AUGUSTA, Ga. — Andrew Novak can see Masters videos in his sleep. The YouTube highlight reels, old final-round broadcasts and shot compilations, they have all scanned through his eyes countless times.
Fanatical obsession. Aspirational education. Novak likens it to watching football tape, a hobby he has turned into a budding podcast, but says this reaches an even higher level. He challenges the general, Masters-obsessed public: no one has watched more of the tournament than him.
“I would put my time watched up against pretty much anybody,” Novak said. “The sheer amount of hours I’ve watched.”
The break of specific putts on certain greens, Novak can rattle them off with ease. Flashes of watching players — from Tiger Woods to Fred Couples to Jordan Spieth — hit shots both memorable and not, Novak has committed them to memory.
Every April, Novak cracks his knuckles and sets up a sanctuary for his favorite week of the year. Multiple feeds on multiple televisions, alternate casts galore and the Masters website after the round to watch players’ every shot, Novak wants it all.
“I’ll go through guys’ rounds and see what they were doing. I noticed certain pins where you can’t be, how to play certain shots,” said Novak, before taking a pause. “Obviously, that’s not … That’s not the true experience. Yeah, I haven’t been there and done it.”
When we speak, at the Players Championship in March, Novak has just missed the cut and calls the state of his game “kind of crap,” but the result does not prevent him from looking at what’s ahead. He still can’t fully wrap his mind around it just yet, that this April he won’t be on the couch but on the first tee of the course he knows like the back of his hand.
“I just feel like I do know the course better than what an average first-timer does,” Novak said. “That being said, I’m sure come Thursday on the first tee I’m going to be completely numb.”
It’s been 47 years since a player playing in his first Masters won when Fuzzy Zoeller did it. Players often say that winning here requires years and years of experience and close calls (see: Rory McIlroy), a notion that doesn’t bode well for this year’s class of first-time Masters participants, arguably one of the best in recent years.
“If I’m being honest, if you get lucky enough to win at this place, more than likely it’s going to be later. It won’t be the first time,” two-time Masters winner Bubba Watson said. “Just enjoy it. You want your first one to be, just enjoy it, take it all in, try to learn some things and get ready for the next time you come around here.”
Among the 16 debutants who are not amateurs there are 12 PGA Tour wins and 12 DP World Tour wins too. This is not just a crop of rookies who have talent; they also have a level of experience with winning that this collection of players normally does not. And while the idea of any of them donning the green jacket by Sunday still seems far-fetched, the intrigue lies in the same question that plagues every player who dreams of one day belonging to the most prestigious field in the sport.
“How do you prepare for your first time at Augusta National?”
“You want to embrace it, you don’t want something that is a big deal to not be a big deal,” first-timer Ryan Gerard said. “At the same time I’ve played a million tournaments and I want to try and think of this as just another golf tournament.”
THIS JOURNEY TO that elusive spot on the first tee Thursday took first-time players from Melbourne to Memphis, from East Africa to East Lake and all over the world. Yet even though some knew they qualified before the year ended, the reality did not strike until they received the formal invitation from the Masters.
“When I got the invite in the mail and read it I was in my childhood home with my younger brother and my two parents,” Michael Brennan said. “We all got in a big hug and started jumping up and down. It was a surreal experience.”
Once April gets closer, surreality gives way to reality and the nerves they know they’ll feel on the first tee begin to creep in. When Brennan visited Augusta before the tournament, he and his caddie poured over countless shots, chips and putts, grinding their way to some level of familiarity.
“If I could play 20 rounds there, maybe it would be a little bit different,” Brennan said.
Everyone has a different approach. Plenty seek out advice from fellow countrymen or friends on tour who have been in the field before. Others procrastinate, or don’t allow themselves to truly think about anything else but the tournament they are playing that very week. Some resign themselves to the fact that no amount of preparation can prepare them for the actual week.
“I feel like even if I play one more extra round, It’s hard to learn all those little details,” Finland’s first-timer Sami Välimäki said.
There are two ways first-timers can make scouting trips to Augusta before the Masters. Every player gets access to the grounds for two days before the tournament week that they can choose to use at their discretion, arranging tee times through the club. As Chris Gotterup, a four-time winner who is the most high-profile first-timer this year, explained recently, players can also get on Augusta National and bring up to two guests if they play with a member. He, however, never wanted to take advantage of that opportunity until he knew he’d be in the event.
“I said I can’t go over there until I play, or else if I’m retired, then I can go over,” Gotterup said. “I don’t know, I think this is such a special event, and it’s something that I wanted to experience playing rather than watching. I get a little stubborn, and it would not be an enjoyable experience for me. Even though it would be a bucket list for a lot of people, I want to play, and I want to be a part of it.”
Back in March, Valimaki added that he was likely to opt for a trip back to his home country instead of trying to squeeze in a scouting trip to Augusta. Unlike Novak, he said he doesn’t watch videos of Masters pasts and is going into the tournament somewhat blind.
“In Finland, it’s always too late to watch the Sunday finish anyway,” Valimaki said. “This way you don’t have too many expectations. You haven’t hit a good shot yet but you also haven’t hit a bad one.”
Still, it is rare that players, especially those making their debut, don’t utilize their ability to visit golf’s cathedral before the entire sport descends on it. How each of them may approach those practice rounds can also vary.
