The Masters: Why one bad shot cost Sheffield's Danny Willett after former champion missed the cut again

Former champion Danny Willett was left to rue a costly late stumble after missing the cut in the Masters for the second year in succession.
Former champion Danny Willett missed the cut at Augusta for the second year in a row. Picture: PAFormer champion Danny Willett missed the cut at Augusta for the second year in a row. Picture: PA
Former champion Danny Willett missed the cut at Augusta for the second year in a row. Picture: PA

After being forced out of his previous event with a shoulder injury, Willett produced a battling performance following an opening 75 to be right on the cut line towards the closing stages of a testing second round at Augusta National.

But the 30-year-old from Sheffield then hit a wayward drive on the 17th which left him blocked out by trees and could only hit his attempted recovery shot into more trouble.

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The resulting bogey was followed by another on the 18th and meant Willett missed the cut - which fell at five over par - by two shots.

Willett, who was ninth in the world rankings after his victory two years ago but is now set to drop outside the top 300, said: "It was tricky out there.

"We hit a lot of decent shots out there, I just hit one bad one and got really, really screwed. If you put the ball in the right spots you can make birdie, as you can see from the scoring between first and probably 20th it's probably about 10 shots.

"So you see the guys on the front page [of the leaderboard] playing well and spreading themselves out a little bit, and then everyone else is going around one, two over.

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"It's a bummer, we were doing a lot of good work. I have a lot of good positives to take from the week and how we played, but things just didn't quite fall into place today.

"You talk about luck. I hit a pretty good one on the 18th, gets a bad bounce, goes in the bunker, you get a terrible lie, and it's one of them things that I think, if things aren't going your way, they're not quite going your way."