Pin placement on No. 5 new to players

Players saw something Friday they can’t remember ever seeing before at Augusta National Golf Club.

Placed in an inviting position, the pin at the par-4 fifth hole was tucked below the shelf on the right-hand side to welcome a flood of birdies.

After the field carded only five birdies at Magnolia in Thursday’s first round of the Masters, it had 20 in the second round. The 97 players averaged an even four strokes on the hole after needing 4.216 in the first round.

“Nope. Never in this tournament,” Jim Furyk, who birdied the hole, said when asked if he had seen that pin placement before. “I played this event 17 or 18 times. I’ve never seen a pin there.

“That’s kind of a nice spot to bail out a lot for a few pins. So I’ve hit it there probably 50 times, trying to get it up on top, and then it becomes a head game of ‘Can you get it there when you want to?’”

After No. 5 was tied for the eighth-toughest hole Thursday, it was only 14th on Friday. Players needed only 1.433 putts on average to close the hole, almost a half-stroke better than the first round (1.928).

Ian Poulter, playing in his 10th Masters, was one of the 20 players to birdie the hole. He said he hit it to 3 feet before he sank the putt.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever had it there, and obviously there’s a number of pin locations out here on this golf course which they have never used, and I guess they felt it was time to use it,” Poulter said. “I guess some people might have made birdie, but you can also make bogey there quite easy.”

In fact, despite the 15-birdie difference from the first to second round, there were just six more bogeys at No. 5 on Thursday than on Friday.

Steve Stricker, in his 14th Masters, was close to parring the hole. But after he chipped to a couple of feet, he missed his putt.

“I’ve never seen it there before,” Stricker said. “I didn’t really know where to hit it, where to miss it. Interesting pin. It was one you could get close, for sure. But you couldn’t miss it long. It was pretty tough.”