AUGUSTA, Ga. — A head coach to your favorite golfing stars offers this: “You hear this more at Augusta than anywhere else: ‘I can’t take my range game to the course.’”

This is not a pre-tournament comment. It’s something you hear after the Thursday rounds have been posted.
 
There’s a reason for that as there is a reason for everything. The tournament practice range at Augusta is about 300 yards wide, flatter than the famous club driveway behind it, with only about a dozen pins and a dozen pines at which to aim. On the course itself, once you’re off the tee, there are few flat lies, lots of pine straw, greenside grain leaning this way and that — and a nervous system in overdrive. So in that sense, the range and the tournament course — on Thursday, on Friday, on the weekend — are on different planets.

But there’s something else that happens more at the Masters, the first Grand Slam event of the year, than anywhere else. At 4:30 Thursday afternoon, there were six players on the range and six instructors. There were two players on the putting green with instructors. There was another player by the chipping green, his coach behind him. Over the course of the afternoon, more players came to this temple of practice for a post-round session, every last one (but one) accompanied by a teacher. Every coach had either a phone or a tablet in hand and many of the players had Trackman devices diagnosing their every swing.
 
This is a relatively new development, player and coach continuing to work together after the start of a tournament. In the 1990s, you would often see Ernie Els and sometimes Tiger Woods on a range without an instructor with a tournament underway. (Every blue moon, you’d see Els or Woods alone on the range, the caddie sent home for the day. Incredible to watch.) But over the past 10 or 15 years, and you see this more at Augusta intra-tournament than anywhere else, the professional golfer has morphed from lonesome cowboy to CEO of Team Your Name Here.
 
In 2015, Jordan Spieth won the Masters. In 2016, he was the third-round leader after an indifferent Saturday 73. He had been going it alone that week. Saturday night, he made an emergency call to his swing coach, Cameron McCormick, looking for help with a case of the short rights. McCormick arrived Sunday morning. Whatever they worked on worked, until it didn’t. Spieth shot a Sunday 73 and Danny Willett won by three. Over the past decade on the Augusta range, you see a player, you see an instructor and a gizmo.
 
“It’s probably been a real thing for the last 10 or 15 years,” Adam Scott said Thursday. He’s 45 and has been a touring pro playing the world for 25 years. “There aren’t 85 coaches here this week, but then there’s someone like Pete Cowen who has a bunch of guys. And I’m not just saying [swing] coaches. There are chipping coaches, putting coaches, psychologists. There are a lot of coaches.”
 
But only one coach is allowed on the range with the player at Augusta and it’s always the main swing coach. It’s good for business. A swing coach at the Masters is usually highly invisible, but when you’re on the inside it’s an enviable place to be.
 
“Ideally, you’ve got everything organized before you get here,” said Scott, who shot a first-round 72. “I feel a lot of the time when I had a coach here they were just watching and not saying too much. Even on a day like today, when you’re a little off, sometimes you just need someone to say, I didn’t feel good today, but I don’t think it’s bad. What do you think? ‘Nothing wrong with it. Go hit 20 balls and come back tomorrow.’ But it looks like everyone is going for perfection.”

Augusta National is not a course that lends itself to perfection. Things go wrong. It’s kind of a head game, because Augusta National, the club, sells the pursuit of perfection, but things go wrong from Thursday morning to Sunday night, for every last player.
 
And that’s the point of the unnamed mental coach here — the players are searching for perfection on the range with a tournament underway, and it’s counter-productive. The real work, the mental coach said, should be between the player and the caddie, because the player and the caddie are out there together. You can’t make a lifeline call in tournament golf.
 
“Early in my career, there was a phase where the coach wasn’t around a lot, and I think that was good,” Scott said. “At 21, I didn’t know what bad golf was. I’d just go out and play.
 
“Later, it was more about taking it to the next level, with more eyes on it. That was how it worked for me, and it worked well. Now I have a lot less of that. I speak to Trevor [Immelman] often about how I feel and my swing but I don’t have him watching all the time. There are phases.”
 
Rory McIlroy, for instance. There have been times in his career where his lifelong swing coach was behind him every time he went to the range. And then there was last year, when McIlroy won the Masters. There was no talk about his team, no discussion of we did this and we did that. He and his caddie, Harry Diamond, were on the range. He and Diamond were on the 18th green Sunday night. McIlroy signed his playoff scorecard. The only other signature required was his opponent’s.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — If you can bear it, take a few seconds to imagine how it felt to be Fred Couples on Masters Thursday afternoon.

