The preeminent tournament in golf wraps up Saturday and Sunday
in Augusta
This is it. The greatest weekend in golf: The Masters. It may be
golf’s first Major tournament of the year, but this is a unique
case of saving the best for first.
The preeminent tournament in golf wraps up Saturday and Sunday in Augusta
This is it. The greatest weekend in golf: The Masters. It may be golf’s first Major tournament of the year, but this is a unique case of saving the best for first.
Just about the time that you’re deciding whether to lay this column across the bottom of your bird cage as a catch or to use it for a paper Mache project, it will be time for the final round to get underway.
And nothing is better than the final round of the Masters. Even non-golfers watch Sunday afternoon at Augusta.
The high drama and tension at the Masters is almost surreal. Take any other weekly tournament on Tour and magnify it to the 10th power and you’ve got the final round at the Masters.
For starters, it’s the first Major of the year. The $7 million purse doesn’t hurt either. But it’s more than that. It’s even more than the history, tradition, interviews in the Butler Cabin and even the Green Jacket.
What makes the tournament is the course itself – particularly the back nine. It probably wasn’t planned this way – although the back nine did used to be the front nine – but each hole on the back nine is so unique and calls for such precision shots that double bogeys are equally as common as eagles.
As a result golfers go up and down the leader board like riders on the Big Dipper at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Some climb to the top real slowly and methodical. Others bolt to the top with an eagle here and there and others might find the pine needles, Rae’s Creek or the wrong side of a tree and dive off the first page of the leader board.
The best example of this is the par-5 13th hole.
At 510 yards, the 13th can be a driver and a five iron for the guys on the tour with an eagle staring them in the face. Just push or pull the tee shot or come up short on the approach and you’re hiking up the pant leg and taking off the shoes to hit one of the most delicate of pitch shots in golf from Rae’s Creek. An approach shot that lands over the back of the green leads to a downhill chip that calls for stopping the ball on an undulated green that’s more akin to a marble floor that was just waxed.
Most every hole on the back nine is that way.
What it does is force the best golfers in the world to gamble on a shot that could win or lose them the tournament. Even if they want to play conservative, the course is constantly egging them on to take a gamble.
The players know that on any given hole landing a ball in the right spot could result in a tap-in birdie, which makes it tough to pass up on the shot. At the same time, landing that same shot just a half-a-foot the wrong way could result in a 50-foot putt or even a ball that rolls off the fast, undulating greens. In the blink of an eye a player goes from having a birdie put for a three to having a 30-yard pitch for their third shot to the same green that they already landed on with their last shot.
Suddenly, a shot that looked like a birdie try winds up being a white-knuckle bogey, which makes climbing from nowhere up the leader board just as common as falling off the board and landing into oblivion.
In most Tour events players within four shots of the lead on Sunday are the only ones with a realistic chance of winning. At the Masters anyone within seven – even 10 — strokes of the lead has an outside chance of winning the tournament with a good round. And that’s great for the fan because as long as their favorite player makes the cut, he is still in the tournament.
Look what Jack Nicklaus did back in 1986. His final round 65, which included a 30 on the back nine with a bogey at 12, propelled the Golden Bear to a record sixth title, and he wasn’t that close to the lead at the start of the final round.
This year, Tiger will be going for his fifth Green Jacket. Will he do it or won’t he? All I know is that I’ll be watching.
