Masters round one: So much for the Tiger and Lefty show

Devotees of Monty Python, and there are quite a few out there still, will know where I’m coming from when I describe the Augusta course as “cruel but fair". Maybe those deceptive greens didn’t nail golfer’s heads to the floor like the mythical hoodlum Dinsdale Piranha, but like him they meted out their brand of cruelty without fear or favour.

There was some brave talk afterwards, much of it I suspect induced by shock. “Tomorrow’s goal is to shoot in the 60s and I can get right back in it,” declared Phil Mickelson after stumbling home in four over, seven shots off the lead. You get one guess who is the only person this millennium to come from seven behind to win, and it’s not our Phil. For the same reason Sergio Garcia is what I would call a fingertips job and Bernhard Langer and Ernie Els can certainly kiss their chances goodbye. That was a crushingly inept opener from the South African.

We can expect the wind to play some more tricks around the trees Friday and those greens look like getting even more vicious over the next three days as the weather dries them out. The average first round score is the highest in four years and the 69 of Justin Rose and Brett Wetterich the highest to lead round one in eight years. You’d think it was the US Open!

Augusta’s organisers can certainly take pride in having put the big hitters in their place. All the previews this week spoke of a bomber’s paradise, but tell that to tiny Tim Clark, among the leaders again this year, or even Rose.

My fingers will genuinely be crossed over the next three days for Justin, who put an awesome short game on show Thursday. He will be defying tradition if he does win, as will Wetterich. Augusta invariably punishes early front-runners, as Justin himself discovered after leading to the halfway stage in 2004.

Despite their untidy rounds Thursday, Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh are lurking with menace. Tiger’s final two bogies raised eyebrows given that the wind had largely died away by then. As he says himself, he threw away a good(ish) round. Vijay too was guilty of some unforced errors, but I liked the way he was putting - unlucky not to birdie the 17th. Now if that had been the 16th, and Tiger …

These two past masters are just where you might expect them to be to cause mayhem over the weekend and nail these awesome greens.