Your day starts with a warmup. But really it begins before that, when the first patron sees you on site at Augusta National, and you can feel the first thought in their head. You’re 66 years old, playing at Augusta National for the forty-first time, and the rumors surrounding your competitive retirement from golf’s first major have gotten so loud you can’t even pretend to ignore them.

But you believe you can compete — not in a vain way, but really believe it — so you’ve showed up again. And you’ve showed up even though you know certain members of the public are snickering at you. Or worse, overlooking you. And you’ve showed up with a bright yellow ball, because if they’re going to laugh anyway, you might as well laugh back.

You arrive on Thursday with something to prove, and though you’re realistic about your goals, things go well. The weather is good. The golf course is firm and fast, which plays into your strengths as one of the geezers who actually learned how to play Augusta National before the days of 350-yard drives and 9-irons into par-5s. You make birdies on a few holes early. You survive the turn unscathed. Suddenly you look up at the big leaderboard behind the 12th hole at you’re one under for the day, three shots off the lead, and royally spanking your younger, longer playing partners despite their insistence on outdriving you by 40 yards.

By the time your birdie putt drops on 13, you’re feeling it. You’re smiling at the crowd, and the crowd is smiling back at you. They’re beginning to believe, and damnit, so are you.

“That’s Freddie alright,” they’re yelling at each other, remembering some vision from the past so old it doesn’t even feel like a memory to you. “He’s making a move!”

Your last real risk arrives on 15, but thankfully, the green jackets have taken disaster out of play. The par-5 has gotten so long that it’s a three-shot hole on your best day, so you lay up to the bottom of the hill and plot for a chip shot that will leave you with a 30-footer for birdie. At worst, you’re looking at an easy par and a pathway to the clubhouse with some real breathing room inside of the cutline.

And then, just when the confidence is really beginning to flow, something mystifying happens. You skin two straight wedge shots within the span of three minutes, sending two balls in the water from 90 yards out. Before you can even count your strokes, your dream is dead. A few moments later, the number on the scorecard confirms it: You’ve just recorded a nine.

“I’ve played I don’t know how many rounds, I’ve never done that,” you say. “Never hit a 90-yard shot in the water and then followed up with another one. I’ve played 41 years here. I’ve never done that.”

And then, even though you know you’re playing for pride, you know the air is out of the balloon, and so a bad situation becomes worse. You look up after punching out into the 18th fairway and laugh.

“What did I do?” you ask later, but you already know the answer. “I went quad-double-double. There’s not much regrouping from that.”

You walk up to the 18th and roll in a 20 footer for par, and the gallery erupts, but you’re too furious to care. You pull the ball out of the cup and take a long, deep breath. You’ve just shot six over for the day, 78, and unless there’s one last true Masters miracle within you, you’re careening for a missed cut.

By the time you make it to scoring, you’re so ready to begin the walk to the parking lot that your feet are already moving in that direction — but here comes a green jacket. A reporter has requested you. A singular reporter. And even though everyone’s pretty sure this request is a bad idea, yourself and the green jacket included, you hear yourself say Yes.

You stand in front of the reporter for a handful of truly painful seconds, hearing yourself recount the events of the last few minutes. It takes you a while to realize it, but you’re sporting the cervical flexibility of a barn owl — eyes and thoughts pointed at 12 o’clock but legs pointed firmly at 4:30. It’s as if your body is already beginning the long walk into the night, but your brain hasn’t realized it yet.

And then, just when you began to think your legs might walk you right off the podium, granting you the dignity of escaping from a closing-stretch meltdown on Masters Thursday in the comfort of your own thoughts, you’re asked why you bothered to say yes to this request in the first place, and you laugh.

“I do it at Augusta. I love this place,” you say. “No matter what I shoot, I try. I get very frustrated. Because at any age you still want to hit shots. But I’m not going to run.

“If I was 35 and did that I would be going bananas on everybody,” you say. “And I would’ve ran right by and you told you to get out of my life.”

But today?

“It really was a fun day.”

And the craziest thing is that even though you don’t feel it, you know you mean it. You still play golf for moments like Thursday — not for the fleeting moments of magic, but for the brief, totally insane belief that the magic might stick around.

You don’t like to think about your game as timeless; you think about it as very much of this time. But there’s a reason why the patrons at the Masters cheer louder for you than anywhere else on earth: This is the golf course where time stands still, and you are the golfer who embodies it.

“I’ll end with this,” you say. “My first Masters I played in I shot 73-68, which was fantastic. I got paired with Tom Watson and I shot 80.”

“I couldn’t keep up with him. I was bogeying holes and didn’t want to get in his way and my score became irrelevant.”