A few first-timers made trips in the fall, when the golf course’s conditions couldn’t be more different than it would be in April. Even as recently as March, players who made the trek to Augusta were well aware that the course they were able to play is not the course they’ll play this week.
“I’m trying to not base everything off those two days because the greens were much slower,” Kristoffer Reitan said. The 28-year-old Norwegian who qualified by finishing top-50 in OWGR last year said he felt like he needed to experience the course in a calm environment first. “It was beautiful.”
So what’s the strategy upon getting on property? Play the course as if you were enjoying a round with your friends? Grind over every shot and take time on the greens as if it were a practice round during tournament week? Or simply focus on getting over the mystique of Augusta National before the competition begins?
“It’s a place where you don’t mind playing a five-, six-hour practice round,” three-time DP World Tour winner and first-timer Marco Penge said. “I’m definitely going to be hitting a lot of shots.”
It’s hard not to, especially when some of the lies and angles and difficulties Augusta can hand players are hard to replicate anywhere else. Some first-timers like Johnny Keefer, a 25-year-old brimming with confidence, didn’t put any limitations on their preparations. Even Augusta’s well-known sidehill, downhill and uphill lies can be practiced if you try hard enough.
“A lot of the places that I practice, they’re pretty flat. But yeah, you know, I have tried to makeshift some stuff I can kind of stand on while hitting shots to simulate it,” Keefer said. “It’s just very different. It’s very unique and that’s what makes this golf course special.”
When Keefer took a trip in early March, he played two rounds with a mindset of enjoying the golf course rather than trying to figure it out (he even played the par 3 course). It helped, too, that his first time playing the 15th hole, he hit his second shot to 10 feet and made an eagle.
As Keefer pointed out, spend any time around Augusta’s 18 for the first time and it’s easy to see why it’s been a long time since a player won in his Masters debut. Whether a player has used up all of his pre-tournament rounds and spent every day of this week grinding, the nuances of this place cannot be crammed into a stretch of days, maybe not even a few yearly visits.
“Obviously being here as a rookie there are so many small intricacies to the course,” said Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, who qualified by winning the Australian Open last fall. “I have three, four days to learn what other players have been [learning] playing here 10 or 20 times.”
“It’s a lot of preparation, just like I would treat it for a normal tournament, but I feel like once you step on the grounds, the first tee here, it feels less like a typical practice round and more like a really enjoyable time and you’re just trying to soak in the experience,” Ben Griffin said. “There’s no doubt I’m getting a good feel for all the areas around the greens and everything like that, but I’m trying to just have as much fun as I can.”
Ignorance can be both an obstacle and a freedom, as can trying to prepare for every single detail. And yet some players cannot help but want to cover all their bases, to find every kernel of knowledge or advantage they can before even reaching Amen Corner, even down to eliminating what Gerard calls the “awe factor.”
“You don’t want to be walking down 11 the first time on Monday and be starstruck, you want to get all of that out of the way,” said Gerard, who qualified by traveling 10,000 miles to play in the Mauritius Open so he could jump into the top 50.
Gerard has been trying to prepare since last year, turning every possible leaf. He has looked at specific shots he might need to hit and charted them out well in advance. He has taken info only from players who think like he does, visited the golf course for practice rounds and said he would try to play with a member to gain local knowledge. He’s even adding a new club to the bag.
“I have a mini driver that I’m building for some of the tee shots on 2, 10 and 13 and maybe the second shot into 8 that’s a little more draw bias for me as a right hander,” Gerard said. “It’s hard going in as a first-timer because you don’t know what to expect so you want to try to get ahead of the curve a little bit any way you can.”
It’s not just what the course demands from a golf standpoint that is vexing; those who have jousted with Allister McKenzie’s crowning jewel and have lost the mental battle can attest to that obstacle. The first-timers know all about that too. They just haven’t experienced it and won’t in some capacity until they tee off on Thursday and every shot counts.
“There’s not going to be a shot that I know I’ll be more unwell on than the first one,” Novak said. ‘”I know I’m not going to be able to feel anything, so hopefully I’ll hit anything on the planet and maybe by the second hole I’ll start to feel things again.”
In this way, Jacob Bridgeman may have a slight advantage. The Genesis Invitational winner who has had three top-10 finishes this season, has had the fortune to play Augusta National well before this week, not once but twice during his time as a golfer at Clemson — once as a freshman and once as a senior.
“I got to have that first taste to see it in person and see how different it was on TV,” Bridgeman said.
Bridgeman also got to experience vastly different course conditions and results during his time in college. His first round there was a windy, cold afternoon with gusts up to 35 miles an hour. He made no birdies, one bogey and 17 pars. His senior year, he got an idyllic day and shot 5 under with eight birdies.
Though he is hoping that his college experience here will give him any kind of advantage, Bridgeman is not stressing out much about his preparation, but he is skeptical that his previous rounds here will do anything to quell the nerves that will come Thursday for him and his first-time peers.
“Maybe the practice rounds that week with patrons will help,” Bridgeman said. “But I think come Thursday when you have all those people around the first tee, we’ll all feel it.”
It’s why the question of preparation can be so fickle — too little and you feel unprepared, too much and you feel overwhelmed.
“I want to make sure that I enjoy it rather than kind of be too serious and put too much pressure on myself,” Penge said. “It’s a week that you don’t ever want to forget.”
Learn every shot as much as you want, try to hit every putt and every chip and yet, come Thursday, you still have to jump without a parachute.
