VK,
The knife cuts both ways, what do you find entertaining?
Well I laid it out like that because DS started with the premise but if you (or anyone is interested)...
1. The #2 and #3 players (1 and 2 of the last five years really) in the world, struggling with course I know better than any I've not played, or played once...
2. Knowing the direction of the wind and predicting (and matching my predictions to what happened) on the wind strength and severity of what the issue will be and where the misses will go...
3. Having every chip and shot (especially in the wind) have such a razor edge from plan, to execution and outcome...no where but Augusta are chips, pitches and greenside play more fretful (and to me, compelling)...we barely give this aspect of the game any steady attention at other great courses...as to what the course and conditions elicit from the players. If you (and all here) are as ardent a golf fan as I believe you are, you probably grasp the greenside considerations on all 18 holes at ANGC, whereas its half or less than that at Pebble or Riviera or TPC Sawgrass or many of the rotated major venues... each ardent viewer knows just how screwed or fantastic a particular greenside is at Augusta; it elicits my appreciation for the professional skill to tackle it. I may have a hard time translating 190 yard 7-irons to my game, and my experience...not so with a 20 foot chip, where 19 feet or 21 feet is bad, and can result in a number...that pressure that even a schlub can understand.
4. The lead group's slashing about on 3 and 4, Spieth maintaining par while Rory's approach netted him +2, and their guarded "shorts" on 5...I love anticipating how they are going to tackle that approach on 5 because the outcomes are razor thin...they both elected to back off and accept the "less-hard" of misses (in front) which itself calls for a jeweler's deft touch on a putt of 40 feet that breaks 10-12 feet left...Rory had to go first, giving Spieth and immediate Power Point on how he would face it.
5. Langer's run at this, his camaraderie with Day and each impelling other (seemingly) to good things, Day's and DJ's fighting to stay relevant (knowing what it might lead to Sunday, with their length and strength), the emergence of Kaufman, Katsyuama...
6. The absolute mental strain and fortitude the field must exhibit to get through it all balanced against how much each of them want it, winners or not, and how they and I and I thin kyou know, how they have to go through the baptism of fire of playing their best to get it...and you know, you just know that this course, besides providing all that minute tick-tock, is goign to produce one or more guys, who will have blown it on a gross error that you felt or saw coming a mile away. Mickelson in 2010 is the only one I can remember who defied that notion on #13, which I still feel was a foolish, foolish gamble (for which he didn't make the "3" anyway)...a gamble not unlike his compounding errors and bad decisions on the 18th at WF in 2006.
I've got like 5-10 more, but I'm nearly tired of typing and I want to make a final statement, but it's not garbage golf or a garbage set-up that has DS and others bored, it's something else.
For me, I watch and I see that its golf provoked to the most personal, inch precision to get what I think are the best goods in the game...the perpetual invitation, the chance to be a public golfer until you want to end it, the champion's dinner...we don't speak of them much, but Weir and Immelman and Stadler and Woosie and Lyle and going back...Aaron and Coody and Archer and Brewer and Doug Ford are in that room...think how much it means to those guys, as professional golfers and aspirants and what it might've meant to the Normans, Montgomeries, Weiskopfs, Kites, Lehman, Love, Garcias, Prices, Rose... and think what it would add to already lengthy resumes...Trevino, Irwin, Els...and look what it has meant to Couples...without that title and the chance to keep playing, he is a substantially different, less well-remembered golfer in the canon... one only remembers Larry Mize's name because of his dramatic winning of the tournament in OT...otherwise he's as forgotten as Steve Jones, who was the first sectional qualifier in 20 years to have won the US Open, and was an almost miraculous recovery from 3-year injury (imagine Anthony Kim coming back now to win the tournament) and who won by one measly stroke over the best players of those years, Lehman and Love.
That's the difference, and that's what the Masters and the course do every year, they put exacting golf on display, with the reward of a more permanent place in the game for those who that same history says, have overcome to do great things...it's no different this year.
cheers
vk