Sungjae Im Leads After a Day Unlike Any Other at the Masters

You might have heard that Tiger Woods played on Thursday. But there were stories all over a leaderboard that is just getting started at Augusta.

Gary Van Sickle | Apr 7, 2022

Sungjae Im Leads After a Day Unlike Any Other at the Masters /

AUGUSTA, Ga.—Thursday was a day “unlike any other” at Augusta National Golf Club. It was effectively National Tiger Woods Day at the Masters Tournament, more or less.

Mostly more, actually.

Woods was trending, you could say, as golf’s greatest player and Earth’s most famous celebrity made a dramatic return to competitive golf after a serious car accident more than a year ago. Woods wasn’t the only player who teed it up Thursday at The National (as insiders call it), it just seemed that way. All eyes were inexorably, imploringly and intoxicatingly on him.

Even early Masters leader Cameron Smith wasn’t too busy stitching together an eight-birdie 68 to sneak a few peeks at Woods, playing in the group behind the Smith-Bryson DeChambeau twosome.

“I found myself just watching a couple of times today because we were waiting so much,” said Smith, the young Australian known as much for his unruly mullet as for winning last month’s Players Championship. “I almost felt like a patron out there. You can’t not watch him (Tiger). He’s unreal.”

All of Thursday was unreal. It was also wild, crazy, windswept and frenzied. What may have been the largest gallery in Masters history followed Woods on this historic-feeling day, pouring alongside fairways like bumper-to-bumper traffic on Los Angeles freeways. Honk if you liked the show: Woods shot 1-under 71, starting the day with a clutch 10-foot par-saving putt and ending the round with a five-footer for par. He had three birdies, a few short hiccups and he prompted the day’s loudest explosion when his tee shot at the par-3 sixth landed on the green’s upper tier and skipped to within a foot of the cup.

It was a Sunday roar on Thursday and it was unmistakably a Tiger roar.

“The place was electric,” Woods said. “To have the patrons fully out and to have that type of energy out there was awesome to feel. I’m very lucky to have this opportunity to be able to play … People have no idea how hard it’s been.”

Smith picked up where he left off at his last tournament, the Players, where he reeled off 10 final-round birdies at TPC Sawgrass. He began Thursday’s round with a double bogey after driving into the first hole’s annoyingly deep fairway bunker and ended the round with another double after spraying a drive into trees on the right, dribbling a shot out, pitching on and then three-putting from long distance.

If it’s possible for an opening 68 to be disappointing on an afternoon when winds gusted lustily, this one was. Two double bogeys aren’t easy to forget. Or maybe they are.

“I’ve already moved on,” said Smith, whose heroics included a chip-in birdie at the fifth hole. “I’m done with it. The stuff in between was really nice. Yeah, I’ll just take the positives out of it.”

Thursday’s leaderboard featured a mix of familiar names and a few surprises.

South Korea’s Sungjae Im, the two-time PGA Tour winner with the slow-motion backswing, eagled the 13th hole en route to shooting 67, the day’s low round. He played a beautiful hybrid shot to eight feet below the hole at the 13th and made the putt. That came after a fast start when he birdied the first three holes. His 67 made him the first South Korean to lead the Masters after any round.

“Records are always great but I try not to think about them,” Im said. “There are three more days to play and I have to be prepared to do the same thing.”

One look at leaders felt like the sequel to “Hot Tub Time Machine,” which was unfairly snubbed by the Oscars. Im tied Smith for second place in the 2020 Masters, that one played in November due to the pandemic. Dustin Johnson won that tournament and yes, he was in the mix again, too.

“There is a coincidence in it somewhere,” Im said via interpreter. “I did look at the leaderboard and it was pretty cool to see that we were all up there together.”

Johnson, former world No. 1 player, was 4 under par through 10 holes and looked as if he turned back time — or the tub. With soft, accepting greens and slower-than-usual green speeds, just like in 2020, Johnson looked poised to take it deep. He laid up on the normally reachable par-5 holes, 13 and 15, and made pars, hit a few ineffective wedges and bogeyed 17 on the way in for 69.

