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British Open champion Cameron Smith summed up the general feeling of despair as hopes of an Australian Masters triumph were washed away at Augusta National.
Former runner-ups Smith, Jason Day and 2013 winner Adam Scott were playing an impossible game of catch-up when Saturday’s third round was abandoned after more than five hours of relentless rain.
“It’s a hard tee shot in this stuff, even harder when you can’t feel your hands and it’s pissing down rain,” Smith said as the field tried desperately to plough on in the freezing conditions in Georgia.
“I’ve played in misty cold but not rainy cold. It was tough to keep everything warm and everything dry. The golf course is just brutal too.”
After starting the third round in a tie for sixth at five under, Day remains the best-placed Australian in a share of eighth.
But the former world No.1 is a distant nine shots behind American leader Brooks Koepka after slipping to four under with consecutive bogeys on the fourth and fifth holes.
He briefly climbed to six under with a birdie on the par-5 second but, in reality, Day’s chances evaporated with a late collapse on Friday.
He was outright second behind Koepka before leaking four shots in his last four holes after dumping his ball in the water on the 15th and racking up a disastrous double-bogey seven.
While Day, playing in the best of the conditions, blew a golden opportunity to finally win the Masters, Smith was philosophical about having encountered the worst of the weather.
“A little unlucky with the draw – you win some, you lose some,” the world No.6 said as he languished in a share of 23rd position at one under through 13 holes of his third round.
(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Like last year, when he finished third, any faint hopes of Smith staging a fightback were sunk on the 12th when he found the water once again off the tee and recorded a killer double-bogey five.
Smith hit back with a birdie on the 13th but will resume on Sunday a dozen shots adrift of Koepka.
Playing in the same three-ball as Smith, Scott also needs a miracle after slipping back to even par for the championship.
He started the third round at two under following a 74, after opening with a career-best Thursday 68, but four bogeys in the first 11 holes ended his prospects of a rally.
Min Woo Lee and amateur Harrison Crowe both missed the cut.
Lee (75-75) finished at six over and three outside the cut line, with Crowe (75-77) completing his Masters debut at eight over.
Crowe planned to watch the final round as a wide-eyed fan with his family after enjoying a tumultuous debut.
The 21-year-old and his entourage were metres away from the pine trees that crashed on the 17th tee box on Friday when spectators were lucky not to have been killed.
But Crowe said the big takeaway from his maiden Masters was that he could one day contend.
“It was great. It was so much fun,” he said.
“Probably the best part is I learned a lot about myself.
“It was good to be out there in front of so many people and I felt like I could hold my own.
“The putter was quite cold but I felt comfortable there and I felt like I belonged.”
The alpha males of LIV Golf and the PGA Tour are poised to stage a titanic last-day duel for Masters glory after Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm remained locked seemingly in a two-man battle at Augusta National.
The third round was suspended for the day with four-time major champion Koepka, looking to strike a massive blow for golf’s breakaway group, holding a four-shot lead over world No.3 Rahm.
Koepka moved to 13 under par through six holes, one under on the round, before officials stopped play at water-logged Augusta.
Thirty-nine players, including Rahm, had already returned early on Saturday morning to finish off their second rounds.
Organisers then applied a split-tee format with three-man groups for round three in desperate hope of catching up.
But play eventually had to be abandoned at 3.17pm local time when greens became saturated, leaving players facing a gruelling Sunday schedule at the year’s first major championship.
Koepka will return in the box seat after picking up a birdie on the par-5 second hole, then making four successive pars as his chasers struggled to keep up in the relentless rain.
Rahm briefly cut the deficit to two strokes until bogeys on three and four doubled Koepka’s advantage.
Fresh off his victory at last week’s LIV Golf International Orlando in Florida, Koepka has gone 29 holes without making a bogey and is looking almost impossible to chase down.
But if anyone is capable, it is Rahm, who has nine holes remaining in his third round.
With five victories in his past dozen worldwide starts, the Spaniard is the heavyweight the PGA Tour needs to fend off Koepka’s bid to be the first player from LIV to win a major championship.
Former world No.1 Koepka hinted after the second round that he may not have defected to the Greg Norman-led, Saudi-backed circuit had he known he was going to reprise the sublime form of 2017 to 2019 when the American captured four majors.
Aside from Rahm, Koepka’s next closest pursuer is American amateur Sam Bennett at five under.
Like Koepka and Rahm, Bennett also has 12 holes of his second round remaining before Sunday’s final round which is scheduled to start at 12.30pm.
Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Viktor Hovland are all five under and eight shots adrift of Koepka.
Jason Day is the leading Australian, nine shots off the pace in a five-way tie for eighth at four under with three-time champion Phil Mickelson, Cameron Young, Justin Rose, Russell Henley and Joaquin Neimann.
World No.1 and defending champion Scottie Scheffler is one stroke further back in a share of 14th with Kiwi Ryan Fox.
Tiger Woods made a record-equalling 23rd consecutive Masters cut on the number at three over before collapsing in the third round.
Playing possibly his last-ever Masters, 47-year-old Woods battled valiantly, walking the hilly course on his rebuilt leg, to post a steely second-round 73.
But successive double bogeys on the 15th and 16th holes of his third round sent the five-times champion crashing to nine over and last of the 54 players left in the field.
Still, Woods joined Gary Player (1959-82) and Fred Couples (1983-2007) in the record books with the most consecutive Masters cuts made.
At 63, the 1992 champion Couples also penned another piece of Masters history by becoming the oldest man to make the cut at Augusta.
© AAP