The golf tournament was originally scheduled for April 9–12, 2020, but it was postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.[1] On April 6, Augusta National announced the tournament was rescheduled for November 12–15[2] and on August 12, the golf club announced that the tournament would be held without spectators in attendance.[3]
The Masters has the smallest field of the four major championships. Officially, the Masters remains an invitation event, but there is a set of qualifying criteria that determines who is included in the field.[7][8] Each player is classified according to the first category by which he qualified, with other categories in which he qualified shown in parentheses.
Golfers who qualify based solely on their performance in amateur tournaments (categories 7–11) must remain amateurs on the original starting day (April 9) of the tournament to be eligible to play.[citation needed]
^Invitations in this category are only issued for the Masters Tournament immediately following the Olympic Games; as such there was no qualifying invitee in 2020.
^Typically, the rule is between the Masters Tournaments. However, for 2020, it was based on the last completed tournament before the PGA Tour was suspended after the COVID-19 pandemic on March 12, 2020. Winners of PGA Tour events that occurred once the season resumed will be eligible for the 2021 tournament.
Round summaries
First round
Thursday, November 12, 2020 Friday, November 13, 2020
Paul Casey had the lead at −7 after the first day, with a round featuring five birdies and an eagle.[11] Defending champion Tiger Woods was three shots back after shooting a 68 and pre-tournament favorite Bryson DeChambeau was a further two shots back after a 70. Play was suspended for three hours due to an electrical storm. 44 of the 92 players did not complete their first rounds on Thursday due to the lack of daylight.[12] On Friday morning, Casey was joined in the lead by Dylan Frittelli and Dustin Johnson, who matched his 65.
Friday, November 13, 2020 Saturday, November 14, 2020
Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm, and Justin Thomas were among five players sharing the 36-hole lead, making it the first time the top three players in the world rankings have shared the 36-hole lead in a major championship. Johnson, a co-leader after the first round, got to 10-under-par with birdies on three of his first four holes before consecutive bogeys on holes 14 and 15 (his fifth and sixth, respectively, of the round). He then made 11 consecutive pars before closing with a birdie on the ninth to finish at 9-under-par.[13]
Thomas made four straight birdies on holes 15 to 18 (his sixth to ninth) and overcame a double-bogey at the first, completing his round with birdies at the last two holes for a three-under-par round of 69. Rahm, who finished his round on Saturday morning, had a bogey-free 66 (−6). They were joined at the top of the leaderboard by Abraham Ancer, making his Masters debut, and Cameron Smith, who eagled the 15th before finishing with three straight birdies.[14]
Two-time champion Bernhard Langer made the cut at three-under, becoming, at age 63, the oldest player in Masters history to make the cut.[15] Two amateurs made the cut, John Augenstein on 3-under-par and Andy Ogletree at one-under.
With the first round still to be completed on Friday morning, the second round started at 9:30 am instead of the planned 7:00 am. 48 players did not finish their second round as play was suspended.[16] The second round continued at 7:30 am on Saturday. After the completion of the round, 60 players made the cut, the leading 50 and ties, with the third round beginning at 10:20 am.
World No. 1 Dustin Johnson had a bogey-free round of 65 (−7) to take a four-shot lead into the final round. Johnson, part of a five-way tie for the lead going into the round, jumped to the top of the leaderboard with an eagle on the par-five second hole after hitting his approach shot to three feet. He also birdied the third hole before making a 38-foot birdie putt on the fourth. On the back nine, Johnson two-putted for birdie on both par-fives, the 13th and 15th, and saved par from left of the 18th green to finish his round. His 16-under-par score of 200 after 54 holes tied the Masters tournament record, set by Jordan Spieth in 2015. He also became the first player in Masters history with two rounds of 65 or better in the same tournament.[17][18]
South Korea's Im Sung-jae, making his Masters debut, birdied the 18th after getting a fortunate bounce off the mound to the left of the green to 14 feet. He joined Abraham Ancer, another Masters rookie, and Cameron Smith in a tie for second place at 12-under-par.[19]
Jon Rahm, tied for the lead at the start of the round, fell four shots back of Johnson playing the eighth hole before making double-bogey on the par-five, his third shot ricocheting off a tree trunk and into bushes from where he had to take a penalty drop. He had an even par round to finish seven strokes off the lead and tied for seventh place.[20]Justin Thomas was still within two shots of Johnson but made four bogeys on the back nine to drop six back.[21]
Dustin Johnson began the round with a four-shot lead before making consecutive bogeys at the fourth and fifth holes. Cameron Smith reduced the lead to one after making birdie at the ninth, hitting his approach shot from the pine straw to four feet.
