Mattiace knew it would take Weir at least forty to forty-five minutes to play the last three holes and that a playoff was a distinct possibility. Traditionally, when a player is tied for the lead late on Sunday after finishing 18 holes, the tournament committee has him taken by cart to the Bobby Jones Cabin, which sits in the woods to the left of the 10th tee. The player doesn’t stop to talk to the media because he is considered to be playing as long as a playoff remains a possibility.
So Mattiace got into a cart with Jack Webber, his caddy, riding on the back, and headed for the Jones cabin. While Mattiace was in transit, Weir hit a shot that made it look as if a playoff might not be needed, absolutely nailing a six-iron shot at 16, the ball landing 10 feet below the hole. Given the way Weir had putted all day, a birdie and a one-shot lead seemed not only possible but likely.
Except that this time he missed—the first putt he had missed from inside 15 feet all day. “It was a putt I thought I could make. I just wasn’t quite as aggressive with it as I’d been with other putts,” Weir said. “Still, I didn’t feel badly. You can’t make every putt, and I had made a lot of them. I just knew I had to grind out the last two holes, hope for a birdie, but make sure I at least went par-par.”
Weir is not one of those players who doesn’t check scoreboards on Sunday. Most players keep a close eye on where they stand on the leaderboard throughout a Sunday round because it can affect decision making, especially coming down the stretch. Every once in a while, a player will make a conscious decision not to check scoreboards, thinking it will somehow make him feel less pressure.
That can be dangerous. At the 1994 British Open, Jesper Parnevik came to the 18th hole needing only a par to—at worst—playoff. Having not looked at a scoreboard all day, he decided he needed to make birdie and played an overly aggressive second shot that led to a bogey. He ended up losing by one shot to Nick Price.
Weir wasn’t about to make that mistake. Throughout the day he had been aware of what Mattiace and everyone else were doing. As he walked to the 17th tee, he knew exactly what the situation was. He knew he was the only man who could take the Masters away from Mattiace.
In the Jones cabin, Mattiace decided that watching Weir and perhaps stiffening up while he watched was probably not the best strategy. He asked to be taken to the range, where he was joined by his longtime teacher Jim McLean. With McLean sitting in a chair and Webber standing nearby, one might have thought the three were having a casual late-afternoon teaching session rather than killing time and trying to stay loose in case Mattiace had to play off to try to win the Masters.
Woods and Olazabal were finishing on 18 as Weir and Maggert walked to the 17th tee. Maggert had somehow not lost his cool after the debacle at 12 and had birdied 14, 15, and 16 to get to two under par, which put him in fifth place. He wasn’t going to win, but no one could dispute his mental toughness.
Woods had never recovered from the gaffe at three and tapped in for a final par and a round of 75. “I thought if I could shoot 65, I’d win the tournament,” he said. “Just like Jack did back in ’86.”
Woods was right: if he had shot 65 he would have won the tournament by one shot.
Back on 17, Weir had split the fairway with his drive and, like Mattiace a little earlier, left himself with a long birdie putt. He charged it five feet past the hole but, not bothered by the miss at 16, made the par putt coming back.
As he walked off the green, Weir felt a surge of pride. He knew the math was simple: If he birdied 18 he would be the Masters champion. If he parred it, he and Mattiace would play off.
“I turned to Butchie and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a real chance to win the Masters in the next few minutes. How great is that?’ ”
Making par or birdie at 18—as Mattiace could attest—was no lock. The character of 18 had been changed radically by the new tee, which was a good 50 yards back from where it once had been. Before Tiger and new equipment, the yawning bunker on the left side of the fairway had been something players had to seriously think about standing on the tee. For most, if a solidly struck tee shot drifted left at all, the bunker came into play. If one aimed too far right, the trees on that side were an issue. Some players took the safe route and layed up with a three-wood before playing a middle iron to the green. Only one player in recent Masters history—Sandy Lyle in 1988—had birdied the 18th to win the tournament, and he had done that from the fairway bunker.
But the new distances players were hitting the ball changed the hole in the late 1990s. Players routinely took driver and blew the ball over the bunker, knowing that even if they lost the ball left, they would still clear the bunker and have a short, relatively easy shot into the green. It was as if the bunker had become invisible.
That wasn’t the case from the new tee. Many players couldn’t reach the bunker, and those who could often went back to the old play of hitting three-wood off the tee. Weir had no idea that there had been only one birdie at 18 all day, and if he had he wouldn’t have cared. All he knew was that he needed to make sure his drive found the fairway.
It did, coming up short of the bunker to a safe spot. He still had 199 yards to the flag and chose a four-iron, knowing that if he came up short of the ridge, the ball would roll back to the front of the green.
“I thought I had enough,” he said, “but sometimes, no matter how many times you play the hole, you forget that it’s basically straight uphill from the bunker to the green, and, on that day, the hole was way back. I think the fact that I wasn’t used to playing to that pin position might have been a little bit of a factor. Plus, I didn’t want to go over the green and have to chip back.”
