They don’t feel down to par

Gentlemen, start your bogeys. Oh, they’re already in motion. There may be no end in sight to them, which could also be the best way to describe today’s final round of the Masters.

If there is a playoff, and that’s a distinct possibility, it could look like the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby. Each one of the Bogeymen out here is playing at approximately the same speed as peaches ripen, so a multi-player playoff probably wouldn’t end before sunset.

Hello, Monday?

It was a breezy, cold and thoroughly deflating Saturday at Augusta National Golf Club, where bogeys and double bogeys outnumbered birdies by a margin of more than 3 to 1. This is also the place where you can smell the wood burning in the fireplace of the clubhouse from the first tee.

It would have been a nice fall day if it weren’t April. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that it wasn’t a good day for scoring, except in the negative direction.

When Stuart Appleby made the turn, he was the only player in the field under par for the tournament. Appleby waited until the 17th to realize he was in the wrong place and made a triple bogey.

The 71st Masters is nearing historic proportions. Not a single player is under par after 54 holes. The only other time that’s happened was in 1966.

The scoring average Saturday was more than five shots over par and the second-highest third round in 25 years.

To spin an old phrase from the U.S. Open, they weren’t identifying the best players, they were humiliating them.

Tied for the lead after two rounds, Brett Wetterich shot 83 and Tim Clark shot 80.

Phil Mickelson, at six shots over par, is tied for eighth and only four shots out of the lead. Retief Goosen moved up 38 places when he shot a 70, the best round of the day by two shots.

All this brings up the possibility that the winning score could be over par, a situation that hasn’t happened in 51 years. Jackie Burke’s one-over 289 beat Ken Venturi in 1956.

Maybe it’ll be another 51 years to get over this year’s edition, unless something dramatic happens, such as a victory by Tiger Woods.

It’s the fault of the course, of course. This is the first time Augusta National has played under the conditions the tournament committee was looking for since 1999, when they began toughening up the place, adding 500 yards and about “a billion” trees, according to Woods.

Firm, fast greens, pin positions you need radar to locate, enough rough to snap you to attention and a steady breeze turned the course into a bogey-making machine.

Mickelson said it was the toughest he has seen.

Stewart Cink said that when the wind blew, he almost closed his eyes when he swung.

Rich Beem said it was like trying to land a golf ball on your driveway.

Augusta National without birdies has a library quietness to it, and the famous Augusta roars from the gallery are too few to number.

Some don’t like that too much, including former champion Fuzzy Zoeller, who called the place “a morgue.”

If you’re keeping track, Woods has won 12 majors, but never when he has trailed going into the last round.

At this point, he has only Appleby in front of him, a situation he had a chance to rectify Saturday but failed to because of a three-putt par at the 15th, a bogey after he drove into the trees at the 17th and then another bogey at the 18th when he missed the green.

Woods also had a bogey-bogey finish Thursday, if that made him feel any better, which it didn’t.

Why was it so difficult? Because it was cold, the ball didn’t travel as far. That left longer shots to the green. And that meant it was more difficult to stop the ball on the firm greens.

Goosen, the only one of 60 players to shoot under par, said there were pin positions he had never seen before, because if they had used the regular ones, they couldn’t play the hole. Case in point was the 10th, where the pin was back left. If it were front left in its normal spot, the hole simply wouldn’t have worked.

What worked was to take your bogey and get off the course.

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thomas.bonk@latimes.com