Weir passing Masters knowledge on to new generation of Canadian golfers

When Mike Weir steps to the first tee at Augusta National on the Tuesday of Masters week, he’ll be joined by three other talented Canadian golfers.

As he has done almost every year since he won the green jacket in 2003, he’ll offer up his knowledge and experience of the famed course to his fellow countrymen in an all-Canadian Tuesday practice round. He hopes they might join him as winners of the year’s first major.

While Weir’s days of earning another Masters victory are behind him, the 54-year-old golfer believes the current crop of Canadians are more than capable of winning.

“I’ve told them they’re ready,” said Weir. “They just have to trust their talent and believe in their abilities.”

Corey Conners, Nick Taylor and Taylor Pendrith round out the Canadian entries this year and all three come in having played well through the start of the 2025 season.

Conners has the most experience at Augusta National, playing once as an amateur and six more times since turning professional. He also has the top finishes of any Canadian golfer since Weir. He tied for 10th, tied for eighth, and tied for sixth during a three-year run starting in 2020. His past two visits were not quite as promising, with a missed cut in 2023 and a tie for 38th last year.

Even though he’s had good performances around Augusta National, the annual round with Weir can only help his knowledge.

“Really looking forward to that,” Conners said with enthusiasm. “I can always learn a lot from Mike around this place. I feel like I have a good grasp of the golf course and intricacies of it, but there's always something that can be learned for sure.”

Conners has been on a roll of late. He finished third at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, then added a tie for sixth at the Players and a tie for eighth at the Valspar Championship. Known as one of the best ball-strikers on the PGA Tour, the key to his play this year has been a solid improvement on the greens. In his last 16 rounds, he has been on the positive side of Strokes Gained: Putting 13 times. Overall this year, he is 60th in Strokes Gained: Putting, a big jump from 128th, where he finished off last season. 

The Listowel, Ont., product credits hard work in the off-season and a new, specially designed putter from PING as the reasons for more putts drop.

Taylor arrives at Agusta on the strength of his fifth tour win, that coming at the SONY Open back in January.

It’s just his third Masters and the first where he says his focus will be entirely on the tournament. He played in 2020, the year COVID pushed the tournament to November and no patrons attended. He played again last year and was joined by a large contingent of family who wanted to share some of the Masters experience with him.

“I think this time it will be easier to focus on playing golf and getting the full Masters experience,” stated Taylor.

The Abbotsford, B.C., golfer said in his brief experience, he’s learned that just because it’s the Masters doesn’t mean your game should change in any way. It’s still a major golf tournament and still a course that requires a full examination, but the game that got him into the field is the one that he should focus on. He and his team have discussed just how easy it is to wander at Augusta National.

“We've talked about around the greens and how it's easy to get trapped on hitting 100 different shots and trying to be perfect around the greens,” stated Taylor. “There's definitely shots you're going to have – you're going to have probably 25 to 30 short-game shots, including third shots into par-5s. Putting too much emphasis on them is not really necessary.”

He added that any guidance he can get on the course will be welcome and that’s why he’s looking forward to playing with Weir, who was his idol growing up.

“I feel like I know generally where to miss,” said Taylor. “I'm going to pick Mike's brain on certain holes when we play, but like I said, putting too many high expectations or too much pressure is not going to help anything.”

A good finish would end an undesirable streak that the 2023 RBC Canadian Open winner has going. He’s missed the cut in his past nine major championship appearances, including all four last year.

Pendrith will make his Masters debut this year and is obviously charged up to walk inside the ropes and take on Augusta National.

His season has been solid if not necessarily consistent. He logged top-10 finishes at the Farmers Insurance Open and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am before slipping in a stretch of four tournaments that included two missed cuts.

But his last start prior to the Masters showed some form as he finished tied for fifth at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, posting three rounds of 65. The weak link in his game this year has been with his putter. After finishing fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting last year, he was 129th coming into the Masters. But there were good signs in the Houston tournament, where he was fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week.

“It's more a confidence thing, I think,” stated Pendrith, who roomed with Conners for four years at Kent State. “I putted really good all last year and this year I've been off to a slow start. So I'm not really doing anything different per se, just maybe working a little bit harder in trying to tighten up our start line and work on our speed.”

He’ll need plenty of confidence and a major cram session from Weir in the Tuesday round to get some sort of read on the diabolical greens at Augusta National. If he can figure them out, he might be on his way to becoming just the second player to win the Masters in his first appearance.

For Weir, playing four rounds would be considered a success. He’s missed the cut each of the past four years, albeit the last two by a single shot. At his age, he’s admitted that the course has become almost too long, requiring him to hit long clubs into many of the holes. Yet he remains as determined and focused as ever.

But nothing would please him more than to see one of Conners, Taylor or Pendrith become a Masters champion.