RBC Heritage takes its best shot every year

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AUGUSTA, Ga.—   You can win a Masters, a British Open, captain a Ryder Cup team and at 49 fire a scintillating third-round score of 66 at mighty Augusta National Golf Club, a course that presumably is too big for you anymore.

And you, Zach Johnson, still can’t draw a crowd. Only a hundred or so fans watched Johnson putt out for par at the 18thgreen Saturday afternoon right after Jon Rahm tapped in for his par. There was polite, modest applause that barely made a ripple because of all the empty folding chairs encircling the green. 

The unexpected 66 lifted Johnson to within four strokes of leader Justin Rose, who hadn’t teed off yet. Of course, part of the reason the 18th green was so empty was that fans had swarmed to the adjacent first tee to get a glimpse of Rory McIlroy, who teed off at 2:30 pm., a few seconds after Johnson finished. Cheers of “Yeah, Rory!” and “Great shot, Rors!” could be heard all the way to the clubhouse. 

The other reasons for the empty chairs were that defending champion Scottie Scheffler, now a Masters favorite and the defending champ, had tee off 20 minutes earlier and that a few minutes later the day’s final pairing was coming up featuring Bryson DeChambeau, who gets the biggest and most vocal galleries of anyone in golf. Scheffler, 

McIlroy and DeChambeau are all big hitters, big winners and big personalities. How is a short-to-medium hitter like Johnson, a low-key personality who lacks the glamor of the big boys, supposed to compete with that?

Johnson has similarities to Bernhard Langer, a two-time Masters champion who played his last Masters Friday and missed the. He never got the appreciation he deserved. And neither does Johnson. That cringe-worthy Ryder Cup loss he helmed two years ago in France didn’t help. Still, Saturday was a pleasant reminder that Johnson still has great golf within himself.

It has been 18 years since Johnson won the Masters. He was asked if he’d stepped into a time machine for today’s round. Johnson joked, “What happened? I just blacked out.”

Reminded that he played great, which maybe is the praise he was fishing for, Johnson answered, “I appreciate that. I don’t want to say I’ve seen it coming. I’ve seen the work and the results of hitting the face and seeing the line on putts. Not this week but weeks prior. It just hasn’t showed. My hope is that it continues to show. I don’t know if today is a flash but today was, for lack of a better term, a stroll in the park. It didn’t feel like work.”

It was a classic Zach Attack from Johnson’s prime years. He birdied six of eight in holes in a stretch from the ninth through the 16th and before that added an eagle at the par-5 second hole. That surge lifted him to within four strokes of leader Justin Rose, who hadn’t yet teed off.

The barren stage at the 18th didn’t bother Johnson. He likes playing here because he feels the love. The course is wonderful, and he’s beaten it before even though it’s not supposed to suit him. Johnson, as a kid from Iowa who played college golf at Drake, has always weaponized his underdog status to good effect. What keeps him going at 49 is what keeps every golfer going, the thrill of competition. 

He talked about the pre-round and post-round preparation and recovery that is required for an athlete of his age to compete. He has aches and pains. His right forearm and elbow area were wrapped in black and gray kinetic tape. But he knows his edge at the Masters is in course knowledge and familiarity. And there’s something more, maybe something only past winners really feel. “When this membership, these green jackets, want you here, you want to play good,” Johnson said.

It is a badge of honor for him to make the cut and appear on the third-round leaderboard. “I love making the weekend,” he said. “I think I made it two years ago so it’s not like it’s that foreign.”

That’s Johnson making a subtle point that, if you’re been paying attention, he’s still pretty good at golf. 

“But man, I was in control,” he said. “I’ve had that feeling a few days this year. I had some days out on the West Coast. Sony Hawaiian Open, I was right there for two or three days. I played well at Torrey Pines. I don’t play well at Torrey. So opportunities is what I’m saying. I don't hit the ball far enough to compete on some of these venues, but it doesn't mean I can't have a decent finish. It doesn't mean I can't make cuts. It doesn't mean I can't still do it. Today was an extreme, obviously, example of the fruits of my labor showing up.

“Yeah, this place can bring out the absolute best in someone, and it starts when you take a left or a right down that lane (Magnolia Lane). When you're engulfed by the magnolias, something just hits you. Honestly, I get the question, What's your favorite thing about Augusta National? Obviously winning and playing in the Masters is an absolute treat. Taking somebody down Magnolia Lane for the first time is probably my favorite thing. I've seen people cry. It's nostalgic, yet for whatever reason you've still got to be where your feet are. I'm very happy with the fact I'm staying present because you can get caught up in all that. It's really, really easy. The beauty of this place somehow gets better by the year.”

