Moment of Glory

by John Feinstein

  Mattiace had finished 84th on the 2001 money list, so he wasn’t invited to the 2002 Masters even after his victory in Los Angeles. Until that point he had only played in six majors in his career, starting with that 1988 Masters when he had been, as he described it, “a young college stud.”

  It had taken him fourteen years to get from there to winning on the PGA Tour. Some players, even very good ones, never get that first tour win. All who do will tell you the same thing: the first win makes you feel as if you truly belong. Loren Roberts, who would go on to win eight times on the tour and has been a star on the Champions Tour since turning fifty, was almost thirty-nine when he won for the first time.

  “Until you walk out on a Sunday evening holding a trophy, you feel almost like a day worker out here,” Roberts said at the time. “Once you’ve won, you know you’re a [PGA Tour] member for life, and you feel as if you’ve proven that you belong, really belong.”

  Mattiace was thirty-four when he broke through, and he felt much the same way Roberts had felt. Brimming with new-found confidence, Mattiace won again at Memphis in June, charging from behind on Sunday just as he had done in Los Angeles, shooting a 64 to again come from seven shots back to win. That victory wrapped up a spot for him in the ’03 Masters because it ensured that he would finish in the top 40 on the money list.

  “Everything really does change when you win a tournament,” Kristen said. “It’s not just financial. It’s the way people look at you, the way they treat you. There is definitely a hierarchy among the wives, just like there’s one among the players. I remember when Len was a rookie on tour, I was invited to a wives’ luncheon. They asked all of us to stand up and say who we were and who we were married to. I stood up and said, ‘I’m Kristen, and I’m married to Greg Norman.’

  “Of course they all knew that wasn’t true—Greg wasn’t even playing that week for one thing. Afterward a lot of the older wives came up and said, ‘Why did you say that?’ I told them it was because I knew they’d like me better if I was Greg Norman’s wife.”

  By the end of the year, Mattiace had won just under $2.2 million, almost triple the money he had made in his previous best year ($762,000 in 2000), and had finished 18th on the money list. That performance guaranteed that he would get the chance to play in all four majors for the first time in his career.

  Unlike Mike Weir, who had not played especially well in 2002 but had started 2003 as well as any player in the world not named Woods, Mattiace had not gotten off to that good of a start. In fact, his only top-10 finish had come in Los Angeles, where he had tied for eighth while defending the title he had won the year before. Nonetheless, just being back in the Masters made him feel good about himself and his golf. Having learned from experience that taking a spot in the Masters for granted was a mistake, Mattiace planned to make the most of the opportunity.

  Weir was in his fourth straight Masters and wasn’t thinking so much in terms of getting to come back as improving on past performance. “I’d been consistently mediocre,” he said, laughing. He was right: his previous finishes had been a tie for 28th, a tie for 27th, and the high-water mark tie for 24th.

  Prior to arriving in Augusta, Weir decided to make one change to his Masters week routine. Like most players, he had always rented a house for the week. Weir’s family and a couple of close friends shared the house with him, and everyone enjoyed the camaraderie of spending time together each night.

  “We had a pretty good routine going,” he said. “We’d cook out if the weather was nice, sit around, maybe drink a few beers, and tell stories after dinner. It was always fun.”

  For his fourth Masters, Weir rented the same house once again. The usual suspects would be there, but Bricia and the kids would stay home because it was just too much work to travel cross-country with such young children. This time, though, when dinner was over, Weir’s plan was to sit around for a while and then leave—for a hotel.

  “I just thought I’d sleep a little bit longer and maybe a little bit better,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily going to be as much fun, but I wanted this Masters to be more than just fun.”

  In a sense, he was in a better position now than he had ever been in before going into the tournament. The two victories had been worth more than $1.6 million, and if he didn’t win another nickel all year he had made enough money to clinch a spot in the 2004 Masters. All he had to do was worry about playing the best golf he was capable of playing. He went to bed in his hotel room on Wednesday night convinced he had a chance to seriously contend.

