adminAUGUSTA. — Defending champion Jordan Spieth sank an 11-foot birdie putt at the par-4 10th hole to keep a one-stroke lead in yesterday’s early first round of the 80th Masters.
England’s Paul Casey, Spieth’s playing partner along with US amateur Bryson DeChambeau, sank a 29-foot birdie putt at the same hole to reach 3-under par.
But Spieth’s birdie to begin the back nine at Augusta National moved him to 4-under after front-nine birdies at the third, par-3 sixth and par-5 eighth.
Spieth fired a 64 in last year’s opening round at Augusta National on his way to a wire-to-wire victory, the 22-year-old American matching Tiger Woods’ 72-hole Masters record of 18-under 270.
Sharing third behind Casey at 2-under were Americans Dustin Johnson, Keegan Bradley and Daniel Berger, and Hideki Matsuyama of Japan.
He got a look at it last year only to fall agonisingly short, but Spieth still says that winning all four majors in the same year is possible.
The then-21-year-old Texan took the golfing world by storm last year when he won the Masters and US Open and came close to becoming just the second player ever, after Ben Hogan, to win the first three majors of the year at the British Open.
He finished the year with a 1-1-T4-2 record in golf’s four crown jewels tournaments — a performance that only Tiger Woods in recent years has been able to match.
At just 22, he has a good 20 years, and perhaps more, of top-level golf before him and plenty of other opportunities to make golfing history.
Asked if the Grand Slam was achievable, Spieth replied: “You know what, I would have said prior to last year, no.
“And it’s very, almost, conceited for me to say because of last year maybe. But we were so close and it was one break here or there.
“Now we got the breaks this week, and we certainly got the breaks at the US Open. It was a golf course where you needed to get breaks at Chambers Bay. Here you have kind of got to create your own.
“We were really, really close. I had control of my own destiny at The Open Championship. And then the PGA, I’ll use an excuse right now and say, there was a three-stroke difference in the draw.” — AFP.
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