Johnson, meanwhile, came back to birdie the sixth and two-putt for birdie on the par-five eighth after reaching the green in two, taking a two-shot lead into the back nine. He laid up on the par-five 13th but managed to get up-and-down for birdie, then made a six-foot birdie putt on the 14th. After again laying up on the 15th, Johnson chipped to seven feet for his third shot and made the birdie putt to become the first player in Masters history to reach 20-under. He made par on the final three holes to set a new Masters scoring record, breaking the old mark of 18-under set by Tiger Woods in 1997 and Jordan Spieth in 2015.[22][23]
Smith bogeyed the 11th after missing the green to the right and finished at 15-under, five behind Johnson and tied for second place. Im Sung-jae, making his Masters debut at the age of 22, birdied both par-fives on the back nine to join Smith at 15-under. Smith shot a three-under 69, becoming the first player in Masters history with four rounds in the 60s.[24][25] Johnson's five-shot margin of victory was the largest at the Masters since Woods won by 12 in 1997. He made only four bogeys in the tournament, the fewest ever by a Masters champion.[26][27]
Woods, the defending champion, made a 10 on the par-three 12th after hitting three balls into the water, the highest score on a hole in his career. But he came back to birdie five of his last six holes, including the last four in a row for the first time at the Masters, and finished in a tie for 38th place.[28]
Of the two amateurs who made the cut, Andy Ogletree finished at 2-under-par while John Augenstein finished at 3-over-par.
For the second year in a row, a two-tee start was used, with players teeing off between 8:00 am and 9:39 am, using the 1st and 10th tees.
This was the 65th consecutive Masters to air on CBS Sports, which began coverage in 1956. Cable coverage aired on ESPN. To ensure that play would conclude before the earlier sunset, and to accommodate CBS's coverage of the NFL, the final round was scheduled so that coverage would begin at 10:00 a.m. ET (similarly to the previous year's final round, which was moved up due to the threat of storms) and conclude around 2:30 p.m. ET. To accommodate the tournament, CBS was only assigned late-afternoon NFL games (4:05 p.m. ET kickoff) for that week's games. Furthermore, CBS's SEC football game on Saturday, normally a 3:30 p.m. ET game, was scheduled for a 6:00 p.m. ET kickoff so that it could air as a lead-out for third round coverage.[29][30][31] It was reported that in the event that the final round did overrun past 4:00 p.m. ET, coverage could be shifted to ESPN's sister broadcast network ABC and simulcast on CBS Sports Network, but that this was highly unlikely.[32]
The SEC game was postponed due to COVID-19 cases in one of the participating teams, leading to CBS scheduling only its pre-game show College Football Today (largely to recap the day's games) after the conclusion of coverage, and giving the rest of the game's broadcast window back to affiliates and its regular Saturday-night network programming.[33]
To cross-promote the tournament, ESPN broadcast College GameDay on-location from Augusta National's par 3 course on November 14.[34]
For the first time since 1963, there was no live coverage of the Masters on free to air television in the UK, with pay television broadcaster Sky Sports securing exclusive rights.[35] Extended highlights were however shown free to air by BBC Sport with what turned out to be the last major tournament covered by veteran commentator Peter Alliss who died less than a month later in December 2020.
Viewership
Facing competition from early-afternoon NFL games on Fox, the final round was seen by 5.59 million viewers in the United States according to the Nielsen ratings — making it the least watched final round at the Masters since 1957.[36]
Dustin Johnson