  Of course, his name was hardly on the lips of any of the prognosticators. Tiger Woods—absolutely. Phil Mickelson, who had finished third two years in a row? Sure. Vijay Singh, another past champion; Ernie Els, who had won three majors and been achingly close at Augusta in the past; Davis Love III; Fred Couples; even Rich Beem who had won the last major played—the 2002 PGA—were all names being mentioned.

  But Mike Weir? Nice player having a nice year but on the new supersized Augusta National (it now played 7,290 yards as opposed to the 6,925 it had played to when Woods won in 1997), a short, straight hitter had little chance. The same was true for Len Mattiace, who would, no doubt, be thrilled to finish in the top 16 and earn a return visit in 2004.

  Woods was trying to become the first player in history to win the Masters three straight years. That was the story when everyone woke up on Thursday morning. It would be part of the story all weekend. But the tournament would not unfold the way anyone had imagined.

  5

  Battle Royal

  THE SCENE WAS SET for a battle in Augusta, but the battlefield was in questionable shape. It had rained overnight, and it was still raining Thursday morning when the players woke up to prepare for their scheduled tee times. The tournament’s planned eight o’clock start was pushed back to 10:50 in the hope that the weather would clear long enough to get some play in.

  The rain did stop briefly, long enough for players with early tee times to hit a few balls on the range, but then the skies opened up again. By 11 a.m. the decision had been made to send everyone home for the day and try to get the golf course into playable shape so that players could be sent off two tees at 7:30 Friday morning. It was the first time since 1939 that the opening round had been completely washed out by rain.

  The Masters doesn’t like to break with tradition, and starting before eight in the morning and having players tee off on both the front and back nines simply isn’t done, unless there’s no choice. In this case, the weather forced a break in tradition.

  Several years earlier, the club had abandoned the notion that it could play the entire tournament in twosomes and re-pair after the first round. Almost all golf tournaments send players out in threesomes for the first 36 holes and do not re-pair until the start of the third round, when the players are sent out in twosomes, the worst scores playing first, the best scores last.

  Because pace of play on the PGA Tour had slowed so much throughout the 1990s, in 1999 the Masters finally gave up on twosomes for the first 36 holes, instead shifting to the more traditional threesomes and not re-pairing until after the second round when the cut had been made. But everyone still went off the first tee on Thursday and Friday rather than off the first and 10th as was done at most PGA Tour events. The Masters could afford the one-tee start because it rarely had more than ninety players in the field, compared to the 144 or 156 (depending on the time of year) in most other tournaments.

  But the Thursday rainout left the Lords of Augusta with no choice: If players wanted to have any chance to complete the tournament by Sunday evening, they would have to start early Friday, go off two tees, and play as many holes as possible before it got dark Friday evening. The plan was to complete the second round on Saturday morning and—weather permitting—be back on schedule by the end of the third round Saturday evening.

  The conditions weren’t pleasant Friday morning. The weather was still misty, and the temperature was in the forties when the players began warm
ing up shortly after sunrise. The golf course would play long and hard because of the wet conditions, and walking up and down the Augusta hills would certainly not be a treat, especially since everyone expected to play at least 27 holes by day’s end.

  “Not exactly the ideal way to start a major,” Mike Weir said. “But it was the same for everybody.”

  Weir was paired for the first two rounds with two-time Masters champion Tom Watson and Irish Ryder Cupper Padraig Harrington.

  For Weir and his caddy, Brennan Little, the pairing was both difficult and poignant. Bruce Edwards, who had been Watson’s caddy for most of thirty years, had been diagnosed in January with ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. Everyone in golf knew that Edwards had been handed a death sentence, and, in spite of his brave promises to caddy for Watson for another thirty years, they knew this would almost surely be Edwards’s last Masters on Watson’s bag.

  “You could see how he was struggling, especially during that long day on Friday,” Weir said. “He was having trouble talking, and even though he would never admit it, you could see how tired he was getting, especially towards the end of the day. I was actually kind of relieved when it finally got dark and we had to stop.”

