Just after two in the afternoon Jordan Spieth set himself for the most keenly awaited shot of the day, one the world had been waiting 362 days to see him play. Spieth has been around Augusta National almost half a dozen times since he took that quadruple bogey and blew a three-shot lead at the 12th back in 2016. He played once with his father, once again with Tom Brady, a couple of times with the members and a couple more in practice this week. Which helped “get rid of some”, as he put it back in January. But they were not in the first round of the Masters, with 92 other golfers on his heels, all chasing the greatest prize in the game, several thousand fans behind his back and a stiff wind in his face.
Spieth has taken a little criticism this week for the curious remarks he made after he missed the cut at the Houston Open, when he said that he knows he and his caddie, Michael Greller, “strike fear in others” at the Masters. As he reached the brow of the hill midway down the dogleg 11th, and came into view of Amen Corner for the first time in this tournament, one wonders if the holes he could see lying in wait ahead perhaps did not strike just a touch of fear in him, a slight tremor in the knees, perhaps, or a few passing butterflies in the gut. He hit his next approach the wrong side of the pin, perilously close to the water. It stopped on the tip of the bank, an inch or so short of a dip. That left him a 60-foot putt for birdie and then a tap-in for par.
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