Kisner shoots 74 on tough day at Masters

Kevin Kisner thought last year’s conditions were difficult in his Masters Tournament debut. He hadn’t seen anything yet.

“I was telling my caddie, I said, hopefully we get in next year and we can play a normal Masters one time,” the Aiken native said after escaping the severe wind gusts with 2-over 74 in Thursday’s first round.

Kisner walked into the shelter of the clubhouse after rallying with birdies on Nos. 16 and 18. He rolled in a 17-footer on the last hole to beat the field average.

“You’re trying to hit these small targets and the wind’s going from 15 to 20 to 40 (mph),” he said. “It’s just incredible trying to hit those numbers. But I hung in there. I was 4-over through 12 and finished at 2. So I’m pretty pleased with my day.”

Kisner and playing partners Adam Scott and Andy Sullivan went off at 9:28 a.m. in the ninth group of the day and played the front nine in what would later be deemed a relative calm. By the time they reached the second nine, the wind was howling consistently at more than 20 mph, and the gusts wreaked havoc on their shots.

“I thought the back nine played incredibly hard,” said Kisner, who made bogey on Nos. 10, 11 and 12 to slip to 4-over par.

“Well, it was weird. Like through nine holes it was like, you know, it’s not terrible, you can still make birdies. But then when I was on about 14 I thought they might pull us off. Because the ball’s rolling. So I think it was just the gusts were higher this year than last year.”

Scott had a short putt on the 14th that rolled to 12 feet away after he picked up his mark. But the real challenge came at the 15th hole playing directly into the fiercest wind.

“I hit driver, 3-iron to lay up,” Kisner said. “Normally I hit driver, 3-iron on the green. I had 97 (yards to the) hole or something like that. Hit a pitching wedge, which is a 135-yard club for me. So that kind of gives you an idea. That wedge shot on 15, who knows what’s going to happen? I think that’s probably one of the hardest ones.”

Kisner stuck his 6-iron from 167 yards to 3 feet on No. 16 to make his second birdie of the day.

“Probably about par,” Kisner said of his 74. “When I was 1- or 2-over early, I felt like you could still make birdies early. I hit a lot of great putts, but I really didn’t hole a putt until the last hole. So, I felt like that was probably about even par. I felt like I could have shot 70 or 69 if I played great and everything went my way.

“Yeah, you just had to hang in there somehow. It’s just brutal to try to hang in, too, because you just never feel comfortable over any shot. You have such small areas that you’re trying to hit and it’s just impossible to hit.”