  Weir played very solidly throughout the day. He shot a two-under-par 70 in the first round, which put him four shots behind leader Darren Clarke but only one shot behind Sergio Garcia and U.S. Amateur champion Ricky Barnes, who were tied for second place with 69s.

  Weir’s group was able to play 12 holes in the afternoon—going off the 10th tee—and by the time the horn blew at dusk, stopping play for the day, Weir was three under par on his second round and leading the tournament at five under par.

  “I felt good all day,” he said later. “I was finding fairways, which was important, because you didn’t want to play out of the rough, even the Augusta rough, with the golf course so wet. And my putter was there right from the beginning. That gave me a real jolt of confidence.”

  ONE PERSON NOT FEELING at all confident when the horn blew on Friday was Tiger Woods. Right from the start, he had struggled. He wasn’t finding fairways with any consistency—and Augusta’s fairways are about as wide as any in golf—and he wasn’t making putts to save par the way he always seemed to do when he was in control of his game.

  He shot a horrific, four-over-par 76 the first 18 holes, his worst round at Augusta as a professional, and was still four over par after 27 holes when play was stopped. As the players trudged wearily to their cars, knowing they all had to return to take their places on the golf course at 8:20 the next morning, Woods trailed Weir by nine shots and was in danger of missing the cut if he didn’t get his game in gear.

  Woods’s play—not the play of Weir or of any of the other players near the lead—was the talk of the tournament that night. No one could remember seeing Woods fight his swing for so long at Augusta National since his win in 1997. That year, he had shot 40 on his first nine holes, only to come back and shoot 30 on the back nine. He had taken the lead on Friday afternoon that year and never looked back. After he had finished off his stunning 12-shot victory, he had been asked if there was any way he could have played better.

  “Well,” he said with a shrug, “I did shoot 40 on my first nine holes.”

  Because of who he is, no one was ready to count Woods out at the end of the first day. Nine shots down with two and a half rounds to go was not impossible for him. He had once come from eight shots down in the final round in a tournament overseas, catching Ernie Els—not exactly a club pro—to win.

  That said, no one had been prepared for the possibility that Woods would be fighting to make the cut on Saturday morning. He had missed the cut as an amateur in 1996 but since turning pro had been out of the top 10 just once in six Masters. He had three wins, a fifth, a tie for eighth, and a tie for 18th in 1999 when he had been going through his first major swing change. Now he was struggling to make the top 44 and ties (or to stay within 10 shots of Weir since the Masters has a 10-shot rule that allows anyone within 10 of the leader to play the last two rounds) in order to make the cut.

  Len Mattiace hadn’t played much better than Woods on Friday, but, at the very least, he appeared to be in good shape to make the cut. He had shot a one-over-par 73 in the first round and was at three-over-par for the tournament, with four holes to play at dusk. It appeared that the cut would come at four or five over par and that it would be the top 44 and ties, because there were not that many players within 10 shots of Weir’s lead.

  Saturday dawned clear and sunny, an almost perfect day for golf. The temperature was still a bit cool—in the low sixties—when the players returned to the spots where they had been when play was called, but the day was warming quickly with no clouds in sight.

  Weir finished his second round solidly, shooting a four-under-par 68, which put him at six under par for 36 holes. No one else had been able to handle the new supersized golf course the way he had. Clarke had spun back after his 66, shooting 76, but was still in second place, trailing Weir by four shots. Phil Mickelson had shot 70 in the second round—only three players had broken 70, the same number as in the first round on the long, wet golf course—and had jumped into a tie for third at one under par with Ricky Barnes, the U.S. Amateur champion who had outplayed Woods while paired with him for two days.