It wasn’t exactly a what-could-have-been round. Johnson struggled with his driver early, then switched to his 3-wood off the tee most of the day. He headed to the practice range after the round to work out the kinks in his driver swing for Friday, when the weather forecast calls for cooler temperatures and stronger, gustier winds.

Besides Johnson, there were other non-surprises. They included Scottie Scheffler, whose three recent victories vaulted him to No. 1 in the world rankings. A bogey at 18 left him at 69, right in the mix.

Canadian Corey Conners was among the group at 70. Why isn’t he a surprise? He took third in the recent World Match Play Championship and clearly has a love affair with The National, finishing eighth and 10th the last two years.

“It’s a very tricky golf course,” Conners said. “It never plays easy. With the wind up, you’ve got to battle hard. That’s pretty much it.”

Chile’s Joaquin Niemann isn’t as well-known to U.S. golf fans as he should be. He is 23, he’s won twice on the PGA Tour, including a victory this year at Riviera Country Club in the Genesis Invitational, and he’s had a few near-misses, including two playoff losses. Also, he’s a big stick, ranking fifth in driving distance, and he repeatedly flew it past Woods, with whom he was paired.

Niemann had the shot of the day in the Woods-Niemann-Louis Oosthuizen group. After a big drive in the ninth fairway, he landed an approach shot past the pin. The ball zipped back up a small ridge, then caught the slope and rolled toward the hole until it hit the pin dead-center and dropped for an eagle 2.

“I hit a good shot and then I saw the people going like this,” Niemann said, waving his arms, “and I knew it was going to be close to going in, and it went in.”

Niemann flipped his club in the air, then grabbed his caddie’s hand to celebrate. “I hit the ball amazing,” he said. “It was a really enjoyable round. Nothing was hard today. Obviously, I got to play with Tiger. He was really nice to me. It was really fun.”

Will Zalatoris was another non-surprise although he was a shocker last year when he finished runner-up in his first Masters. Zalatoris, a 25-year-old from Wake Forest University, managed three birdies en route to an opening 70.

The two unexpected early contenders were Danny Willett, a former Masters champion, and Harry Higgs.

Willett won the 2016 Masters after Jordan Spieth hit several shots into Rae’s Creek during the final round. Willett, an Englishman, has had back problems and difficulty regaining some consistent form. He won three times on the European Tour since his Masters victory, including a couple of big events, the 2018 DP World Championship and the 2019 BMW PGA Championship but has missed the cut in four of his last five Masters.

Willett, 34, wasn’t on anyone’s list of Masters favorites. “It’s just really nice to be back on property,” Willett said after he shot 69. “You can’t come to this place and not wake up every morning with a smile on your face. It’s impossible for the players and impossible for the patrons who walk around every day. It’s a pretty special place. It kind of gives you that little bit of butterflies just walking around this place.”

Higgs is a former SMU player who won once on the Korn Ferry and Latinoamerica Tours. He has had two solid years on the tour, highlighted by a fourth-place finish at last year’s PGA Championship at Kiawah Island. This season, he has managed only one top-25 finish — ninth at the CJ Cup.

When storms arrived and closed the course Tuesday, Higgs’ coach and caddie visited a local sporting goods store and bought a net so Higgs could hit balls at the back porch of the house he’s staying in this week.

“It’s one thing to just hold a club and make air swings, it’s another to hit a golf ball into a net,” Higgs said. “So we made a makeshift net, covered it with some sheets and towels to make sure it didn’t hit off the little bulls-eye and come flying back at us. It was fun. Everybody in the house sat around and basically watched me hit balls. I hit some good shots and it turned into, OK, let’s keep feeling that.”

That feeling turned into a 71. It was a good day for Higgs, who tied Woods, the player everyone watched.

It truly was a Masters Thursday unlike any other.

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