The weather has been superbly spring-like this week. When he won in 2007, it was not. Asked to compare the course then to today, he joked that 18 holes and 18 tee boxes are where the similarities end. 

“I don’t think we saw 60 degrees the entire wee," he said. "Sunday was a nice day. Saturday was -- will probably go down as a top 5, top 10 hardest day of golf I've ever played.”

Johnson shot 73 on Friday and moved up from fifth to fourth. He shot 76 on Saturday and held fourth place. He played with Vijay Singh, who shot 79. “Vijay had four three-putts and he didn’t really play that bad,” Johnson said.

What most people recall about Johnson winning was that he laid up on all of the par-5 holes that week. That comment put a little burr under Johnson, who said that wasn’t entirely accurate. 

“That laying-up thing has taken on a life of its own,” he joked. “It was just taking what the course gave me. I hit 4-iron onto the second hoe on Friday and it rolled up on the front of the green and rolled off,. It wasn’t like I was trying not to go for it. I gave it what I had. I didn’t hit great drives on the par-5’s, that’s really part of it.”

Saturday, he his caddie talked him into hitting a 3-hybrid for his second shot from 215 yards and he caught it perfect. The ball bounced onto the front middle part of the green. From there, he drained a 35-footer for eagle. “That was a gift,” Johnson said.

A key point in his round came at the fifth hole, where he misclubbed after his best drive of the round and left himself a 35-foot putt up and over an angled ridge. “I don’t want to say that pin was impossible, it was just brutal,” Johnson said. “I had it going left early, then right, then left late.” The putt never cleared the top of the ridge and rolled back down to the right. He had another 30-footer for par up that slope from a different angle. And holed it. “I was trying to two-putt—I was trying to three-putt at that point,” he joked. “That was an absolute gift.”

Then came his birdie barrage from 9 through 16. A bogey at 17 cost him a shot but he parred 18 and beat his best-ever score at Augusta National by two strokes.

At some point during his post-round interview, he was interrupted by loud roar that came ringing through the trees and up the hill to the clubhouse area. Johnson squinted, as if trying to see. 

“That could be a hole-in-one,” he surmised as the roar continued. “Or maybe an eagle at 2.”

Later, he would surely learn the roar was McIlroy chipping in for eagle from behind the green at 2, after he had birdied the first. He would par the fourth, birdie the fifth and par the sixth for a rare 3-3-3-3-3-3 start and surge to a three-shot lead. Not that Johnson was really in position to win another Masters but Rory’s quick start probably eliminated any possibility of the thought.

Johnson left the interview pedestal in front of the clubhouse and headed to the locker room. He stopped to shake hands with two green-jacketed members. A third gave him a hearty hug. Johnson hugged a couple of friends near the ropes and pointed acknowledgement to another walking past the big tree.

He had a bounce in his step that looked more like a swagger. He loves this place because it loves him back. He isn’t a big star in the pantheon of greats but he’s a big deal at Augusta National where every past Masters champion is a big deal. It’s one place he gets the adulation he knows he deserves.

Saturday, he played a round worth of recognition, a 66. It may mean something in the long run, it may not. “It’s just one day,” Johnson said. 

But he posted it on the right day. Saturday. At the Masters. 

Louisville, KY — It’s official. Sixty-three isn’t a thing anymore in major championship golf.

Why would it be in a year when Korn Ferry Tour players—you know, the second-tier guys who aren’t good enough yet to break through to the PGA Tour—have already posted a 59, a 58 and a 57?

The history of obscene scoring keeps accelerating in the modern game.It’s a good thing Valhalla Golf Club is such “a big boy course,” as defending champ Brooks Koepka described it, or maybe Xander Schauffele would have gone even lower than the 62 he posted Thursday in the PGA Championship’s opening round.

 Johnny Miller’s gold standard, the closing 63 he shot to win the 1973 U.S. Open, literally is ancient history. Players have stuck the landings for 62s in majors four times in recent years. This was Schauffele’s encore 62. He and Rickie Fowler kicked off last year’s U.S. Open with that score. Branden Grace was first to do it in the 2017 Open Championship. 

These guys are good. Maybe, these guys are too good. The equipment? It is definitely too good. Honk if you think the USGA should move up its planned ball rollback from 2030 to something a little sooner. Like, say, next Wednesday.

