Geoff Ogilvy leads the Aussie pack in the Masters – Golf news
Geoff Ogilvy came out as the Australian front man after his unblemished first round, finishing 3-under for 69, at the Masters. He stumbled with just one bogey in an otherwise tight round and closed for equal seventh at the end of the first day. With a back-warming
sun on a delectable spring morning, it was a low scoring day at the Augusta National.
“I'm pretty happy with the way I played,” said Ogilvy, “If I'd had a crazy putting day I could have gone pretty low but it was a pretty fair score. I haven't been lucky enough to play this course in weather like this very often. The pins aren't savage, the
weather's perfect.”
Ogilvy has a good solid record of a possible winner. The 2006 US Open Champion, the Victorian, has made the cut in his past five appearances. His best performance to date came in 2009, when he finished 15th. Ogilvy had a brilliant year in 2010,
when he won the Australian Open and settled for second place at the Australian PGA Championship. In a bid to defend his title in the Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, he accidentally cut his finger and suffered from it since then.
None of the other six Australians were able to break par while Adam Scott and Jason Day matched it with equal par 72. A double-bogey at the par-four first left Scott lurking in obscurity and his confidence was visibly shaken. He regained strength with a
birdie at par-five second and tried to concentrate on his performance with his newly adopted putter. He said, “I was in poor shape from the get-go. It was just a bit of a grind. I'm certainly going to need to play some good golf from here on, but you don't
win it today, although you can certainly lose it.”
Australians have never been able to win the title, although four Aussies including Jim Ferrier in 1950, Bruce Crampton in 1972, and Jack Newton in 1980 finished for the second place. Greg Norman finished runner-up on no less than three occasions. Jason Day
is the new Aussie debutant at the Masters after his quality performance at the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship last month, but his lackluster performance at the start must have pushed him to re-think his strategy.
Day finished off on a decent note starting from almost complete wreckage. Playing with Rory McIlroy, he double-bogeyed the par-four 11th but later moved on to card four consecutive birdies from 13th onwards. Aaron Baddeley, Robert Allenby
and Stuart Appleby, the rest of the three Aussies finished with an over par score of 75, each. The five Australian players participating have collectively played total of 43 Masters with Stuart Appleby having played the most at 13.
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