The first day of competition at the 2011 Masters is complete with Northern Ireland’s Rory Mcilroy and Spain’s Alvaro Quiros sitting atop the leaderboard after a pair of 65’s have set them apart from the field at -7 par. There are a number of players right behind them though, such as defending champ Phil Mickelson and Stockton native Ricky Barnes.
Mcilroy used a bogey free round with 7 birdies for his 65, while Quiros used his booming drives and great putting, including 3 birdies in the last 5 holes to card his 65. Quiros had never shot better than 75 at Augusta before today, and picked a great time to do so.
Other than Mcilroy and Quiros the two most exciting rounds of the day belonged to two South Koreans, the 2009 PGA champ Y.E. Yang and veteran K.J. Choi. Choi and Yang finished at -5 par 67; Yang’s second shot finished 5 feet from the cup at the par 5 13th, making eagle. But two bogeys at 17 and 18 dropped him back to -5.
Phil Mickelson started out with 7 straight pars, then birdied the 8th, 14th and 15th. His approach flew past the green on 18, leading to his lone bogey of the day a score of -2 par 70. As for Ricky Barnes, he started the day with a bogey at the first, but went on to score 6 birdies for the day finishing at -4 par 68.
Tiger Woods couldn’t get any putts to drop today, finishing with a 3 birdie, 2 bogey round of -1 par 71. He’s definitely not out of it by any stretch of the imagination, and if he can the the flat stick going, he could vault of the leaderboard in a hurry. Rickie Fowler shot -2 70 in his first round ever at the Masters, Matt Kuchar shot -4 68, Sergio Garcia shot -3 69, Anthony Kim finished at even par 72, while current #1 in the world Martin Kaymer shot a disappointing +6 78, en route to his fourth missed cut at the Masters in four tries.
As for the other bay area boys, Nick Watney and Stanford’s David Chung both finished at even par with Chung tied for the early lead for top amateur in the field.
Full Leaderboard can be found here.
Post Round interviews can be found here.
Highlight videos can be found here.