Rory McIlroy and Alvaro Quiros are first round leaders

The 21-year-old Rory McIlroy leads the Masters with long-hitting Spaniard Alvaro Quiros, after both players had a 7-under-par first round 65.

A couple of shots further back are Y.E Yang  and K.J. Choi. And Ricky Barnes and Matt Kuchar are on 4-under.

Rory is the youngest first round leader in the 75-year history of the Tournament.

And the extraordinary thing about the Northern Irishman’s round (which was his lowest ever around Augusta) is that he missed at least five very makeable putts. If his short stick starts to get hot; anything could happen at the weekend.

“I am very comfortable with my game,” he said afterwards. “I’ve taken three weeks off, and that’s because I feel I play my best golf in the first week I come back. I’ve been working hard in the gym and on my game down in West Palm Beach, Florida.

McIlroy has finished in the top-3 three times in the past five major championships, and he has put himself in with a great chance of winning his first. But few will forget the last time he enjoyed a great start in a major, at last year’s Open at St Andrews, when he followed a first round 63 with a second round 80.

“What was especially satisfying about my round today was that my score was made on the front nine,” he said. “That is the nine I have struggled with over the past couple of years, and I made a point last Friday to play the front nine twice, and just make sure I am comfortable with the shots that I need to hit here.”

Meanwhile, Quiros’s 65 beats his best round at Augusta by an extraordinary 10 shots! He has played four competitive rounds in the Masters, and never once shot better than a 75.

Late into the evening when most people had left the course (he was in the last group of the day) he gave a hilarious press conference.

“My aim tomorrow is to make the cut,” he said. “I mean it. I’m just thinking about my tee shot at the 1st.  I didn’t look at the leaderboard when I arrived at the course, except to see how my Spanish players were doing. It would be stupid to look at anything else when (as you all keep reminding me) my best previous score here was a 75!”

Let’s hope no Green Jackets were watching his tee shot at the 13th, which went absolutely miles around the corner of the dog-leg, and left him a little flick with a wedge to the par-5! Augusta members don’t take lightly to their par-5’s being made to look silly. Maybe they will have to buy some more land from the other golf course at the back of the 13th tee, so they can make the hole longer.

A brand new caddie called Gareth Bryn Lord (who used to work for Robert Karlsson) is on his bag. It was their first competitive round together. “That’s why we talked so much on the way round,” he said. “We had a lot of things to talk about and sort out!”