Ryan Fox led through 12 holes – image courtesy of Masters Tournament
Ryan Fox and Cameron Davis led the Australasians when play was suspended for darkness on day one of the Masters, both players at 3 under and tied for 6th. Cam Smith, Jason Day and Adam Scott will complete their opening rounds on Friday morning US time.
Playing with Chris Kirk and Sergo Garcia, Fox got off to the perfect start with birdies at each of the first three holes and when he hit his second to the par 5 8th to 25 feet and holed for eagle he was at 5 under and 2 ahead of the field.
Fox’s first mistake came when he found the trees at the par 5 13th, laid up with his second then chunked his 3rd off a downhill lie into Rae’s Creek. The ensuing bogey was followed three holes later by a 3 putt bogey at the 16th but he held on to finish with an opening round of 69.
Arriving at Augusta National for his second Masters appearance after a struggle in the early stages of his PGA Tour career, Fox had limited expectations and, despite the dropped shots over the closing six holes, was happy with his start.
“If you’d have given me 3-under without teeing off today, I certainly would have taken it,” said Fox.
“To be honest, everything worked really well today. I drove it great, which is pretty important around here. Had a lot of decent iron shots and holed some putts. Made a couple of nice up-and-downs towards the end of the round.
“I felt like it got really hard to pick the wind the last few holes, and I did pretty well to hang on to 3-under when I didn’t really feel like I did a whole lot wrong.”
Davis is playing the Masters for the second occasion having made the cut and finished 46th in 2022.
Like Fox, a strong start to his round was a feature being 3 under through 8 holes before consecutive bogeys at the 10th and 11th holes threatened to bring things undone but the US based Sydneysider birdied the two par 5’s on the back 9 to finish at 3 under.
“I battled pretty hard for it, but I felt honestly pretty tidy around the golf course today with the winds like this. It was gusty. It swirled. It did all the things it normally does, but add another 30 miles an hour to it.”
When asked how it felt to be just four back in these conditions Davis responded;
“I’m not even paying attention to the leaderboard right now. These are the sort of conditions where if you’ve got to get nine holes where there’s not much and you can go and score, that’s great. I might not have that same opportunity, so I’m just really going one shot, one hole at a time.
“It’s cliche, but it’s the only way to really play a golf course like this. You can’t get ahead of yourself and start chasing people. I think the back nine on Sunday is the only time you can start thinking about that, but you’ve got a lot of work to do to get there.”
Of the other Australians, Cameron Smith finished his round at 1 under, Jason Day is through 13 holes at even par, Adam Scott is through 13 holes at 1 over, Min Woo Lee is finished at 2 over and amateur, Jasper Stubbs, finished with a round of 80.
