AUGUSTA, Ga.
As Alvaro Quiros and his personification allies Jhonattan Vegas and Gary Woodland walked off the ninth tee Friday here at the Masters, an scary reality dawned on the gallery. They had only seen 3 group wholly emulsify drives that journeyed more than 1,000 yards amalgamated " on the fly. No hurl required, thanks. We'll only go Express Mail direct. It's a entire new world.
"That is the initial time in a long time that we can examine the clubs of the colleagues who are personification shut sufficient to me," mentioned the 6-foot-3 Quiros, a Spaniard whose amused loosen up frankness has prisoner fans here as he has smiled and joked his way in to a third-place tie.
Usually Quiros is so far in to the next zip code, there's no indicate in his profitable concern to his partners. His median expostulate on the European Tour is 314.8 yards " serve than J.B. Holmes , Bubba Watson , Dustin Johnson or any U.S Tour belter.
This Masters monster-mash contingent " ages 27, 26 and 26, all of them as fit as large joining outfielders " exchanged glances with players leaving within reach No. 1 green, inclusive Ricky Fowler , 22, final year's PGA Tour rookie of the year, and Rory McIlroy , 21, the rookie runner-up.
There, prisoner in a moment, you saw the change of power at the tip of the girl transformation in chosen golf. On a hand, you have traditionally-built golfers, similar to the slim 5-foot-9 McIlroy who's still perplexing to "gym up" and the aroused 150-pound contortionist Fowler. You wouldn't wish to outlay the next decade as Ricky's spinal column.
Most of golf's paramount players have been reduction than 6 feet high because the excellent engine coordination indispensable is to partial diversion manifests itself reduction frequently in gents such as Vegas, who mount 6-3 and import 230 pounds, or Quiros, who says "I have brick-layer hands." The who were 6-4 " such as Tom Weiskopf, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III " occa! sionally looked similar to they'd outlayed their youths hurdling tacklers or slam-dunking on playgrounds.
The multiple of sufficient power, shot-making bravery with manacles and hold around the greens is still the connection that creates players such as McIlroy the eternal tuxedo of golf.
"Can Rory win?" mentioned Quiros, frequency desiring any person would skepticism McIlroy whose 65-69 " 134 work leads the margin by two shots over Jason Day , 23, who shot 64 personification with McIlroy and Fowler. "Rory's tip 10 in the world, right? What do you think? He has every chance."
But he's young.
"And good," Quiros quipped. "What's the complaint with it?"
None. But, on the other palm " and much bigger hands these days, we might increase " golf right away offers us players such as Quiros, Vegas and Woodland, whom Tiger Woods described this week as "the guys who have played other sports, then motionless to fool around golf instead. It's tidy to see these guys renovate our sport. They are carrying out things no a has ever seen on Tour before. ... That's the new game.
"When Gary [Woodland] stairs on it, it's like, 'Whoa, are you teasing me?' His round is [compressed] flat. When you regard it should be forthcoming down, it only continues to fly."
During a use round, Woods watched Woodland obtain "bent out of shape" when he unsuccessful to bring a fort at 335 yards.
"Gary said, 'I mislaid the skill to bring 340 now,'" mentioned Woods, incredulous. "Like, sorry, we had never seen that shot."
Nobody has. The final couple of years have brought us to a indicate that no golf air blower has ever seen. Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Woods himself all took power, right by the entire bag, to new levels. But we're in quantum jump domain now.
If you mount at the back a of the typical "launching pad" tees here, similar to the coming after at the Nos. 8-9-10 here, you can comprehend how! the mul tiple of over-the-top technology, bigger players, post-Tiger techniques and full-bore aptness has shop-worn golf by creation many of the most appropriate courses roughly obsolete. The Masters has ripped and made up its entire plan to indemnify is to stretch onslaught. Yet, at the 495-yard downhill 10th hole, Quiros, Woodland and Vegas demolished all concepts of march pattern and had dinky partial manacles off prosaic lies. Somewhere, Bobby Jones, medium-sized dude, is spinning.
However, at the simplest primal level, golf has right away made itself a must-see-in-the-flesh event. As a hacker who has fritter away a lifetime sacrificing every essential spur of the moment for an additional back yard of distance, we can't believe what these guys can do. But conjunction can Woods, who shot a 66 to safe himself in to a tie for third.
Quiros, the ultimate of the breed, is able of a crash-and-burn at any time here, similar to his leave-it-in-the-back-trap double-bogey Friday. But he, and the others similar to him, appear to know that their time will come. In his initial two Masters, he mentioned he attempted to fire 65s and, as a result, never pennyless 75. On Thursday, he mentioned he only played "to make the cut" and shot 65. "Experience," he says, grinning.
If you can fume it, and your back binds out long sufficient for you to pick up every Augusta merge of collapsed grass, the Masters loves you more with time. The explanation is a of the crowd-favorite bombers of other generation, Fred Couples , 51, whose 68 put him scored equally for seventh. If he someway won " and he was sixth final year " what would Freddie, the human who can only fool around a couple of times a year since a typical golfer's bad back, do next?
"Retire. I'd be 'Gone,'" he said. "It'd be the paramount anxious in golf history. Are you kidding?"
A Couples win might need a splendid vast joke. But in this period of The New Game, with young golfers who look similar to they'd be! at home in an NFL defensive backfield or a big-league all-star game, nothing will ever appear unthinkable again. Shots that used to appear impossible, even to Tiger, right away advance at us 3 to a group.
boswellt@washpost.com
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