AUGUSTA, Ga. – Close your eyes, take a deep breath and repeat after me: “It’s just a golf tournament. It’s just a golf tournament.” Go to Dorothy’s playbook, with a twist: “There’s no place like home. . . but lots of places like Augusta National.” Click your heels three times, if you think it’ll help.
Greg Norman could have used that advice. He blew a six-shot lead in the first 11 holes on Masters Sunday 1996. It was like watching a marathoner pull a hamstring on Mile 26.
Jordan Spieth should have been clicking his spikes on that Sunday afternoon in 2016, when he went bogey-bogey-quadruple bogey on 10, 11, and 12, blowing a five-shot lead in about half an hour. Stephen King has never been more frightening than Spieth was at the par-3 12th, where he dropped two balls into Rae’s Creek and made a seven.
Just like the rest of us would.
Maybe the best (or worst) was Rory McIlroy, Masters Sunday, 2011. Standing on the 10th tee, McIlroy led by a shot. Then he hooked his tee ball into the backyard between the Peek and Berckmans cabins. The shot was so unfortunate, TV viewers had never seen the cabins where McIlroy’s ball landed.
His attempt to pitch out hit a tree and his eventual triple-bogey took him out of the championship. McIlroy’s still looking for a green jacket.
There are any number of ways to lose the tournament. An uncooperative putter. Second shots that are less than surgical and leave a player with no chance at a makeable birdie putt. A gust of wind at the worst possible time. A failure of nerve.
And the mystique. It’s as real as the palm tree near the 4th green.
The lore and history wrap players’ brains in a wisteria vine. They might know Bobby Jones as the kid who lived up the street and wore black socks in gym class, but they quickly learn otherwise. If only this were Augusta National Goat Track.
The set-up might be identical, but the scores would be dramatically lower. And Greg Norman would have a green jacket.
“I don’t feel this tournament is the hardest to win, by any means,” Spieth said Tuesday. “But this has that added level of legacy to it, that tournament we all grew up watching, our generation watching Tiger makes those putts to win. We’d go right out to the 18th green with our buddies and pretend we had that putt to win the Masters, right?
“If you can almost dumb it down to, ‘I’m just playing against these guys like I do every week,’ it makes you a little more comfortable.”
A secret to winning the Masters is not to set out to win the Masters. If you can’t control that competitive urge, at least learn to manage it. Tiger Woods hasn’t won the Masters five times because he has always been that much better than everyone else. He has won five times because he has a unique ability to channel all that want into amazing golf shots.
The great tennis champion Ivan Lendl never won Wimbledon, an obsession that tortured him so much. He literally had a grass court built on the grounds of his Connecticut estate. He still never won Wimbledon.
Golf’s current version of Lendl is McIlroy. He’s just 32 years old and already has played 13 Masters. He has six top-10 finishes. He has the game to win here: Long off the tee, an excellent iron player and putter. The best he has done is 4th.
McIlroy has taken to using the familiar trick of downplaying the significance of winning, offering verbal shrugs at the prospect. “I’m maybe at a different stage of my life now,” he said. “Back then, golf was everything. I didn’t know if I would feel like I was fulfilled if I didn’t win” the Masters.
Now, McIlroy says losing the Masters is OK. Does anyone believe him?
He said the player who wins will be patient and disciplined and not let his reach exceed his grasp. “You don’t have to do anything spectacular,” was McIlroy’s opinion. Only sometimes, you do. But daring greatly requires a head free of legacy, lore, and ghosts.
Collin Morikawa is playing in his third Masters. He respects golf and the event. But he isn’t on bended knee at the mention of Bobby Jones. “That’s what happens to a lot of people,’’ said Morikawa. “They’re like, this happened here (or) there.
“When I showed up, I was like, OK, here we go. Let’s go play golf at Augusta National.”
Who shoots a better score here this week? I’ll go with Morikawa.
