Masters Round 1 live

The Masters started Thursday, April 9, with 91 players at Augusta National and a leaderboard that can swing by three shots in the span of one bad hole on the back nine. Rory McIlroy arrived as the defending champion, which means every round this week doubles as a title defense and a chase for another green jacket. (espn.com) (augustachronicle.com) Augusta is the smallest field of the four men’s major championships, so there is less traffic and less room to hide. A player who makes one double bogey here cannot count on 155 other golfers to bury it by Friday night. (golfweek.usatoday.com) (sportingnews.com) That is why the first round gets treated like a pressure test, not a warmup. Scottie Scheffler opened the week as the betting favorite at roughly +510, ahead of Jon Rahm at +900, Bryson DeChambeau at +1050, and McIlroy at +1175. (espn.com) (pgatour.com) Those numbers are really a shorthand for one course-specific question: who can survive Augusta’s greens. The fairways matter, but the tournament usually turns on approach shots that land in the right shelf and putts that do not roll six feet past the hole. (pgatour.com) (golfchannel.com) The field is also one of the few places where the fractured men’s game still meets in full view. Players from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are in the same tournament again, with 10 LIV golfers in this year’s Masters field. (augustachronicle.com) (golf.com) That is part of why names like Rahm and DeChambeau draw so much attention this week even before the leaderboard settles. Augusta is still one of the rare scoreboards where fans can compare those stars against Scheffler and McIlroy on the same course, on the same day, under the same pins. (espn.com) (golf.com) The viewing setup is unusually open for a major championship. Masters.com and the Masters app are again offering free featured groups, featured holes like Amen Corner, and the “Every Shot, Every Hole” feed that lets fans track a single player from first tee to final putt. (golf.com 1) (golf.com 2) Thursday’s streaming started at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Amazon Prime Video for early coverage, while ESPN carried the main television window later in the afternoon. ESPN+ also carried live streams for featured groups and holes, which turns the first round into something closer to a control room than a single broadcast. (golf.com) (espn.com) So Round 1 is not just about who leads at dinner time on Thursday. It is the day Augusta starts sorting players into two piles: the ones who can still win on Sunday, and the ones who now need three straight rounds of recovery on a course that almost never gives anything back. (espn.com) (cbssports.com)