The battle zone was deceptively angelic. It had magnolias and dogwoods and azaleas. It had running brooks and calm ponds. It had concession stands selling ice creams and lemonade, the real thing.

Yesterday afternoon, though, within 11 minutes of each other, two Irishmen trudged up the hill that is the 18th fairway at Augusta National and they were battered and bruised and utterly defeated by a course that had shown no mercy.

Paul McGinley, a two-time Ryder Cup hero and seasoned professional, signed for 78; Brian McElhinney, who had conquered the best amateurs in the world to claim the British Amateur championship and earn an invitation to the US Masters, put his name to an 80. At different ends of the learning curve that is tournament golf, both took the hits and accepted that sometimes this is just how it is.

"It's a major championship, I have no complaints about the course. It's a major championship and that's the test you're being asked (to face)," said McGinley, who was put on the back foot within seconds of hitting his first drive. As he watched the ball curl left towards the towering, cathedral pine trees that line the hole, the Dubliner could only hope for a lucky ricochet or a kindly bounce. Neither came his way.

When McGinley got to his ball, he was faced with two options. Either play out sideways towards the fairway and have a four-iron approach to an elevated, rock-hard green. Instead, he decided to gamble, and it backfired. His shot cracked off one tree and then another, and he failed to find the green with his third. A pitch and two putts later, and McGinley was walking off the first with a double-bogey six.

Right decision? "I had a two-yard gap (between trees) and I thought it was worth the gamble," he replied.

On this course more than any other, you can't afford to be put on the back foot. "It was a horrendous start," agreed McGinley. "To be honest, I was fighting to break 80 out there - and it's tough when everything is so difficult. I can't blame the golf course. The quality of my golf wasn't good enough and my short game was very poor. Actually my long game wasn't that bad, but my short game was appalling. I got off on the wrong foot, but it's not all despair."

McGinley has recovered from poor starts in majors before to make the cut, which is now his principal aim. In the 2003 British Open, he opened with a 77 but survived to play all four days.

If there was any solace for McElhinney, it was the way he redeemed himself over the closing six holes which he covered in one-under, a run of five pars and the only birdie of his round which came on the 16th where he holed from 15 feet.

"It's the kind of place where you have to think all the time," said the 23-year-old amateur. "If you get into any sort of bogey run it is so hard to stop it, because there's no real holes out there that you can be guaranteed a par," added McElhinney. "You have to work for it.

"It was a bit scary. It was scary enough going on to the 13th tee, and I was nine over at the time. It's the kind of course that will just jump up and bite you from any angle."

McElhinney, who has proven his quality with wins in the European and British Amateur championships in the past three years, felt he didn't get the speed of the greens until late in his round.

"I'll just try and start off the way I finished, try to get it going a little bit earlier (in the second round). I feel as if I am playing well enough to get it going," said the Donegalman, a member of North West.

Still, McElhinney did manage to have "some fun", as he put it, on his Masters debut, and was thrilled to be paired with five-time British Open champion Tom Watson and current US Open champion Michael Campbell.

"Brian is a very nice young gentleman and it was a pleasure to meet him," said Watson. "He did make some fundamental mistakes that you don't make if you have played the golf course a bunch of times - though you don't win the British Amateur through luck to get yourself here, especially as Brian did in the wind at Birkdale."