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Patrick Cantlay needed to do some ready himself Saturday.
Getty Photos
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The stainless golf course right here at Augusta National, with its world-class agronomy whizzes and complicated irrigation system and SubAir models, is a contemporary marvel. Nevertheless it doesn’t lack for throwback attraction, both. It has an old-timey plantation-style clubhouse, a no-phone coverage and brief strolls between tees and greens — and, in spots, greens and greens.
Such is the case at 9 and 18, the place the 2 placing surfaces don’t fairly abut however are shut sufficient to 1 one other that if gamers catch flyers on their approaches into both inexperienced, they might theoretically discover themselves taking part in their third pictures from the adjoining gap.
Within the third spherical of the Masters on Saturday, Si Woo Kim arrived on the house gap at one beneath for his spherical and 5 over for the event, a great distance out of the hunt. He arrange on the precise aspect of the tee field and hit a towering lower that lower an excessive amount of. His ball rattled round within the bushes proper of the golf green and dropped into the tough under. Boxed out by the bushes, he tried to hit a low onerous fade towards the inexperienced with a fairway wooden. His ball didn’t fade.
“Left!” somebody cried, adopted by a “Forrre!”
Kim’s ball missed the inexperienced effectively left and scooted down close to the sting of the ninth fairway slightly below the ninth inexperienced in an space populated by dozens of patrons. By the point Kim arrived on the scene to play his third shot, Patrick Cantlay and the low novice at this week’s event, Neal Shipley, have been making their manner down the ninth fairway. They might see the commotion forward — gallery guards making a channel for a participant to hit a shot again to 18 — however couldn’t make out who was concerned or what precisely was taking place.
“We have been simply there ready for them to clear patrons, do one thing,” Shipley mentioned after his spherical. “We have been simply actually confused. We have been standing there for some time, and anyone from the aspect informed us, ‘Oh, that was truly a participant on 18.’”
In the meantime, the clock was ticking, because it does when pictures goes astray in big-time golf tournaments. Folks-moving takes time. So, too, does taking part in pictures from unfamiliar spots and angles, particularly at Augusta Nationwide. Shipley estimated “seven or eight minutes” elapsed earlier than Kim cleared out they usually may play their approaches into the ninth inexperienced, that means that they had fallen behind tempo — albeit not by their very own doing.
An official approached Shipley and Cantlay.
“They didn’t give us a time warning, however they requested us to try to shut the hole,” Shipley mentioned.
Cantlay, pretty or not, has never been considered an elite gap-closer. On Masters Sunday a yr in the past, he was within the penultimate paring with Viktor Hovland, taking part in one pairing forward of eventual runner-up Brooks Koepka and winner Jon Rahm. After the spherical, Koepka bemoaned Cantlay and Hovland’s “brutally sluggish” tempo, although his critique was presumed to be leveled instantly at Cantlay. (Cantlay countered that he, too, had been ready on each shot within the remaining spherical.)
Shipley, for his half, mentioned he had no points with Cantlay’s tempo Saturday.
“I do know he has a nasty rep for enjoying sluggish, however he truly is a reasonably fast participant,” Shipley mentioned. “He takes a bit of bit longer over the ball, however he’s actually fast in making his selections. It’s form of a disgrace that he has that status, as a result of it’s actually not unhealthy in any respect.”
Shipley shot 80 within the third spherical; he’s eight over the week and 15 strokes off Scottie Scheffler’s lead. Cantlay shot 70 and is even for the event, seven again.
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