Welcome to GOLF.com’s “Seen & Heard” video series, in which we give you an inside look at golf’s biggest events through the eyes and ears of our onsite crew. On deck this week: the 2024 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. Let’s go!
It’s one of the greatest weeks on the golf calendar: Welcome to Masters week, folks!
GOLF’s team has hit the ground running in Augusta, Ga., where there are plenty of questions to be answered about the year’s first major championship.
Was Jordan Spieth spurned by the golf gods for hitting at a clubhouse? Who will be lower? Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson? Will World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler need to withdraw for the birth of his child?
These are just some of the questions Dylan Dethier and Sean Zak were contemplating on the drive from Atlanta to Augusta.
Outside the gates of Augusta National, Claire Rogers was spending some time with 2013 U.S. Open champ Justin Rose and getting an exclusive first look at his previously secret RV-turned-mobile wellness center.
A heartfelt Augusta reunion, secondhand Masters merch, the press building | Rogers Report
The bus, which Rose has dubbed Sub Rosa, features a red light therapy bed, hot and cold plunges and an infrared sauna.
“I haven’t really invited anyone in to see it until now because I’ve kind of wanted to keep it a little secret,” Rose said.
What wasn’t secret, however, was that this Masters Monday was one unlike any other as the solar eclipse took over Augusta National.
Rogers and Rose donned the special Masters-branded eclipse glasses to gaze up at the cloudless skies and see the moon block out more than three-quarters of the sun.
After the celestial activities, Michael Bamberger visited Callaway’s tour truck where the company’s PGA Tour manager, Jacob Davidson, told him this week was one where they hope not to do much work for the players. That allows them to spend as much time on the course practicing as possible.
For an hour at Amen Corner, Masters patrons stared into the sky
The team ended Monday by running into legendary Augusta National caddie Carl Jackson, who revealed the keys to looping at the famed track.
“You have to want to be the best,” Jackson said. “I studied the course. I was being an engineer and didn’t realize what I was doing at the time. You’ve got to pay attention and realize when you make mistakes and live up to them and learn from them.”
Tuesday was all about who’s talking for Sean Zak, who poured over every word uttered in the 26 press conferences from Monday. Masters Tuesday featured just 24 press conferences, but some of the game’s loudest voices were on the docket like Woods, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. Zak said he would sit through them all.
He found out that Woods still stubbornly refuses to admit he can’t win.
“If everything comes together, I think I can get one more,” Woods said. “I still think they can. So I don’t know when that day is, when that day comes, but I still think that I can. I haven’t got to that point where I don’t think I can’t.”
Woods also made a bold assertion that McIlroy will eventually win the Masters to complete his career grand slam.
Tiger’s belief, Spieth’s wrist, Rory’s texts: 9 secrets shared at the Masters
Zak pointed out he thought McIlroy was “in a rut” given how his press conference started early and finished after only 11 minutes.
“Very purposeful how Rory is treating press conferences these days,” Zak said. “Whether that works for him on the golf course is one thing, but he’s just not giving the press a lot of time.”
Zak and Dethier both agreed however, the two players who appeared most comfortable answering questions were Scheffler and Wyndham Clark, who might just be the two best golfers in the world right now.
“That’s obviously a telling sign of where they’re at,” Zak said.
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