That would admittedly be a knee-jerk over-reaction. Greens were soft at Valhalla, skies were cloudy and wind was absent. Soft greens for PGA Tour players equal low scores. Sure, the course played a 7,506 yards in the first round but length is never a deterrent for these guys. So Valhalla got eviscerated. Shoot 20 under par this week and… you might be in the running.

That number is not a joke. Jason Day already won a PGA Championship with that total in 2015 at Whistling Straits. Henrik Stenson, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith subsequently matched it at the 2017 Open Championship, 2020 Masters and 2022 Open Championship, respectively.

Still, if a guy shoots 9 under par on the first day of a big tournament, he’s going to be in the mood for joking.

Schauffele was asked if he knew who was the last player to shoot 62 in a major? He pretty much knew. “Did I get in before Rickie?” he asked. The answer was no. Fowler posted 62 at Los Angeles Country Club last year first, then Schauffele’s 62 followed. So the answer to the question Schauffele asked was… Schauffele.

Then Schauffele was asked a question no golfer had ever been asked: Which of his major-championship 62s was the better round?

“I can’t nit-pick,” he said, grinning. “I’ll take a 62 in any major any day.”

There was one more joke worth noting, although it was intended as a serious question. Schauffele was asked, Do you feel like you're playing the best golf of your career right now?

Let’s see. He just tied the all-time low mark in a major. And he just got outdueled in a birdie blitz the weekend before when Rory McIlroy went on an eight-hole, 8-under-par run to beat him in the Wells Fargo Championship. Yeah, the question sounded dumb the moment it came out.

What really happened Thursday, as one spectator wearing a blue UK cap (for University of Kentucky)   noted with a guffaw as he wandered past the clubhouse, “Well, I guess Rory done p----ed off ol’ Xander this time.”

The fan wasn’t wrong.

“Not winning makes you want to win more, as weird as that is,” said Schauffele, who hasn’t won a major but does have a coveted Olympic gold medal for golf. “I react to it and it makes me want to work harder and harder and harder.”

Schauffele was paired with Kentucky native and local favorite Justin Thomas, a two-time PGA Championship winner. Thomas shot a solid 3-under 68 yet couldn’t help but feel like he got left in the dust.

“When you’re playing with one of the easiest 9-unders you’ve ever seen,” Thomas said, “it makes you feel like you’re shooting a million. But for the rest of our sakes, I hope he doesn’t shoot any more 9-unders.”

More joking. Possibly.

There is a long-term, serious undertone to this scene. Golf is evolving quickly. We’ve seen it with equipment, from the Pro V1 to exotic shafts to oversized driver heads. Players have gotten bigger (in general), stronger, fitter and are more athletic than ever. Top players not only have a trainer or three, plus a swing coach and a psychologist, but often a personal nutritionist-chef.

Scores have gotten lower in this century despite the fact that PGA Tour course setups are tougher. Four steps from the edge used to be a standard pin location limit. Then it became three steps. Now it’s two.

Tournaments that didn’t use to grow much rough, for recruiting purposes so top players would shoot low scores and have fun and want to return, often have substantial rough now in a desperate attempt to defend par. Despite that, low scores have advanced.

Al Geiberger shot the first 59 on the PGA Tour in 1977. No one matched it for 14 years until Chip Beck in 1991. Then David Duval in 1999. Three in 22 years? Not bad. There have been seven 59s on the PGA Tour in the last 14 years, plus Jim Furyk’s 58 in Hartford. Even women’s golf and the senior circuit have seen 59s. The Korn Ferry guys smash it on a regular basis.

It’s a trend. Johnny Miller often expressed his surprise while broadcasting golf for NBC that his mark of 63 was still standing into the mid-2010s. He knew records are meant to be broken and was simply proud to have held one.

Thursday at Valhalla was another record-setting day. Masters champ Scottie Scheffler teed off in the afternoon wave of the PGA Championship field and did it in an auspicious fashion. He holed out a shot from the fairway for an eagle 2 on the first hole.

A chorus of cheers arose that was heard throughout the course.

And rightly so. On this unusual day, he had just closed to within seven shots of Xander Schauffele.

Photo:  Gary Van Sickle​​​​​

Gary Van Sickle has covered golf since 1980, following the tours to 125 men's major championships, 14 Ryder Cups and one sweet roundtrip flight on the late Concorde. He is likely the only active golf writer who covered Tiger Woods during his first pro victory, in Las Vegas in 1997, and his 81st, in Augusta in April.