Capricious winds hurt Campbell at No. 17
Chad Campbell went to the 17th hole Friday afternoon riding a birdie and two straight pars.
But No. 17, as it was for many players on Friday, was too much for the leader of the 70th Masters Tournament. The wind near the green grabbed Campbell's approach shot and sent it over the green. He eventually made bogey.
"I drove it right down the middle on 17 and had 161 (yards) in," he said. "Like I said before, we thought the wind was straight right-to-left, and I think it ended up being that way. We just caught a gust ... and hit 8-iron over the green. I actually had a (7-iron) at first because I thought it was hurting, but I switched to 8.
"It was a little too much club."
Campbell was not the only player to struggle with the uphill, 440-yard par 4. In all, 17 was the fourth-most difficult hole Friday, mostly because of its pin placement in the right corner of the sloping green. It rendered just six birdies, with 53 pars, 25 bogeys and six double bogeys.
Playing in the last group, Fred Couples was one of the six players to birdie the hole. He said his tee shot allowed him to gain a stroke at No. 17.
"It's a very hard hole," he said. "The other guys I played with (Jim Furyk and Shigeki Maruyama) drove it into the hill, and I don't know what they went in there with. The wind was blowing ... the whole back nine, and that's a very key hole.
"You have to step up and really hit a good drive and then judge your second shot."
Couples, Bernhard Langer, Edoardo Molinari, Vijay Singh, David Duval and Tim Herron each made birdie at No. 17.
One of the longest putts of the day was Ben Crenshaw's 25-footer to save par from the left side of the green after hitting the Eisenhower Tree with his drive, topping a 4-wood back into the fairway and hitting 9-iron to reach the green.
