Masters Tournament Updates: Hideki Matsuyama Wins With a Groundbreaking Performance

Coming off the 15th hole, Schauffele was almost assuredly feeling good: He had just made birdie and narrowed Hideki Matsuyama’s lead to two strokes.

Schauffele marched to No. 16 and promptly hit his tee shot into the water. His next shot — technically the third because of the penalty — landed in the gallery. He eventually posted a double bogey.

Matsuyama bogeyed on the hole to move to 11 under par after a putt lipped out. But Schauffele’s debacle moved him to seven under, and he surrendered second place to Will Zalatoris, who just finished his tournament at nine under.

Now at 13 under par for the tournament after a birdie to finish the first half of his final round, Matasuyama has a five-stroke lead at the start of the back nine. Will Zalatoris, who is playing in his first Masters, has not altogether faded and is at eight under. Jon Rahm, who just finished his round with a 66, rode a six-stroke swing on the day into a tie for third place with Xander Schauffele.

Just one former Masters winner is in the top five at this point: Jordan Spieth is one of the fifth-place contenders at five under for the tournament. He has shot even par so far in the final round.

And Justin Rose, who led after Thursday and Friday’s rounds, is also tied for fifth place. He is two over for the day.

Matsuyama opened the day at 11 under, but bogeyed the first hole before recovering well on the second, where he made birdie. Now, through his first nine holes, Will Zalatoris has narrowed Matsuyama’s lead to three strokes.

The player having the biggest day, though, falls just below them on the leaderboard. Through 17 holes, Jon Rahm is six under on the day, which has vaulted him from a tie for 21st at sunrise to a tie for third. Rahm’s biggest moment came on the second hole, where he made eagle just after he carded a birdie on No. 1.

The good news for Matsuyama, besides leading the Masters on Sunday, is that he has made it past the course’s most difficult hole. He made par on No. 5. Xander Schauffele, paired with Matsuyama for the round, had a disaster: double-bogey. Through eight holes, he had shot one over for the day and trailed his partner by six strokes.

Although players have said they were adjusting to the new rigors, the field scored a cumulative 103 over par on the par-4 hole across the first three rounds — the handiwork of 84 bogeys, nine double-bogeys and just five birdies. (The easiest hole, in case you’re wondering, has been No. 8, with Nos. 6 and 9 roughly in the middle.)

Escaping the two bunkers before the pin requires 315 of the hole’s 495 yards, and then there is another just beyond the green, which slopes from the back to the front.

Gary Player, a three-time Masters winner, said in an interview last year that with such a hole design in his day, he would have had to use a driver and probably a 5-wood. Then again, he said, today’s players can afford to approach the game differently.

“The ball goes 50 yards further, and the metal heads hit it so much further, and the fairways run more,” he said. “We never had the conditioned fairways, we never had the metal heads, we never had a ball that goes 50 yards further and curves less.”

All of that notwithstanding, the hole has, to put it politely, driven the field bonkers this year. Even Hideki Matsuyama, who entered Sunday’s final round at 11 under par, bogeyed the hole.

Will Zalatoris, also tied for second place, is a Masters rookie and has never played on the fourth day of the tournament. Zalatoris is also trying to become the first Masters rookie since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979 to win the tournament.

So why do they come back? In Johnson’s case, of course, it is because he is still in the prime of his career. But consider, say, Fred Couples, who won the 1992 tournament and has placed no higher than third in a major since 2005.

“It’s not a competition for me,” Couples said last week, before he missed the Masters cut for the third consecutive tournament. “The competition is for myself to play the course the best I can, and when that becomes havoc, then I will have probably played my last Masters.”

Besides, playing or not, most past winners come back to Augusta each year for the closed-door dinner for the champions and the club chairman. The 2021 menu, which Johnson selected and paid for, included pigs-in-a-blanket, filet mignon and peach cobbler.

But for players who are young enough, the hope of another title lurks. Mickelson, who had a three-under 69 on Saturday to move to even for the tournament, thought he could still contend on Sunday — maybe.

“You want that opportunity to do what Nicklaus did in ’86 and shoot 65 and have a chance,” he said after his third round. “I don’t know if that will be good enough, but I’m having a lot of fun.”

Let’s back up. Horschel’s second shot on Saturday landed in Rae’s Creek, one of the dangers of the par-5 hole. So Horschel’s socks and shoes came off as he prepared to try a shot from the water. But after he surveyed the green before his attempt, he lost his footing and slid down the hill, prompting a consultation with Phil Mickelson, the three-time Masters winner who was his partner for the day, and later blamed the steepness of the bank and the wetness of the rye.

“I said, ‘How bad is that grass stain going to be?’” Horschel, who was sporting white pants, recounted after the round. “And he said, ‘There may not be one there,’ and he looked and said, ‘Yeah, there’s one there. Sorry, buddy.’” (Asked whether he had faced a more embarrassing moment, he replied: “I’ve ripped my pants a few times — and early in the rounds.”)

The shot went much better.

“It was probably a couple inches under the water,” Horschel said, adding, “I knew there was a whole bunch of green behind me, so as long as I hit it hard enough, it would come out.”

It did, lifting up onto the green and past the pin to set up a two-putt, and Horschel ultimately made par.

“It was an incredible golf shot,” Mickelson said later. “That’s not easy. Sometimes that thing comes out kind of blah. I’m curious how he hit that.”

Then came Sunday, when Horschel’s tee shot landed in the water.

Much as Horschel fans might hope, we are not making this up.