“I think that happens at all acts of life. You just feel uncomfortable and can’t turn it around.”

The reporter seems pretty glad you haven’t thrown a 7-iron at him, so he’s not going to keep you, but he sure seems to think he’s seen some magic, and he sure seems to think that magic is lingering … even in an opening-round 78.

But you’re Freddie Couples, and you know better than that, so you laugh.

“Tomorrow I just have to go do the same thing. But maybe not finish 10-over par on two holes, or whatever the hell I did.”

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Before the first round of this 90th Masters, the last swing Collin Morikawa had taken in competition was a practice swing. That swipe came in the opening round of the Players Championship last month, when, while rehearsing for his second tee shot of the day at TPC Sawgrass, Morikawa wound up and eeeek . . . something didn’t feel right. He grabbed his lower back and tried to walk it off, but moments later the white flag went up. He was done. “I can’t swing through it,” he said later. “Trust me, I would play if I could. It’s just the worst thing in the world.”

The severity of Morikawa’s injury became even clearer last week when he withdrew from his next scheduled start at the Valero Texas Open. That scratch brought into question whether Morikawa might also have to forego the season’s first major at Augusta National this week. But Morikawa wasn’t about to let his misfortune mar his Masters week.

On Monday, he said his “back actually feels fine. It’s just other parts of the body not cooperating a little bit how I want.” He said he was chipping and putting beautifully and had been hitting full shots for the last week but was limited in terms of what kind of shots he could hit, which would force him into a “different game plan” at Augusta.

Morikawa referenced Augusta National Women’s Amateur competitor Bailey Shoemaker, who has been battling a painful ulnar nerve injury that she says has made her more deliberate over the ball. “When you hurt yourself swinging, it’s a completely different beast of itself because you just don’t know,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a commitment, trust.”

Augusta National is not a golf course you want to play with any degree of uncertainty in your game — certainly not this week when the greens are rolling like countertops, the eyes of the world are upon you and legacies are in the balance. But sitting out a Masters in the prime of your career is no cup of pimento cheese, either, so Morikawa decided to press onward, if ever so cautiously.

In his Monday practice round, he hit only chip shots. On Tuesday, he played nine holes, followed by another nine on Wednesday. When Morikawa woke up Thursday morning, he said he’d “never felt this nervous in my life.” Not about playing on so grand a stage — this was his seventh Masters start, after all, and 25th major start overall — but about whether his back might give out again. “There’s a certain doubt factor of, like, is this going to happen, is this not?” he said.

“Physically there’s no pain,” he continued. “It’s just a trust thing. My legs don’t want to trust that it’s going to hold up the back and the rest of the body. When that’s feeling wobbly, plus you add the adrenaline and the nerves, it’s not easy.”

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Morikawa opened solidly, with six straight pars, before dropping his first stroke when he missed the fairway right at the par-4 7th and had to punch his second shot into a front bunker. Another bogey followed at the 9th, where he missed the green long and right. His drives lacked their usual pop but, the firm conditions worked in his favor. “I’m calling it a little dink it out there and find it and move on,” he said. On the inward nine, Morikawa made two more bogies, at 11 and 14, but countered them with birdies at 10 and 13. He signed for 74, which had him in 41st place as of this writing.

Thing is, it’s not only the fear of reaggravating his back that is hampering Morikawa. “The legs just don’t feel comfortable right now,” he said. “They don’t feel strong like they’re underneath me. I don’t think it’s really muscle loss. It’s just a trust factor and saying that the legs are under there that you can go fire the way I used to.” He said his walking pace has been sluggish, to the point where he’s “probably the slowest out there out of this entire field.”

All in all, though, he said he was pleased to get through the round and post a number on a course that can make even the world’s best players look silly. “I’m proud of myself the way it kind of played out today,” he said. “I mean, I had no clue what I was going to shoot today. Like, I had no idea.”

That he signed for a score at all felt like a win in itself.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Carlos Ortiz of Mexico, the LIV Golf golfer, got into this Masters tournament by way of a T4 finish at last year’s U.S. Open. He’s a highly skilled golfer, of sound mind and body, playing in his second Masters. He shot 80 on Thursday. You could say he played poorly but this would be a more accurate statement: Augusta National is an insanely difficult course.
 
If you have ever played it, you know that any two-putt from 20 feet is an accomplishment. Augusta National during the Masters — back tees, fairways lined with spectators, cameras pointed at you, and millions watching on TV, fairways cut to crew-cut length, and the prospect of immortality — is almost impossibly difficult.
 
We ordinary golfers cannot even conceive how difficult it is.
 
