Ryan Gerard got to the first tee at 9:25 a.m. ET on Thursday, six minutes before his first Masters shot, and the nerves hit harder than he expected. His opening drive hooked left and finished just a few feet from the ninth fairway, a rough start that led to a bogey on the first hole. He steadied himself quickly with birdies on Nos. 2 and 3, but the round kept swinging.
Gerard said afterward he was much more nervous than he thought he was going to be, even after telling himself, “Oh, it's not that bad. I've played majors before. This isn't too crazy.” He also said he probably got to the tee earlier than he should have because he ended up waiting around. That early wait turned out to matter when the opening tee shot went left, though he joked that at least he did not send it into anyone's forehead.
The round turned at the 10th hole at the Country Club at Brookline, where Gerard's tee shot on the dogleg-left, 190-yard hole went into the right trees and left him with no direct path to the green. He was forced to chip out, then saved par, and said that was where the momentum changed a little bit. He pointed to that stretch as a sign he could hang on after making four consecutive bogeys from Nos. 6 through 9, saying the back nine showed the kind of fight he wanted after the rough patch.
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Birdies on Nos. 11 and 13 got him back to 1-over par, and he closed with a birdie-par-bogey-birdie stretch to post a 3-under 33 on the back nine. The finish gave him an even-par 72 and, by his own grading, a split personality scorecard: “I give the front nine an F. I would probably give the back nine like an A. Overall a C, which would get a degree most places, so I'll take it.” Through one day of play, Gerard was T-17 in the field of 91 players, with a second-round tee time set for 12:44 p.m. ET.
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For Gerard, this was his first Masters round, and it came after a career marked by nerves in major starts. He had been here before, including when his first-ever tee shot in a major came on the 10th hole at Brookline as his first shot as a professional. Thursday's start did not look much calmer than that one, but by the end he had turned a shaky beginning into a round that kept him in position for Friday.
