AUGUSTA, Ga. — Golf, man. It does things to the brain.
There is evidence all over of men breaking down at this year’s Masters, toiling on a sun-fried Augusta National. But look no further than the Thursday evening comments of Harry Hall, an Englishman playing in this tournament for the first time.
First round at the Masters, he was asked. What do you take out of that?
“I need to get a lot better,” Hall said, doing his best Eeyore impression.
He looked off into the distance as he spoke, slow and resolute. This broken man promised changes: He’d put a second driver in the bag for his second round, he said. He was going to change putters, too. He needed to hit it further and spin his irons better so he could “stop it on a dime.” That’s the only path he saw forward. He was going to grind on the range well past dinnertime to figure it all out. And then wake up Friday to try and make the cut. This is the golf life he chose.
Hall is 6-foot-4 and lumbers when he walks. When he misses with his driver(s), it’s a big paw stuck out in the direction of its path. You saw these signals all week. On Friday it was a Ping driver and a TaylorMade driver — the former set up for a fade, the latter for when he wanted a draw.
With the fade driver, Hall pulled his first shot into the trees on 1. With the draw driver, he did the same on 2. He started stepping out of his swing a bit, a move to straighten things out. He began over-emphasizing the draw swing with his arms. This was a man in mental prison. Then he blocked one into the trees on 7 before hooking one into the pines on 9.
“Fighting to hit it where I’m looking,” Hall said Friday. Succinct and sufficient. On paper, golf can be simple like that.
He changed his putter overnight, too. From an Odyssey blade to a TaylorMade mallet. It’s not a crazy thing to swap gear around like this, but context is everything. The dueling drivers is old hat — he did it a few weeks ago in Houston. (And played well!) But in 2025, Hall was one of the best putters in the world. In the world. He’s ridden that Odyssey for six years. It only recently started acting up.
Pity the man searching with his driver and his putter in this exacting place. Hall turned to the back nine at Augusta National at seven over, with basically no one watching. The only crowd he attracted this week was an angry one online, upset about the hat he wears.
But then something happened. On the back, he made four straight birdies quicker than you could say West Cornwall Golf Club. That’s where Hall was raised, on the southwest English peninsula. That’s why he wears the goofy flat cap the Twitterverse hates — because Jim Barnes used to wear one and Jim Barnes is from West Cornwall and Jim Barnes won four majors. He never won a Masters because he never had a chance to play one. The tournament didn’t exist in his heyday.
It now exists for Hall as some sort of confusing haunt. He said he learned that the Masters is a “great test of golf,” in addition to all those feelings of inadequacy about his irons, his length, maybe his entire skillset. Golf, man. It does things to the brain.
When Hall was 10 years old, he wrote himself a story with all kinds of detail and characters about what his “golf dream” would look like. It was a Saturday at the Masters, alongside Tiger Woods, eating a Cornish pastry when it was over. The latter details would be difficult to create this year, but Hall had a fighter’s chance to play on a Masters Saturday.
He made two-putt pars on 15 and 16, but then that fade driver faded too much on 17, leading to a bogey. It sliced wayyyy too much on 18, landing short of the start of the fairway. He took his medicine, punched out, played up the hole and had a chip shot for par. He couldn’t have known it at the time, but he needed to make it to play the weekend. It curled short of the hole, and about 20 minutes later a reporter suggested it was the perfect summation of Hall’s first Masters.
Hall gave him a golfer’s response:
“It’s not over yet.”
He figured he had a 50 percent chance that his five over would make the cut. It didn’t matter that he was wrong and not particularly close. The cut was never going to be five over. But that’s golf, man. It asks you to do crazy things. Like play with two drivers, and swap in a new putter, and also, to just believe.