My friend Mike Donald and I discuss this now and again. Not quite a decade ago, but years ago, when Mike was in his 60s, we played as guests and Mike played all the way back. He played well, holed everything and shot 80.
 
In the 1990 Masters, Mike played in his first (of two) Masters. The course played hard on Thursday and the stroke average was 74. Mike had to be one of the 100 best golfers in the world then. Bill Harmon, son of a Masters champion, was Mike’s caddie and he knew what he was doing. Things were clicking. Mike shot 64.
 
In those days, the field was re-paired for the Friday round based on the Thursday scores and Mike was in the final twosome on Friday. It wasn’t like he forgot how to play, one day to the next. Mike shot 82 without playing that poorly. He started with three three-putt bogeys. It happened before that day, it’s happened since then and it will happen again.
 
Somewhere out there in this great moment of podcasting, there are people talking about what ordinary golfers could shoot at Augusta. There was one podcast this year where the co-host, a 7-handicap golfer, wondered what he could do in the Masters if he could play every hole under certain fantasy conditions: Second shots on the eight par-4 holes from 100 yards, third shots on the four par-5 holes from 100 yards; tee shots on the four par-3 holes from 100 yards. The 100-yard fantasy.

This 7-handicapper said he could win the Masters on those conditions.

Mike and I were in complete agreement: He’s deluded.

“Rory McIlroy couldn’t pitch that shot on the green on 13,” Mike said, recalling McIlroy’s short third shot into the par-5 13th on Sunday. He made 7.

“From 120 yards on 18, he puts that ball in a bunker,” Mike said, referring to McIlroy’s play on the 72nd hole at last year’s Masters. He needed 4 to win, but he was playing for immortality. “He couldn’t do it and he’s the best in the world. How’s a 7-handicapper going to play those shots?”

Not gonna happen.

Let’s recap: Back tees, fairways lined with spectators, millions more watching on TV, cameras pointed at you, fairways cut to crew-cut length, playing for immortality? And your playing partner is staring bullets through you?
 
No 7-handicapper would have a chance.
 
Mike and I devised our own fantasy scoring situation, with the same 100-yard-shot rules. Our theoretical golfer would be a club champion at Acme Golf & Country Club, able to shoot 77 at home any day of the week and right around par on better days. This imaginary golfer is now the Masters leader through 54 holes, playing under 100-yard rules. Will the golfer make it to Butler Cabin?
 
Mike’s verdict: Not a chance.
 
“Anytime you’re putting from 30 or more feet, you’re never going to make one and you’re going to be lucky to two-putt,” Mike said. That was his starting point and it was a devastating one. You would do well to go around in 45 putts, with nine two-putt greens and nine three-putt greens. If you hit nine greens and missed nine greens and needed only one chip or bunker shot on those nine holes, that would add up to 71. Even that seems fantastical.
 
You’re a good club player and now you’re trying to win the Masters? Rory McIlroy was the best player in the world with a three-shot back-nine lead and he needed a playoff to win.
 
“You’re a 100 yards out, and that ball is sitting up and it’s a perfect lie — if you’re a Tour player,” Mike said. “But for the good country-club golfer, anything other than solid ball-first, take-a-divot contact will mean something fat and short or thin and long. Now you’re looking at one or two chips and, as often as not, three putts. The next hole, you’re looking at the same lie again — it’s like a ball on a driving range mat, except when you fat it the clubface doesn’t bounce up and into the ball. As for your last three-putt, it’s lodged in your head. Your putting issues are like a runaway snowball.
 
“On 15, fat is in the lake and thin is in the other one,” Mike continued. The third shot there from 100 yards is a downhill shot from a downhill lie, a gruesome combination. “If you’re chipping from over the 15th green, do you know how easy it is to run it through the green and into that lake?”
 
Very, very easy.
 
Maybe you’ll two-putt.
 
The 6th hole could be the hardest 100-yard par-3 in the world, playing to the traditional back-right Sunday hole position, on a shelf about the size of a White House banquet table. Even if you could get your tee shot to stay on the shelf, any missed putt for 2 could wind up on the front part of the severely sloping green. You would do well to three-putt from there. Another double on the card, with 12 more holes of torture to go.
 
Any Sunday score under 80 for our club champ from central casting in these conditions would be an achievement.
 
“It’s late in the day, the greens are blue and you’re nervous as hell,” Mike said. Yep, 80 would be a good score.
 
Rory McIlroy showed how hard Augusta National is last year on Sunday. Carlos Ortiz showed it on Thursday. Here comes Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It only gets harder.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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