at the vast splendor of Augusta National Golf Club and sees not a canvas upon which to paint but a math problem that must be solved. Bryson DeChambeau’s nickname is “The Scientist,” but that’s really more than just a cute moniker. It’s not a role he’s playing. It’s who he is.

“He always had the brain of a scientist,” said Jodi Cooley, the director of the undergraduate physics program at Southern Methodist University when DeChambeau was a student there.

“He and I used to joke that he had taught himself quantum mechanics,” said Emily Cobb, an academic adviser in SMU’s athletic department.

DeChambeau, 27, is the winner of the most recent major in this discombobulated golf season, the U.S. Open in September at Winged Foot. That accomplishment made him the betting favorite heading into the first November Masters in history, even though he has never finished in the top 20 in three previous tries at Augusta.

DeChambeau teed off around 10:30 Thursday morning.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — A wall of thunderstorms sent players and caddies scurrying for cover at 7:35 a.m., delaying the first November tournament in the club’s history.

Play is scheduled to resume at 10:22 a.m., according to the PGA. Though scattered thunderstorms are projected in the area through the late morning, the rain is projected to have moved through by noon. Pretournament favorite Bryson DeChambeau was scheduled to begin in the next group before the delay, with defending champion Tiger Woods two groups behind him.

Because this Masters — rescheduled from its traditional April date due to the novel coronavirus pandemic — is being played during a time of year when there’s less daylight, accommodations have already been made to try to ensure the completion of each of the four rounds. The 92-player field — which is more than 40 fewer than a typical major championship — is beginning rounds from both the first and 10th tees, another Masters first.

The final group in both the first and second rounds had been scheduled to tee off at 12:32 p.m., and officials hoped to have play completed by 5:30 p.m. on both Thursday and Friday.

The forecast for Friday and through the weekend does not portend any problems, with temperatures in the 70s and as high as 80 on Sunday, when the final round is scheduled to conclude between 2:30 and 3 p.m.