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AUGUSTA, Ga. – Sergio Garcia didn’t make another octuple-bogey Friday, but he still struggled at Augusta National. Garcia shot 78 to set a dubious record in the defense of his emotional victory at last year’s Masters. Garcia’s 78 on Friday gave him a two-day total of 15-over 159, the highest 36-hole score ever shot by a defending champion. His 81 matched the highest score by a defending champion who missed the cut. Nick Faldo also shot 81 in 1997. Garcia’s 13 at the par-5 15th hole, which matched the highest single-hole score in tournament history, sealed his fate. He hit five shots into the pond that fronts the green on the hole nicknamed Firethorn. On Friday, he made six bogeys and a double-bogey. A birdied at the last allowed him to break 160 for the week. He’ll need to find a way to pass the time this weekend as he waits to return to Augusta National to slip the Green Jacket on this year’s champion. This is the 11th time in Masters history that the defending champion missed the cut, and the second consecutive year. Danny Willett missed the cut last year. The cut fell at 5-over 149, the lowest since 2015. Fifty-three of the 87 players who started this week will play on the weekend. The odd number of weekend participants means that an honorary marker will be used in the first tee time. That role is traditionally filled by club member Jeff Knox, who famously beat Rory McIlroy when they were paired in the 2014 Masters. U.S. Amateur runner-up Doug Ghim was the only one of the six amateurs to make the cut. The Texas senior, who made two eagles Thursday, shot 72-76 to clinch low-amateur honors. Among the players to miss the cut by a single shot were past champions Charl Schwartzel, Sandy Lyle and Jose Maria Olazabal. Here’s a look at other notables to miss the cut: — Thomas Pieters (73-78), who finished fourth last year in his Masters debut. — Patrick Cantlay (75-76), winner of this season’s Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. — Shubhankar Sharma (77-74), who received a special invitation to play this year’s Masters. — Danny Willett (75-76), the 2016 Masters champion. He’s missed the cut in both Masters starts since his win. — Patton Kizzire (76-76), a two-time winner this season. — Joaquin Niemann (76-77), the world’s No. 1 amateur. This is his final tournament as an amateur. — Mark O’Meara (78-81), the 1998 Masters champion. He said this will be his last Masters.

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New world No. 1 Jon Rahm calls it “busy.” Webb Simpson calls it “very strange.” Scott Van Pelt of ESPN, which will televise next week’s PGA Championship, calls it “a time of total disarray.” Call it the Crazy Eight. Starting with this week’s World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis, the next eight weeks will determine the winner/s of a WGC, the FedExCup, and two majors. England’s Tommy Fleetwood is among the players who circled this stretch on their revised calendars, dropping in for last week’s 3M Open and committing to nine big weeks of golf through the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, Sept. 17-20. “I’m going to work hard and play hard and see how well we can do,” Fleetwood said. That’s a common sentiment on TOUR as players commence the biggest and most impactful stretch of golf this season, and maybe the biggest in years. FEDEX ST. JUDE INVITATIONAL: Featured Groups | Tee times | FedExCup standings Said Rahm from TPC Southwind: “It’s one of those situations where somebody could get hot and possibly run away with the World Golf Championship, majors, possibly the FedExCup. “… It will be a good time to start playing good golf,” he added. Rahm of course is already playing good golf, having won the recent Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide to take over world No. 1. He is eighth in the FedExCup, but volatility could be the rule for both metrics going forward. The winner at TPC Southwind this week will earn an elevated 550 FedEx points (up from the usual 500), while someone will bank 600 at the PGA Championship next week. The Official World Golf Ranking could feature shake-ups at the top, as well. According to Sports Betting News, FedExCup No. 1 Justin Thomas could return to world No. 1 with a win this week. So could reigning FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy, who lost the top spot to Rahm two weeks ago. “It’s extremely important,” Thomas said of the prospect of returning to world No. 1. “It’s never something that I won’t want to have and won’t be trying to get to if I’m not there. The thing about that is it’s not about getting there, it’s about how long can you stay there.” (Thomas, the 2017 FedExCup champion, was world No. 1 for four weeks in 2018.) How players handle this busy time will have a lot to say about that. Each of the eight weeks is of course important for its own sake, but it’s hard not to take in the bigger picture. Simpson spoke of how nice it will be to have “the best players in the world” at TPC Southwind since that will also be the case for the PGA at TPC Harding Park. (The 44 of the top 50 in the OWGR in Memphis this week is the most on TOUR since the 2019 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.) Thomas, who will be attempting to join McIlroy and Tiger Woods as the only two-time winners of the FedExCup, name-dropped East Lake and the season-ending TOUR Championship (Sept. 4-7) even as he geared up for a run at another WGC title at TPC Southwind, where he finished T12 last year. “I find this place very similar to East Lake,” Thomas said, “to where if you drive it well, if you hit the fairways, it’s not a very difficult golf course. You have a pretty good amount of short irons and some wedges to where you can control your distance into the greens. Because it’s so important to be putting from below the hole or on the correct side.” As for the Crazy Eight, which will also decide the Wyndham Rewards Top 10, no one knows how things will go. Will one player get hot and take a big stack of chips? Will a star emerge? “I feel like it’s breakthrough season at a time of total disarray,” said ESPN’s Van Pelt. Fatigue could be a factor. Although one wonders how that’s possible after the TOUR’s three-month hiatus, there’s so much to play for, so many big events all crammed together, it could test the stamina of even the current wave of 20-something superstars. “Nothing special,” Rahm said of how he’ll handle so much golf. “Probably keep doing what I’ve been doing right now. I would say I’m out of quarantine, I’m in really good shape, so I feel physically and mentally strong enough to do what I need to do the next few weeks.” As for looking ahead, so much could happen. Too much. Do we even dare prognosticate? Curtis Strange, who will be calling next week’s PGA for ESPN from home in Morehead City, N.C., didn’t take a stab at where we’ll be in eight weeks. Nor did his colleague, Andy North. Instead, they, along with Van Pelt, credited the PGA TOUR and Commissioner Jay Monahan for bringing golf (and to some extent sports) back. “I hope it all goes through,” Strange said. “I hope the players stay disciplined … I hope that’s the storyline.” Settle in. It should be a wild ride.

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