AUGUSTA, Ga. — Max Homa played the most beautifully boring round of golf amid raging wind and endless calamity Friday in the Masters, giving him a share of the 36-hole lead with Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler going into a weekend for the survivors.
Homa made 15 pars — they all felt so much better than that for him — on the way to a 1-under 71.
Scheffler finally made his first bogey of the week and then a few more, but the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking was rock solid down the stretch for a 72, his highest score of the year. DeChambeau played the 13th hole from the 14th fairway — at one point hoisting a wooden directional sign over his shoulder as he plotted his move — and finished with a 73.
For some 12 hours, the wind roared through the pines, scattered magnolia leaves across the pristine grounds of Augusta National Golf Club, and blew sand out of the white bunkers and into the faces of the players as they tried to handle a beast of a course.
“Mostly what I was trying to do out there was make a bunch of pars and stay in the golf tournament,” said Scheffler, with the 2022 champion’s strategy a testament to just how difficult it was.
The leaders were at 6-under 138, two shots clear of Masters newcomer Nicolai Hojgaard of Denmark, who shot a 73. Two-time major champion Collin Morikawa, one of only two fortunate souls to break par each of the first two rounds, had a 70 and was three behind, tied for fifth with Australia’s Cam Davis.
The 60 players who made the cut at 6 over are expected to get a slight reprieve, though still plenty of wind, when play resumes.
And that weekend will include Tiger Woods.
The 15-time major champion with five Masters victories among those titles set the tournament’s record by making the cut for the 24th consecutive time, breaking his tie with Fred Couples and Gary Player. Woods started his streak when he won the green jacket for the first time in 1997, though he did not play in the tournament in 2014, 2016, 2017 or 2021 due to injuries.
This time, the 48-year-old had to play 23 holes on Friday — five in the morning to finish the weather-delayed, darkness-suspended first round, and then a second round in which he kept the ball in play on the way to a 72. He was only seven shots behind and still very much in the tournament.
“I’m here. I have a chance to win the golf tournament,” Woods said. “I got my two rounds in.”
That’s really what it was all about. Finishing. Surviving. Enduring the punishment just to come back and try all over again.
“That was about as happy as you could be to be off of a golf course,” Homa said. “That was so hard. We got the sand shower to end our day. So it was kind of the golf course saying, ‘Get the hell out of here.'”
The average score was 75.09. Only eight players broke par, the same number who shot 80 or higher. Norway’s Ludvig Aberg had the low round at 69, leaving him alone in seventh at 2 under with seven players another stroke back.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” said DeChambeau, seeking a second major title to go with his 2020 U.S. Open triumph. “But what a great test.”
The 88th Masters teed off Thursday as the first one with three Baylor School golfers competing, but the representation of former Red Raiders will be down to two starting Saturday.
Harris English missed the cut in his first competitive appearance at Augusta National a decade ago, but his four trips since then have taken him to the weekend as he tied for 42nd in 2016, tied for 21st in 2021 and tied for 43rd last year. The 34-year-old was tied for 24th at 2 over after a 74 on Friday, taking bogeys on two of his last three holes.
“This course is hard with no wind,” English said, “and then you throw in gusts like that, it can be three clubs different, depending on what time you hit it — 10 to 20 seconds later or earlier, it can be a totally different shot. It’s really tough.”
AP photo by Charlie Riedel / Baylor School graduate Harris English hits from a bunker on the 12th hole at Augusta National Golf Club on Friday during the second round of the Masters. English shot a 74 and was tied for 24th at 2 over.Luke List missed the cut in 2023 — 17 years after tying for 33rd in his only previous Masters — and was in danger of that fate again Friday, but the projected line moved after he had already completed his second straight 75, and the 39-year-old Augusta resident made it on the number as one of 11 players tied for 50th.
Not as fortunate was Stephan Jaeger in his first Masters. A first-time winner on the PGA Tour just two weeks ago at the Houston Open — the runner-up was Scheffler, denied what would have been three wins in as many consecutive starts — the 34-year-old Chattanooga resident followed his opening 74 with an 80 that included four bogeys on the back nine.
Homa is the only one of the co-leaders without a major title, but he heard some of the loudest cheers, even if they weren’t for him. He spent two days with Woods and caught the full experience of the largest galleries, all of them rising to their feet when Woods approached tee boxes — as well as the 15th green, which he managed to reach in two shots.
“The memories will just be a lot of the Tiger stuff,” Homa said. “I hope to build my own come this weekend, but I fortunately think I’ve done a good enough job of playing it one shot at a time that I can’t really remember a ton of the round at the moment. I played really well, and I tried to play as boring as possible.
“I think just the view of this beautiful golf course with the sea of fans, it will be seared in my brain for a while.”
Justin Thomas will have far worse memories. He was at par for the tournament on the par-5 15th hole, very much in the game. He hit an iron to lay up, but the ball raced along the turf and into the pond. That was the start of a double bogey-double bogey-bogey-double bogey finish. The two-time PGA Championship winner shot a 79 and missed the cut by one shot.
Jon Rahm, the tournament’s reigning champion, and four-time major winner Rory McIlroy, seeking a green jacket to complete the career Grand Slam, looked as though they might join him, but that was before the cut line began to move.
Rahm made a late charge for a 76, leaving him 11 shots out of the lead. McIlroy didn’t make a birdie for only the third time in his 56 trips around Augusta National, shot a 77 and was 10 behind.
Also among those making the cut were three Masters champions who have combined to play the Masters 97 times: 53-year-old Phil Mickelson, 58-year-old Jose Maria Olazabal and 61-year-old Vijay Singh.
Homa has some experience of the grandest of stages, playing with Woods during his final British Open at St. Andrews two years ago. He was far more comfortable with Woods on Friday, and his own game was a big part of it. Homa picked up two early birdies, one of them on the par-3 fourth when he had to hit a 7-wood.
His lone bogey was on the 11th, the hardest hole at Augusta National, and he buckled down against the most extreme conditions.
AP photo by Ashley Landis / Tournament co-leader Bryson DeChambeau shields himself as the wind blows sand on the 18th hole at Augusta National Golf Club on Friday during the second round of the Masters.DeChambeau was the only player to reach 8 under at any point with his birdie on the 13th hole that was quite the expedition. He drove right into the pines and didn’t see a clear route back to the fairway — not the 13th fairway, anyway.
So he looked to the right toward the 14th hole, even removing the sign post that he briefly carried over his shoulder — “It was probably 30 pounds, not too bad,” he said — and left himself 145 yards over the tributary to Rae’s Creek to a back right pin.
“The patrons were nice enough to move over to the side to make sure it was wide enough so if I hit an errant one, nobody would get hit by the ball,” he said. “I hit a great, great shot around the corner and was able to take advantage of a pretty open entrance to the green.”
He hit it to about 15 feet for a birdie and dropped two shots coming in. In those conditions, that was acceptable.
The wind was so fierce that players thought play might be suspended, with balls oscillating and gusts arriving without notice. As it was, the rounds took nearly six hours to play.
Scheffler hit a driver and then a 3-iron onto the 15th green on Thursday; he used the same clubs just to lay up on the 15th on Friday.
“It’s just so difficult when you can’t tell where the wind is coming from,” he said. “You can only make really an educated guess and try to go from there. For the most part, I think we did a pretty good job today.”