Tiger Woods does this at Augusta, major winner says — and it’s an Augusta key
Shane Lowry and Tiger Woods during the final round of the 2020 Masters.
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Shane Lowry, months removed from the Masters. can name you his Augusta National non-par-3 tee shots. He doesn’t hesitate.
Here he goes:
“Down the first. I hit a low cut.
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“Then the second, I hit a high draw.
“Third, I always lay up.
“Five, I hit a low cut.
“Seven, I hit a low cut.
“Eight, I hit a low cut.
“Nine, I hit a really high one. I try to hit it as high as I can there.
“Ten, I hit a high draw.
“Eleven, I hit it high down there.
“Thirteen, I try and draw one obviously.
“And then 15, I go for a really low cut.
“Fourteen, I try and turn it a little bit as well. So I kind of have …”
Here, on the latest episode of GOLF’s “Warming Up,” host Dylan Dethier asks the 2019 Open Championship winner if the approaches ever change. Lowry says no — the shots are based on what he sees. Good enough. But why the “really high one” on 9, Dethier asked. Good question, it turned out. The answer started a back-and-forth on the Augusta plan of Tiger Woods, the winner of Masters tournaments at the course.
At the 2020 Masters, Lowry played with Woods for rounds 1, 2 and 4. There, he said he noticed the play on 9.
“He hit a big high one because there’s a tree down the left that overhangs,” Lowry said on “Warming Up,” “and if you pull it a little bit with a mid-height, it catches the tree. But if you hit it high, it will carry over the tree. So little things like that actually make a big difference.”
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A natural follow-up question followed:
Did Lowry learn anything else?
He did. Lowry described it as an Augusta key, and the complete answer is below — and you can watch the entire episode by clicking here or by scrolling to the bottom of this article.
“When you watch him play Augusta,” Lowry said, “he just doesn’t — I mean, obviously, he doesn’t win it every year, but when he plays it good — I remember the first time I played with him, he shot four under. And I was like, he didn’t even play that good. But he just like — you know, up the 5th hole, he would never hit it in that bunker on the left. He’d always make sure he hits it — like, his second shot on 15, he hits it kind of long, right of the green, where there’s the best leave. He just leaves himself in the best positions. And I think Augusta is nearly about that — it’s about playing away from the trouble a little bit and kind of playing a game of chess around there.”
Said Dethier: “It’s funny — I think people have this vision of him as the most aggressive golfer ever. And there’s parts of him that are actually quite conservative in his approaches to …”
Said Lowry: “Like the 3rd hole, I always lay up on the 3rd. But I hit a 3-iron, get it up, like there’s bunkers there. But he hits a 5-iron off the tee. So he doesn’t even take the bunkers into play. But he can do that because he’s as good with a 9-iron as most people are with a sand wedge.”
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