The 2025 Masters got underway Thursday at Augusta National with Justin Rose firing a seven-under-65 to take the Round 1 lead and break Jack Nicklaus’ record for most 18-hole leads in Masters history. Nicklaus did it four times. Rose has now held the lead after the first round five times.
Scottie Scheffler, Corey Conners and Ludvig Åberg finished the first round tied for second at four under.
While many of golf’s best will spend Friday at Augusta National trying to climb into contention, others will just be hoping to get on the correct side of the Masters cut line.
Starting in 2020, Masters officials changed the cut-line rules. The old cut rule included the top 50 and ties plus anyone within 10 shots of the lead. Now the “10 shot rule” is no longer.
Masters chairman Fred Ridley said they changed the rule because the stats told them it was an unnecessary life vest.
“But the other thing is we look back at the statistics, and the last few years, or the last several years, I think we’ve only had two players who have been in contention who made the cut only because of the 10-shot rule,” Ridley said. “While certainly it can happen, it just doesn’t. It’s not relevant that often, and we thought this was a way to sort of tighten things up and have a more predictable field size for the weekend.”
At the start of play Friday, one over was the cut line — though that was expected to slip several shots. That would put the likes of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Keegan Bradley, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson at risk of missing out on the weekend.
Several stars, including Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele, began Friday’s action at one over, needing to play solid Friday golf to stick around for the weekend. Rory McIlroy got off to a hot start Thursday but fizzled late due to a catastrophic mistake on No. 15 and shot even par.
