• Updates from day two at Augusta National
• Live leaderboard | Feel free to mail Scott

Early-morning misery for Tyrrell Hatton as well. He dumps his approach at 15 into the briny, and runs up a double-bogey seven as a result. He tumbles down the leader board to -1.

A cold start for Tiger Woods. He batters a fine drive down the middle of 14, only to duff a miserable chip 20 yards short of the green. His chip up isn’t all that, either, and two putts later he’s walking off with a bogey, slipping back to level par.

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• LIV convert leads by one shot from Scottie Scheffler
• Danny Willett shoots 68 after shoulder surgery

In 2020, we were primed for the age of Bryson DeChambeau. The US Open had been claimed, Augusta National was supposedly a par of 67 rather than 72 and golfers the world over were trying to imitate the bomb and gouge approach of this wacky Californian.

DeChambeau polarised opinion but was a genuine needle-mover in a sport where vanilla is the prominent flavour. DeChambeau’s peculiar habit of rubbing people up the wrong way masked the fact he always seemed to mean well. The Mad Scientist helped to sell sport to the masses. He had an extended feud with Brooks Koepka and publicly berated his own equipment manufacturer in between winning eight times on the PGA Tour. Being Bryson seemed exhausting.

The 88-year-old held court on the secret to a long life and his political heroes while insisting humans will soon live to 140

The start was running just a little behind time at the Masters this year, made three hours late by the storm that blew through early in the morning. It was 10am already when Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson made it to the practice range, and just gone 10.15 when they walked from the clubhouse through the gallery to the 1st tee. Player stopped to press a ball into the palm of a lady waiting by the ropes. Her name was Barbara, and she was 88. “We’re the very same age,” she says, smiling like a little kid who’d just discovered the big presents tucked around the back of the Christmas tree.

Player gives her a kiss on the cheek on his way back in, too. Turns out this is one of his Masters traditions. “It’s the third time he’s done it,” Barbara says. “My husband said if he did it again this year then I shouldn’t come back home afterwards.”

• Updates from day one at Augusta National
• Caddie gaps to Masters gnome: what to watch out for
• Live leaderboard | And feel free to mail Scott

Welcome, patrons, to the 88th edition of the Masters Tournament. Cellphones and other devices with recording and/or transmission capabilities are prohibited, no autograph requests on the course, do not run.

So will Jon Rahm become the first player since Tiger Woods in 2002, and only the fourth in history, to win back-to-back tournaments? Will hot favourite Scottie Scheffler pull on the Green Jacket for a second time? Will Hideki Matsuyama, Jordan Spieth or Dustin Johnson do it again? Will Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Brooks Koepka, Shane Lowry or Viktor Hovland break through? Will Rickie Fowler become the first winner of the par-three contest to go on to win the main event? Will Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark or Akshay Bhatia become the first debutant to win since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979? Will Zalatoris?

• Fred Ridley says newly fractured nature of sport ‘not helpful’
• Special invitations for select players likely to continue

Fred Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National, has all-but ruled out the prospect of LIV golfers gaining entry to the Masters via their own order of merit while branding the “closed shop” of the Saudi Arabian-backed tour problematic.

Golfers on the LIV tour who have won the Masters remain eligible for the first major of the year . One member of LIV, Joaquin Niemann, received a special invite to this Masters edition. Others have seen their route to Augusta blocked after tumbling down the world rankings. LIV withdrew its bid to be part of that system this year having failed to meet Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) criteria .

Masters host has the experience and finances to launch a women’s tournament – it just needs the big-picture thinking

Fred Ridley’s Wednesday morning address to the media at Augusta National has become an episode in self-congratulation and script-reading. A box-ticking exercise for Ridley, the Augusta chairman, and his acolytes becomes an annual frustration for journalists. Presumably they wouldn’t want it any other way.

Those presiding over the Masters swagger with pride at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the children’s Drive, Chip and Putt Championship which precede the opening major of the year. Nobody of a squeamish disposition should watch either on television; broadcasters fall over themselves to offer gushing superlatives to a point which goes beyond parody. The Green Jackets lap this up. “Look! Look! We are progressive! There are children wearing shorts and everything!” By Monday of Masters week, the big stuff starts. England’s Lottie Woad, the newly crowned women’s amateur champion , will be back at Florida State University by the time the 88th Masters champion is crowned. The show quickly moves on in this corner of Georgia.

Augusta National taps into fever for ‘pretty wild’ moment with branded solar glasses – which rapidly become a must-have

They say bats come out during a solar eclipse, and owls too. Hippos have been seen to move towards their nighttime feeding grounds, bees to fly back to their hives and refuse to emerge until the sun comes back out, crickets begin to chirrup, mosquitoes come out for the evening, spiders take down their webs to protect them from the nighttime dew. Last time they had a solar eclipse one around these parts, scientists working at Riverbanks zoo over in South Carolina noticed that the gibbons started barking and a pair of Galapagos tortoises immediately began mating with each other.

During this one, the fauna around and about Augusta National was acting unusually, too. Novel behaviours included patrons gathering together away from the shade and craning their necks to stare up into the blue spring sky. There were also sudden, and repeated, oaths, sighs, and other unusual utterances. “OH MY GOD! IT’S HAPPENING!” cried a man in the grandstand down at Amen Corner when the moon took its first little nibble out of the sun’s bottom corner.

• 20-year-old from Farnham is first European to win event
• Birdies three of last four holes to win by one shot

A sign of things to come in Masters week? Lottie Woad, the 20-year-old from Farnham, has become the first European winner of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. In the kind of moment childhood – and plenty of adult - fantasy is made of, she converted a birdie putt on the 18th green to take the title by one shot from Bailey Shoemaker of the United States.

Woad picked up shots in three of her closing four holes, including the last two. The former Girls’ Amateur champion shot a 69 at the Georgia venue where the 88th Masters will get under way on Thursday. What competitors there would give for Woad’s finish.