DeChambeau collapses at 18

Bryson DeChambeau stood on the 18th tee at Augusta National on Friday at 3 over par, needing only a bogey to survive to the weekend, and walked off with a triple-bogey 7 that dropped him to 6 over and out of the Masters. (sports.yahoo.com) The cut at the Masters is simple: the top 50 players and ties after 36 holes keep playing, and this year that line settled at 4 over par. DeChambeau finished two shots on the wrong side of it. (sports.yahoo.com, espn.com) This was not one bad swing out of nowhere. DeChambeau had already opened the tournament with a 4-over 76 on Thursday, and that round included a triple bogey at the 11th hole. (sports.yahoo.com, cbssports.com) Friday briefly looked like the escape. He made four birdies and three bogeys in the second round, then birdied the 17th to climb back inside the cut line before the last hole undid all of it. (espn.com, sports.yahoo.com) The official second-round highlight package shows the pattern Augusta punished all day: one miss into a bunker or one shot out of position turned a routine par save into a scramble for damage control. DeChambeau’s closing hole fit that script exactly. (youtube.com) That is what makes the miss so jarring. At the 2025 Masters, DeChambeau was in Sunday’s final pairing and finished tied for fifth at 7 under, while Rory McIlroy won the green jacket after a playoff with Justin Rose. (espn.com, espn.com) He came back to Augusta this week as one of the names people expected to matter, not just because of last April but because the 2026 field and coverage kept placing him among the main challengers to McIlroy. By Friday afternoon, he was packing before the third round even began. (pgatour.com, espn.com) The leaderboard shows how narrow the margin was. Players at 4 over made it through, while DeChambeau joined the group at 6 over that included Zach Johnson and Akshay Bhatia on the wrong side of the line. (espn.com, espn.com) Augusta can look wide on television, but this week it played more like a staircase with missing steps. DeChambeau was one hole from safety, one bunker from trouble, and one year removed from chasing a green jacket on Sunday. (youtube.com, sports.yahoo.com, espn.com)