It rained in Augusta last night. Hard. Which means the greens might play a little soft this morning, and players in the first groups might be able to go low – and get themselves back into this tournament.

And they don’t have that far to go, for only ten strokes separate the first twosome going off this morning (Ryuji Imada and Stuart Appleby) for the last (Chad Campbell and Kenny Perry).

Fortunately, the bad weather, which included thunder storms and tornado warnings, blew through by sunrise, and the outlook today is for mostly sunny skies, with temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s and winds out of the Northwest blowing as much as 15 miles per hour.

In other words, conditions are about perfect. And Sunday is expected to be the same, the only difference being that winds will then come more from the East.

I watched yesterday’s storm pretty intently as I drove back to my hotel from dinner and got particularly concerned when I turned on the Weather Channel in my room and saw there were tornado warnings for parts of this area. So, I called the front desk to ask if there was anything special I should do in a situation like that.

“I didn’t even know there were tornados in the area,” the receptionist said. “We’ve got the Golf Channel on down here, not the Weather Channel.”

Spoken like a true Augustan during Masters week.