Wesley Bryan takes time off to get ready for first Masters

It’s not a strategy for everyone, but Wesley Bryan believes it is best for him.

When the Augusta resident tees off Thursday in his first Masters Tournament, it will have been nearly five weeks since he last played competitively.

The former University of South Carolina golfer, who won at Hilton Head Island, S.C., the week after last year’s Masters to qualify this week, took a break from the PGA Tour to work on his long game and be totally ready for his first shot at Augusta National Golf Club.

So against the advice of his manager Andrew Kipper, Bryan hasn’t played since missing the cut at the Honda Classic on Feb. 25. It was the third consecutive missed cut for Bryan, who had gone 18-over-par for those six rounds.

“I felt like I was going in a direction that I wasn’t seeing any results for the first half of the year, and I knew that I was really close,” Bryan said Monday. “And I’ve never been one to play my way into form. You’ll see guys like Patrick Reed go out and play nine or 10 events in a row and get a little bit better every single week. I feel like I’m one of those guys that has always done really well off of rest. I kind of know what I’ve got to do to get better and I don’t need tournament golf to round me into form.”

After taking the first week off during his sabbatical, he dived into a practice routine that was like a 9-to-5 job, he said.

PHOTOS: Monday's practice round at Augusta

“It’s definitely not been a vacation by any stretch, probably worked harder than I’ve ever worked in my entire life to get ready for this one event,” he said.

His practice included an average of “six to seven” rounds a week, he said.

“There were plenty of days where I played 36 or 54 holes,” he said. “I put a plan together for March of all the practice goals that I wanted to do, to accomplish, and I wanted to take on. So for the entire month I guess I worked 26 of them to get ready.”

He played his rounds at Evans’ Bartram Trail Golf Club, Augusta’s Forest Hills Golf Club and Augusta National.

At Bartram Trail, where he has shot a course record 60 a couple of times, he said he had a “brutal lip-out for 59 on the last hole the last time we played. But it was a lot of fun, just playing golf recreationally for five weeks, not having to worry about tournaments and getting ready.”

He said the worst score he shot during that time was “four- or five-under” at Augusta National.

Last week, he took his friend Jon Rahm, who is the world’s No. 3-ranked golfer and one of the favorites this week, to Bartram Trail. Bryan and Rahm became friends as rookies on the PGA Tour in 2017, and Rahm stayed with Bryan last week as the Masters approached.

“He came up one short of my course record (at Bartram Trail), so it is still safe,” Bryan said.

With the time off, Bryan was able to get back on good terms with his driver. Poor play with that club early in the season led Bryan to take it out of his bag for the Sony Open.

“Yeah, that was part of the reason (for the break),” Bryan said. “I just was not very comfortable off the tee, and started seeing glimpses of it turning around. Even though I missed the cut at Riviera and at Honda, I was definitely making strides in the right direction.

“These last four or five weeks I’ve been really working on turning the ball over a little more right to left,” he said. “Moving forward I felt like it couldn’t get any worse than where it was. I’ve been playing a cut (a slight left-to-right shot) the last couple years off the tee, and statistically it just hasn’t been very good. So I felt like it was one of those changes that needed to happen. It has gotten a lot better.”