Masters week begins

The quiet part of Masters week ended on Wednesday when Augusta National’s Par 3 Contest produced four holes-in-one, including one by Tommy Fleetwood with his son Frankie on the bag, and then Thursday morning turned serious with the first round of the year’s first men’s major. Rory McIlroy starts this week as the defending champion after winning the 2025 Masters in a playoff, and Golfweek notes he is trying to become only the fourth player to win back-to-back green jackets. Scottie Scheffler arrived as the betting favorite at about +600, with sportsbooks also listing Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and McIlroy near the top, which tells you this week is not built around one overwhelming favorite so much as a tight front shelf of stars. The first tee shot does not decide much at Augusta, but the opening draw still shapes the day because Thursday’s pairings bunch together players people want to compare in real time, like Jon Rahm with Ludvig Aberg and Chris Gotterup in the afternoon, and Jordan Spieth with Justin Rose and Brooks Koepka in the next group behind them. Augusta National also starts with ceremony before competition, with Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson scheduled as honorary starters at 7:25 a.m. Eastern, a reminder that this tournament sells continuity almost as hard as it sells shotmaking. The course can look calm on television and still play like a trick table because elevation changes hide in camera angles, and even a small breeze can push approach shots into collection areas that turn easy pars into scrambling tests. That is why caddies matter more here than at a flatter, more straightforward stop on the tour: they are reading slopes, landing spots and misses the way a good parking guide sees the whole garage while the driver only sees the next turn. The weather is expected to stay warm and dry, and several forecasts say Augusta could get its first completely rain-free Masters since 2011, which usually means firmer fairways, faster greens and less room for a slightly offline iron shot to stop quickly. Bryson DeChambeau is getting a lot of the pre-round buzz because preview coverage has framed him as arriving in strong form, and that kind of talk matters at Augusta because one hot nine holes can turn a player from subplot to leaderboard problem before lunch. So Thursday is really two tournaments at once: the official one measured in strokes, and the unofficial one measured in storylines, where McIlroy chases history, Scheffler chases a third green jacket, and everyone else tries to survive Augusta long enough to make Sunday feel possible.