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The Loop

Missing links: Luke Donald's Masters bid, Lee Westwood's 'toe-curling' Twittter rant

April 07, 2014

Stories worth your time, in case you missed them:

"That year [2005] gave me the belief that I could win around Augusta, despite my lack of length. And I still have that conviction," Luke Donald said. James Corrigan of the Telegraph has the story of Donald and his pursuit of the elusive first major.

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(Getty Images photo)

A European has not won the Masters in this century. John Huggan in the Scotsman assesses Henrik Stenson's bid to rectify that, beneath the headline, "Stenson, the old world's hope."

Last August, Lee Westwood went on a Twitter rant, described this way by Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail: "In a drink-fuelled tirade, more than 80 tweets — most of them toe-curling, such as boasts about how much money he had earned — were sent from his phone." Westwood explains himself in this story by Lawrenson.

The Masters tends to inspire "press-center poets," as Dan Jenkins calls them, to script flowery odes to the cathedral of golf, as Augusta National often is called. There is real golf poetry, however, and former Golf World writer Lisa Mickey explores it in the New York Times.

"Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament do many, many things very well. What they don't do often, however, is surprise you," Scott Michaux writes in the Augusta Chronicle. The surprise was the hit Augusta National had with its new Drive, Chip and Putt Championship.