The Loop
Colin Montgomerie favors Jordan Spieth over Jason Day, Rory McIlroy
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Colin Montgomerie favors Jordan Spieth over Jason Day and Rory McIlroy in the Masters, “an event that the Scot says has set pulses racing despite the absence of four-time Green Jacket winner Tiger Woods,” the Scotsman’s Martin Dempster writes. The reason? Spieth’s putting. “I love to see the way his putts are holed in an aggressive manner,” Montgomerie said. “The Masters is always 75 per cent on the greens and I love the way that Jordan approaches the putts at The Masters in that very confident way. Everyone can hit the ball; it’s the guy who can get the ball in the hole who wins The Masters. I love watching the putting at The Masters because you can tell very quickly who has it and who hasn’t that week.”
“His family joined Brookhaven Country Club when Jordan was 8,” Scott Michaux of the Augusta Chronicle writes in this story on the roots of Jordan Spieth’s stardom. “Chris Spieth made her two sons participate with the swim team the first summer to get them out of bed and busy in the morning. ‘Jordan saw the driving range from the pool that entire summer and asked if he could do that instead of swim team the next year,’ his mother said. ‘We let him and the rest is history.’”
Rory McIlroy needs only a Masters victory to complete the career grand slam, yet “for the first time since 2012, the Northern Irishman will arrive at Augusta National without an all-consuming narrative as baggage,” Ewan Murray of the Guardian writes. “The most naturally gifted player in the world, who remains capable of a gear shift beyond all others, is in the curious position of being under the radar. As David Feherty, the respected commentator, put it: ‘When Rory plays well, good luck to all the others.’”