The First Cut crew discusses why defending at Augusta National is about more than just what’s happening on the golf course
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ABOUT THE SHOW: The First Cut brings you everything you need to know in the world of professional golf. Nearly every day Rick Gehman, Kyle Porter, Mark Immelman, Greg DuCharme, Sia Nejad and Patrick McDonald bring you the best analysis in the game. From DFS to betting previews, interviews and recaps… everything golf is on the table when you listen to The First Cut.
Let’s kick off uh the 88th masters with where we finished the 87th and that’s with John Rah being the defending Champion obviously now a member of live golf we’ve not seen him compete on the PGA tour during this recent run of Scotty Sheffer going nuts and we’ve seen
Him play Live Events we’ve seen him play on the DP World Tour what are expectations for Rah coming back and trying to defend his title I think the expectations are for him to be in mix come Sunday I mean this is one of the two or three best players
In the world on live or on the PGA tour and he’s played great golf on Liv with the four straight top 10 finishes he’s going to have a go there this week at Trump National Dural as well and he’s not in the same form as last year I
Don’t think anyone would be winning three times and averaging almost three Strokes gain per round but he’s not far off if last year was a great prep this year is probably a very very good prep and not only is John R one of the best players in the world in playing great
Golf but he’s the best player in this field at Augusta National among those who have played at least 10 Rounds I mean this is a guy who in Seven Trips his worst finish is a t-27 he’s got the win obviously a couple other contention runs so it would be very surprising if
Rah despite a a different prep this year isn’t in the mix light yeah and KP we talk about the pressure that Rory mroy is is going to feel on the first te trying to win the GRE jacket for the career Grand Slam and we will we will talk about that at at
Nauseum a little bit later but what’s the pressure for John ROM feel like there is there a part of him that has to justify the move to live golf and say I can still contend at these major championships you’re not going to be able to take that away from me no matter
What my schedule looks like yeah I I think I think maybe I think the bigger pressure for ROM actually he he did a conference call uh with some kind of a group of media I guess two weeks ago now and he was he was talking through uh the
Champions dinner and he was talking through just sort of a little bit of what his week is going to look like as the defending champion and he was very nervous he was very sort of out of his world and I think this gets at something that Mark
Was alluding to earlier which is a guust national and the Masters is so different than any other event even if you’re the defending US Open Champion which John ROM has or the defending PGA Championship winner or the defending open Champion all all three of those are
A big deal but they’re not like the Masters because of the emphasis that Augusta National has put on its own history uh For Better or Worse that puts a lot of pressure on the champion and I think that is pretty separate from all the Liv stuff there there might be some
Pressure I I think the Liv PJ tour story line is actually more interesting this year because Liv just has a lot better players than it did a year ago between Rah and trell Hatton and um you know all the guys that they had prior now Brooks
Is a reigning major Champion so I think there is some live PGA Tour storylines to be had but I think with Rah specifically it’s more about the emotion of being the defending Champion he said he can’t even really think about the speech that he has to give at the
Champions dinner on Tuesday night because it makes him too nervous so I think that’ll actually take more out of him emotionally than maybe anything else he encounters that week mark this is such a great graphic here we’re looking at the defending uh Masters champions in their performance
Uh in the year that they defended and there was only one top 10 there was a T10 from from Scotty Sheffer there there is uh something inherently more difficult than just having your face you know picture on a poster as a defending champion at some of these PGA Tour
Events to having to host the Masters or the the Champions dinner having to kind of be a part of history now and play Great Golf absolutely uh the one thing and Kyle I think knocked it out of the park with his answer over there in my experiences
Personally when we went back there in 2009 after my brother Trevor had won in 2008 I was teaching Trevor at the time and he’s run in the tournaments he had played uh be prior to the event he had played pretty well so he got there Sunday to Augusta that is and Monday morning
Preparation um everyone’s kind of greeting each other Hello’s all the rest of you know it’s a light morning over there then players go and see the golf course then Tuesday it gets into a real preparation but I’ll never forget on that Tuesday morning my brother kind of
Seemed maybe not antsy but he was just not present in the practice in the preparation because he’s hosting this dinner on Tuesday nights and uh obviously the day went well he had a decent um practice session but you could see all the time he was thinking about
The Champions dinner and he was thinking about you know what he was going to say and then you wonder perhaps I’m sure he did and ROM does well all the Champions going to enjoy what I have to offer because this is it’s a big deal this
Thing and you know you only get to host this once maybe twice three times if you’re a Legend um so then you have that day so preparation on Tuesday is somewhat scuttled given your commitments in the evening and then Wednesday you know normally it’s a light day because
You have the par three contest in the afternoon so it’s a weird sort of a preparation coming into the event Thursday morning when you’re coming back as the defending Champion um but the one thing about Augusta National is it loves its Champions um because there’s a conundrum there’s a Nuance to the golf
Course and you figure out your way around there and and once you’ve figured the puzzle if you will coming back it’s not like you’re having to spend that much time around the greens on the course because you sort of know where whole locations are likely to be you can
Reminisce I mean I was there with Larry MERS working with him prior to Masters and he would talk about whole locations on 11 and all the sort of stuff that he’s experienced Through The Years so say yes it it’ll be emotional for John Ram look we know he’s an emotional guy
And this stuff will tickle his sensibilities and I would venture to say Tuesday he’ll be kind of disconnected for a little while then Wednesday you’ll see things settle but then on the horizon Thursday morning is now you teeing it up and you’re waiting for that announcement for please John Rah now
Driving so it’s a really sort of spiritual emotional experience and and I can see why just because of all of that having been close to it why it’s so hard to defend