Off came the footwear.

His recovery shot managed to leave the water but headed straight into a rock-strewn slope. His third shot went a few inches. At last cutting his losses, he took a drop, only to see what was technically his fifth stroke wind up in the gallery. Horschel’s sixth put him onto the green, where he putted well.

But it was very much a miserable showing on the hole: eight strokes — good for a triple-bogey that moved him to six over par for the tournament. At least, though, he did not rip his pants.

But at this year’s Masters, there are probably fewer than 10,000 fans allowed on the property, which makes traffic to the golf course a breeze. That has meant that the early crowds for the final round have been thin.

The early groups of players are making their way around Augusta National with a following that more closely resembles the last day of a local club championship than the most celebrated golf tournament in the world. At noon today, as Bryson DeChambeau walked to the fifth green, a couple spectators were having a conversation with him from 40 yards away — and both parties had no trouble hearing each other.

Only at the 2021 Masters.

“I’m here because I got here on merit, and I’m here to win a golf tournament,” MacIntyre, a 24-year-old player from Scotland who qualified for the Masters because of his world ranking. “If I wasn’t trying to win this golf tournament, I’d be sitting at home with my feet up watching it. I’ve prepared for the last two years or the last year, my goal was top 50 in order to get in this golf tournament because I love watching it so much. I’m here now, and I’m trying to win it.”

Newcomers have made serious runs toward the green jacket in the past. Just in November, for instance, Sungjae Im placed second in the tournament, and C.T. Pan finished in a tie for seventh. Abraham Ancer, who entered the final round tied with Im for the runner-up slot, was one of the 13th place finishers.

But Zoeller is the only modern exception to the seeming rule that newcomers must fade on a course that rewards experience. Just two other men have won the Masters in their debuts: Horton Smith in 1934, when Augusta National first held the tournament, and Gene Sarazen followed him in 1935.

Zalatoris acknowledged that the course could be intimidating. But, he said, “The fact that I wanted to be here my entire life actually almost frees me up.”

“If it stays dry, it’ll be as difficult as the course has played in a long, long time, and that’s what I think we need to have,” Fred Couples said early in the week.

Couples, the 1992 champion, largely got his wish. But now it has rained — a quick system that forced a delay during the third round on Saturday. (Hideki Matsuyama spent the time, he said, in his car playing games on his cellphone. He finished the day at 11 under par on the week, so maybe there is a lesson there.)

Virtually no one is expecting the greens to be anywhere near as soft as they were in November, when Dustin Johnson won the tournament with a record 20 under. The greens, though, might be just a little less glass-like, perhaps inviting fewer debacles like Bernd Wiesberger’s eagle putt on No. 15 that rolled all the way into the water.

Players have spent the tournament both talking about the perils of the greens and celebrating them.

“It’s set up perfect to identify kind of the best player, and the guys that are striking it well are up on the leaderboard, the guys that are putting it well,” Phil Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, said on Saturday. “And I think it’s very fair because we’re making divots, the balls are stopping. It’s not like the ’90s where we weren’t, but you have to have quality shots. You’ve got to hit angles into the pins. You’ve got to be smart.”

Mickelson, who had suggested just days earlier that Augusta National’s greens had been too forgiving in recent years, declared the course “perfectly done.”

“It punishes you — like it did me the first couple of days — when you make mistakes or don’t put it in the right spot or hit poor chips,” he said. “I love seeing it like this because you can score low, but you also need to respect it.”

First round

On Thursday, the course had its way with the field, with only 11 golfers finishing under par. Justin Rose was an outlier, shooting a seven-under-par 65, and led after the first round. Only Rose, Brian Harman and Hideki Matsuyama shot below 70.

Second round

On Friday, the fan favorite Jordan Spieth, who has been waging a steady comeback and won his first tournament since 2017 the previous week at the Texas Valero Open, turned in an excellent round, a four-under-par 68. He was just two strokes behind Rose, the second-round leader. In a bit of a shock, Johnson, the defending champion, Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy all failed to make the cut.

Third round

A 78-minute rain delay set up a remarkable run up the leaderboard by Matsuyama. The 29-year-old Japanese star shot 65 to enter Sunday’s final round 11 under par. Four golfers were tied for second: Rose, Xander Schauffele, Marc Leishman and the Masters rookie Will Zalatoris.

The main action

The traditional television coverage of the tournament’s final round, which will culminate with somebody donning a green jacket, can be seen on CBS from 2 to 7 p.m. Eastern time. That coverage will be simulcast in the CBS Sports app and on the Paramount+ streaming service.

All-day coverage

Groups begin teeing off in the morning, however, and you can start watching the Masters with your coffee. On the Masters livestream there are four different “channels” to watch:

These options all begin and end at different times, depending on when the first golfers reach the different holes, but the featured groups channel kicks things off at 10:25 a.m. Eastern. The featured groups are Paul Casey and Billy Horschel (10:30 a.m.), Bryson DeChambeau and Harris English (11 a.m.), Justin Spieth and Brian Harman (2:10 p.m.) and Justin Rose and Marc Leishman (2:30 p.m.).

You can watch the Masters livestream in a number of different places. ESPN+, Paramount+, the CBS Sports app, CBSSports.com and Masters.com all carry it.

Other stuff

If you are more interested in analysis from talking heads and footage of golfers practicing before their tee times, the Golf Channel is live from the Masters both before and after the main coverage on CBS. If you miss the final round, encore coverage begins almost immediately, at 8 p.m. Eastern on the CBS Sports Network.