Our man at The Masters

Scottish amateur, and the 2014 British Amateur Champion, Bradley Neil tells TG about his preparations ahead of The Masters.

When did you arrive at Augusta?
I’ve been here a couple of weeks now. I arrived early to play the Georgia Cup which is a match vs the US Amateur Champion, it’s a great opportunity to acclimatise and work on my game. The Match is held at Georgia Golf Club which was a beautiful course. I didn’t play my best and was beaten 3&2, but it gave me a good idea of where I need to improve my game. 

What’s Augusta like?
It exceeds all your expectations. From the way the people greet you right through to the golf course, it’s an amazing place. One of the first things you see is the slopes, it’s a really hilly course. The greens are obviously unbelievably fast, everyone knows that, but the slopes on some of the greens make it very challenging to putt, it’s very difficult if you get the wrong side of the hole. I stayed in the Crow’s Nest on Monday night after the Amateurs Dinner at 7pm. It was a great evening and I met some inspiring people. Mark O’Meara gave a great speech, it was great to hear from a former champion and such a legend. Four of the Amateurs stayed in the Nest that night, so it was good to share the others’ experiences. They leave all the old films of the championships on, so we watched a few legends from a few years ago.

Any special preparation you have done for Augusta?
We’ve been doing more running in my training over the past month. The course is very hilly as reported regularly, it’s quite hard on the legs getting around so I’ve been building up my fitness levels to cope with the week. I’ve worked on draw with my driver with my coach, Kevin Hale, for the past few months now. It’s very much a draw golf course with the driver especially and you need to drive the ball well round here. I feel this is one of the best parts to my game so hopefully I will use it to my advantage.

Practice Rounds?
I came up once in January with my caddie, Phil McKenna. Augusta National were so generous hosting us and we managed to spend a lot of time around the greens. It literally is a course you could play every day for the rest of your life, and you would see something new every time you play. The course is amazing. I managed to play with world No 1 Rory McIlroy on Monday.

It was amazing getting the chance to practice with Rory, it exceeded all my expectations. He’s a really nice guy and made me feel really comfortable. I holed out from about 90 yards on the par-5 2nd hole and he couldn’t stop laughing because the day we met here on my first trip, I did exactly the same and he was on the 3rd tee. He said. ‘Just don’t bother going for the green, just lay up all the time’. That was really nice and I got a nice cheer from the crowd.

Rory always has a huge crowd and it was great to experience that as I don’t think I’ll get to play in front of a crowd like that again this week which should make it easier. It’s amazing to think that Rory is only six years older than me but I’d be happy if I was to even get to where he is in 15 years! The way he’s dealt with it at such a young age is what’s very impressive. He seems as if he has nothing to worry about. I’m looking forward to playing with another Scot, 1988 champion Sandy Lyle, when the action at Augusta begins on Thursday.