Bryson DeChambeau charges early, Scottie Scheffler charges late to open Masters

After a rapid-fire birdie-birdie-birdie start, DeChambeau battled par most of the afternoon until the par-5 No. 15, when luck interceded. Driving to the pine grove on the right side, he determined to go for the green in two through a small window of pine boughs.

“I clipped the tree,” he said. “I hit four pine needles rather than five and it worked out perfectly. But it was a scary shot. I probably shouldn’t have done it but I took a risk.”

The ball carried the pond, settled 40 feet from the pin, from where he scored a two-putt birdie and started him off on another birdie-birdie-birdie binge for a lead that held up.

Starting two hours behind DeChambeau, Scheffler had to chase him down through increasing evening wind conditions. His solution? Don’t think about wind conditions.

“I wasn’t really trying to think too much about my score out there,” he said. “I mean, it’s the first day of the tournament. I was just trying to hit good shots and stay patient out there. You cannot force yourself into making birdies around this golf course. It just doesn’t lend itself to that, especially with the high winds.

“And so, I saw that he shot 7-under and I thought to myself, wow, that’s a really good round of golf, and I put my head down and focused on what I was doing.”

Scheffler’s round featured birdies on three of the course’s four par-3s. But he needed a break on the par-5 13th, when he mis-hit his 212-yard approach shot that teetered on the far edge of the creek. Finding his ball had stayed dry, he got up-and-down for birdie, one of four he carded between Nos. 12 and 16. A fifth birdie try on No. 17 died at the cup.

Before anyone could pull a club from his bag, the tournament celebrated one of its new traditions: the weather delay. The storm system that ripped through the state overnight left Augusta National soggy and lingering drizzle forced tee times back 2 1/2 hours to a 10:30 a.m. start.

Since 2019, every Masters has experienced some weather-related pause; last year’s championship stopped play in both the second and third rounds. While not unusual — 49 of the 88 Masters have experienced some rainfall — the 21st century has been particularly well-watered. Thursday marked the 15th year it has rained on the Masters in the 2000s.

No more rain is forecast for the weekend but there is one game-within-the game ongoing with Scheffler. His wife Meredith is due with the couple’s first child this month and while she has shown no signs of early labor, the lines of communication to his Dallas home are open and he will leave Augusta on a moment’s notice.

“I feel like, well, we are a little underprepared,” he said. “The nursery is not quite ready and we’ve had some issues at our house the last few weeks. I think that’s the exciting part. I think we are definitely underprepared to be parents.”