For a brief period yesterday afternoon, the 2022 Masters tournament threatened to turn into a parade, as the world’s most talented number one, Scotty Scheffler, roamed quietly on his head. But realizing where he was and what he was doing inevitably began, and he wiggled a little on his way home. Meanwhile, 2020 runners-up Cameron Smith and Im Sung Jae, the equal runners-up, took the opportunity to close the gap.
Schaeffler remains a strong candidate, three times ahead of Smith, and five shots better than M. But larger strands were shipped on the back of the nine on Sunday alone. So there is nothing in the box. Most of the names near the top of the leaderboard will need help from Schaeffler if they want to pull off an outrageous victory in the comeback, but for now they’re all holding out hope knowing anything is possible on Sunday’s main. Any thing. Here’s the top of the leaderboard after 54 holes…
-9: Scheffler
-6: Smith
-4: M
-2: Laurie, Schwarzl
-1: Thomas Koners
E: Willett
+1: Fleetwood, Kokrac, McIlroy, Morikawa, D. Johnson
+2: Champ, Simpson, Zalatores, Matsuyama
…and here’s when everyone flirts today. (USA unless indicated, all times are GMT). We’ll start here at 6 PM GMT. It’s up!
15.10 Cameron Davis (Australia), Adam Scott (Australia)
15.20 Terrell Hutton (Eng.), Billy Horschel
15.30 Patrick Cantlay, Mackenzie Hughes (Canada)
15.40 Bubba Watson, Max Homa
15.50 Tiger Woods, John Ram (spa)
16.00 Russell Henley, Daniel Berger
16.10 Harold Varner III, Robert McIntyre (SCW)
16.20 Sepp Straca (Auto), Tom Hogg
16.30 Seamus Bower (Earl), Kevin Na
16.50 Joaquin Niemann (Che), Christian Bezuidenhout (Rsa)
17.00 Kevin Kesner, Matthew Fitzpatrick (Eng.)
17.10 Sergio Garcia (spa), Tony Finau
17.20 Patrick Reed, Lucas Glover
17.30 JJ Spawn, Min-Woo Lee (Australia)
17.40 Lee Westwood (Ing), Harry Higgs
17.50 Hudson Swafford, Si Woo Kim (Core)
18.00 Mark Leishman (Australia), Taylor Gotsch
18.10 Hideki Matsuyama (Japan), Victor Hovland (Norway)
18.30 Will Xalatores, Webb Simpson
18.40 Dustin Johnson, Cameron Champ
18.50 Colin Morikawa, Rory McIlroy (Nearl)
19.00 Jason Kokrac, Tommy Fleetwood (Eng.)
19.10 Danny Willett (engineer), Cory Conners (Canada)
19.20 Justin Thomas, Charles Schwarzl (Rsa)
19.30 Shin Lowry (Earl), Im Sung Jae (Core)
19.40 Cameron Smith (Australia), Scottie Scheffler