  Woods’s Saturday morning was a lot like his Friday had been. While everyone waited for him to make a move, he appeared to be running in place. He had teed off on the 10th hole for the second round, meaning he would finish his round on the ninth green. He arrived at the eighth tee appearing to be safely inside the cut line at four over par. The cut was almost certain to be five over at that point. Since the par-five eighth is a birdie hole for most players—more so for a long hitter like Woods—it seemed out of the question that Woods would play the final two holes at anything worse than even par.

  That almost wasn’t the case. Woods’s drive missed the fairway at the eighth, and he had to lay up rather than go for the green in two. He hit a mediocre third shot to 50 feet and then, shockingly, three-putted for a bogey six. Instead of making birdie to have a two-shot cushion on the cut going into the ninth, he now had to par the ninth to make the cut. By now it was late morning, the course was bathed in brilliant sunshine, and thousands of spectators—most of them stunned by what they were seeing—were ringing the ninth green waiting for Woods.

  The ninth is a deceptively difficult hole. It isn’t very long—460 yards with a drive straight down a hill—but the second shot is straight uphill, a blind shot to a tricky green that tilts back to front. Land a shot too close to the front, and the ball will spin right off the green and roll down the hill. Land it too far back, especially with a front-hole location, and you can be left with a very long putt that can twist in four different directions before it reaches the hole.

  The flag that morning was front right, almost a sucker pin in the sense that a player trying to hit a shot directly at it could easily watch his shot land a few feet from the pin and roll back down the hill in front of the green.

  Woods had no chance to fire at the flag because he pushed his drive into the pine straw underneath the grove of trees to the right of the fairway. From there, he had to try to punch a shot toward the left corner of the green, hoping to somehow get the ball up on the green and then stop it before it rolled all the way over. It was the kind of Houdini-like shot Woods has made famous.

  Only this time, Woods wasn’t Houdini—he was human. The ball rocketed out of the trees, left of the green all the way, finishing in the left bunker. That made the math quite simple: Woods had to get up and down for par, or, for the first time in the twenty-five majors he had played as a pro, he would fail to make the cut.

  The good news for Woods was that he had a lot of green to work with. He set his feet carefully and hit a wonderful shot from the bunker to within four feet of the hole. Not exactly a tap-in, but the kind of putt Woods rarely misses under pressure. This time was no exception: he rammed the putt into the
center of the hole, took a deep breath, and headed to the champions locker room for a quick lunch.

  WOODS WAS ONE OF the last players to finish the second round. There was a break of an hour and forty-five minutes before the third round began. Only four players were under par after 36 holes, led by Weir at six under. Then came Clarke, Mickelson, and Barnes, who not only held up quite well playing with Woods but had outplayed him by six shots. There was a host of big-name chasers not much further behind. Vijay Singh, two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal, and David Toms were among those at even par, and K. J. Choi, Jeff Maggert, and Ernie Els—who had shot 79–66—were at one-over-par 145. Len Mattiace had made the cut with two shots to spare at three-over-par 147.

  When the players returned to start the third round at 12:50 in the afternoon, they found completely different conditions. The sun had dried the course, but it was still soft, meaning players could fire shots at flags knowing the ball was likely to stop quickly. The temperature was warm, now approaching eighty degrees, and the breeze was gentle. Ideal conditions for scoring.

  Not surprisingly, the player who took advantage of the conditions first and foremost was Woods. Right from the start, playing in one of the first groups on the course, he looked like a different player. Starting on the 10th tee—the players again went off two tees in order to try to finish the round before dark—he drained a long birdie putt on the 11th and was off to the races. By the time he returned to the ninth green for the second time that day, he was six under par for the afternoon and was one under par for the tournament.

  That put Woods on the leaderboard and had people talking about the greatest comebacks in major championship history. He had made up nine of the 11 shots by which he had trailed Weir, who struggled to a 75 in the afternoon round. That left Weir in second place at three under par behind the new leader, Jeff Maggert. Often a contender in major championships but never a winner, Maggert, who had birdied five of the last seven holes after a double bogey on the 11th, had equaled Woods in the third round with a 66 of his own and had jumped to the top of the leaderboard at five under par.