All facets of Henley's game on point in second round of the Masters
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The second round of the Masters hasn’t been necessarily a good one for Russell Henley.
The first time, back in 2013? He blew up with an 81, and missed the cut. That hasn’t happened since, but Henley had made par on Friday only twice in five other tries, and the 72 in 2018 and 70 in 2014 were countered by two 74s and a 76.
That changed.
Henley stormed out of the near-lunchtime start with birdies on 2 and 3, and stayed on point the rest of the day until the horn sounded for the second time at 4:23 p.m. on Friday, trees having fallen on the course.
The action was stopped for 21 minutes an hour earlier Friday for threatening weather. Play for Friday was officially suspended at 5:44 p.m. Weather will remain an issue throughout the weekend.
At that point, Henley’s first shot on 18 sat on the fairway about 200 yards from the hole, with the Stratford grad among eight players –including Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, and Patrick Reed – tied for 10th, eight back of in-the-clubhouse leader Brooks Koepka.
He was hoping to avoid a familiar fate, ending a decent – or better – round with a bogey, as he did Thursday to slow some momentum.
Henley has plenty of that.
He jumped into the middle of the pack of those clearly making the cut, stayed steady, watched as the field stabilized or dropped a little, and could end the round in the single digits on the leaderboard if managing a birdie on 18.
While Henley cruised into weekend play for the sixth straight time in Augusta, scores of names are packing up the clubs and making new plans: co-Bulldogs Bubba Watson, Kevin Kisner, and Brian Harman, plus Bryson DeChambeau, Rory McIlroy, Tom Hoge, and Danny Willett, among others, were a few strokes behind the late-afternoon cut of plus 2.
Henley was 1 over on Thursday, and went from hovering toward the bottom of the leaderboard, and a little too close to the impending cut line – 2 over, early on, then 1 over, before settling back at 2 over - for comfort, into the top half of the field – albeit with a chunk of the field yet to start – early in the round.
But could he keep it up? That’s been an issue as Henley battled consistency issues this season, especially with his short game.
He was coming up a little short on birdie tries early, but left himself pretty much tap-ins for par. After the birdies on 2 and 3, he peeled off four straight pars, then followed consecutive birdies with five more pars.
Making life easier was better accuracy to start with. Henley had to battle through some off-target tee shots on Thursday, but he hit all fairways on Friday.
His second shot on 7 landed just short of the sand trap – another foot or so and he’d have been on the beach – and he saved par.
A nice up-the-hill approach on 8 left him a tap-in for another birdie and a 2-under round heading into what got him in trouble Thursday, when he had a bogey and double bogey.
A much better second shot on Friday set him up for a 2-footer for birdie on 9, as opposed to Thursday’s bogey.
No. 10 was a mess Thursday, his third shot from pine straw with some tree obstruction basically going sideways en route to a double bogey.
Friday was the opposite, Henley facing a birdie try of about eight yards just off the green and settling for an easy par to stay 4 under for the day and 3 under for the tournament after improving by four strokes those two holes alone.
He kept on cruising, with five straight pars until a birdie on 15, and resumes pars until play was stopped.
If he pars 18 and finishes with a 5-under 67 for the day, it’ll tie his best Masters round. His fourth-round 67 in 2018 put him in a tie for 15th. And it would be his 11th sub-70 round this season.