Steven Bowditch was rolling along nicely in his Masters debut before his ball rolled when it shouldn’t and derailed his momentum.
After opening with an impressive eight straight pars as a first timer at Augusta National, Bowditch carved his drive from left to right and ended up in the pine needles.
As he tried to clean up some debris around his ball it moved, forcing the Queenslander to call a one-stroke penalty on himself.
He eventually took bogey and dropped other shots on 10 and 12 before his lone birdie on 15 left him with an opening round two-over 74.
“I just hit in the pine needles and tried moving something a little bit away from the ball and unfortunately my ball changed positions so I had to call a penalty on myself,” Bowditch explained.
“You’ve got to be careful and I wasn’t careful enough. I haven’t done it for a while and hopefully won’t do it for a while again.
“At the end of the day you shouldn’t be hitting in the pine needles.”
The 30-year-old admitted to some debut jitters as he played with 1998 champion Mark O’Meara.
But once his first drive went in the air and down the middle things started to feel normal again.
“I was quite nervous, I had butterflies,” Bowditch said.
“But I didn’t expect to be falling asleep on first tee. It was a good feeling to settle down after a couple of holes and I just enjoyed myself.
“I had a blast and it was awesome to play with Mark O’Meara, one of the greats of the game, and see how he plotted himself around.
“He knows the golf course and where the putts break.”
With limited experience from just a few practice rounds on the revered course, Bowditch was only too pleased to learn on the run and will leave his driver in the bag a little more in round two.
“My driver was a little off today, unfortunately,” he admitted.
“This course doesn’t quite fit my eye with it, especially when it gets heated up. So I’ll go work on my 3-wood and I should be able to get it around using my 3-wood on a lot of these holes.
“Nearly every hole I’m learning something because of the complexity of the greens and how much faster they are.”
