\n<\/p>\n
With a forecast of warm and dry weather all week at Augusta National, the expectation was firm and fast greens would lead to difficult scoring conditions – McIlroy said he thought the winning score would not reach double digits under par. <\/p>\n
There was also a perception the officials in charge of the course set-up would be delighted with the prospect.<\/p>\n
However, their decision to water the greens each morning – softening them for the following day – has made scoring easier as the week has gone on.<\/p>\n
That has not been a popular decision with the purists, who have accused the Masters of also going soft.<\/p>\n
There is no doubt making things more scoreable has led to an entertaining spectacle as the pack hunted down McIlroy.<\/p>\n
World number one Scottie Scheffler was the first player to really take advantage as he threatened to challenge the course record of 63 – jointly held by Nick Price (1986) and Greg Norman (1996) – with a blistering front nine.<\/p>\n
The two-time champion, who won in 2022 and 2024, ultimately fell short and signed for a career-best 65, which put him back into contention, at four off the pace, after he maintained a recent trend of making slow starts.<\/p>\n
Eventual co-leader Young also gave Price and Norman cause for concern when he reached seven under after 14 holes.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old American’s momentum was stalled by a bogey on 15 – which would have been worse had he not pitched close with his fourth after finding the water – but he recovered to birdie 16 and match Scheffler’s low round of the day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With a forecast of warm and dry weather all week at Augusta National, the expectation was firm and fast greens would lead to difficult scoring conditions – McIlroy said he thought the winning score would not reach double digits under par. There was also a perception the officials in charge of the course set-up would<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}