Playing just a little conservatively, Weir watched his shot land on the ridge in the middle of the green and roll backward until it stopped about 50 feet short of the pin. Realistically, that took birdie out of play.
As Weir and Maggert walked up the hill to the 18th green, bathed in cheers, Mattiace was standing on the putting green. He had given up trying to hit balls and decided to hit a few putts so his second warm-up of the day would feel as normal as possible. Most players hit balls on the range before they play, and then go to the putting green—which is almost always near the first tee—to hit some putts before their tee time. Mattiace knew his tee time was probably a few minutes away, so he was on the putting green.
Finding a place to putt wasn’t that easy. The awards ceremony is always held on the putting green, and dozens of chairs and a podium had already been set up in anticipation of what was to come. Mattiace finally found a hole that wasn’t covered by chairs in a corner of the green and hit a few putts. Mostly, though, he watched Weir as he lined up his birdie putt.
Weir knew he had a long uphill putt, and he didn’t want to leave it short. He also knew that most of the day his longer putts had gone past the hole, and he didn’t want to leave himself a downhill putt of any length coming back, simply because downhill putts are tougher to control than uphill putts.
He thought he had rammed the putt when he hit it, but he could see it quickly losing speed as it tracked up the ridge toward the hole. It stopped about six feet short, leaving him a putt similar to the one Mattiace had made for bogey forty-five minutes earlier. Only now Weir had to make it, or, after not three-putting all day, his final memory of the ’03 Masters would be a three-putt on the final hole that cost him a chance to win the tournament.
While Maggert was finishing, Weir stood to the side and waited, his face showing no emotion. Inside, he was churning. When it was his turn, he circled the green, trying to read the putt, but also having a talk with himself.
“Whatever you do now doesn’t change anything you’ve done all day,” he said to himself. “Stay with your routine, make sure you hit a solid putt, and if you do that, whatever happens, you can walk away feeling good about yourself. Just stay in the moment and make the putt—don’t think about what’s going to happen next, one way or the other.”
As he got over the putt he could feel the tension, and he to
ok a deep breath to settle himself down. Finally, amid deafening silence around the green, he drew the putter back, put a perfect stroke on the putt, and watched it go straight into the center of the hole. Just as every putt under 15 feet—other than the one on 16—had been all day, this was a never-in-doubt putt. Weir pulled the ball out of the hole and shook his fist, knowing there was still work to do but extremely satisfied with what he had accomplished in the past four hours.
Mattiace saw the putt go in and forced himself to look down and hit some more putts. He knew he had a few more minutes to wait while Weir signed his scorecard. They would be on the 10th tee—which is only a few yards from the putting green—in a matter of minutes. Soon after that, one would have a green jacket and a place in golf history forever. The other would be, well, the other guy: Dan Pohl to Craig Stadler, Ed Sneed to Fuzzy Zoeller, Scott Hoch to Nick Faldo.
IT WAS A FEW minutes after seven when Weir joined Mattiace on the 10th tee. The two men shook hands and congratulated each other on their play. Mattiace won the draw—reaching into a hat and pulling out the number one—so he had the honor. By now, every inch of possible space outside the ropes was packed with people, fans having raced over from the adjacent 18th hole the instant Weir’s final putt went in.
Bricia Weir was standing outside the ropes at that moment, escorted by a club member. She hadn’t gotten to the golf course until Mike was making the turn. She waved to him as he walked off the 10th tee to let him know she was there. Mike waved back. Later, when they discussed the day, Mike had no memory of seeing her at that moment.
“I was very happy to be out there, but I was trying not to get too caught up in the whole thing,” Bricia said. “I knew what was going on, but it was almost as if I was in denial about what was at stake. I’m not one of those golf wives who analyzes everything her husband is doing. I’ve never gotten into that. When I’m out there, I do try to channel positive energy in Mike’s direction. My hope is it starts with me and ends up coming out of his putter.
“By the time he got to the 18th, I was past being able to pretend this wasn’t a big deal. All you had to do was look around to know. Standing there on the 10th tee when he and Len walked out there, I could definitely feel the tension of the moment.”
Kristen Mattiace wasn’t there. She had walked the entire 18 holes with her family and Len’s family, often standing back from the ropes and listening for sounds, because trying to get close became more difficult as Len moved up the leaderboard. “At the 13th hole, I knew he had to decide whether to go for the green over the water,” she said. “I’m afraid of water. Maybe it’s left over from the 17th hole at TPC in ’98.
“My mother isn’t shy about shouldering her way into a crowd. She worked her way in there, and I said, ‘Is he going for it?’ She said, ‘He’s going for it.’ I thought, ‘Oh God.’ I couldn’t see the ball in the air, but then I heard the roar, and I knew he’d hit a great shot. I remember thinking, ‘Why you little so-and-so, you just might pull this off yet.’ ”
Kristen managed to stay calm as Len negotiated his way—with the lead—from 14 through 17. At 18, her nerves kicked in again. “He’d struggled on the 18th tee all week,” she said. “I knew what a good drive at that moment would mean. It was just a tough driving hole for him. Once he made the putt for bogey, I took off to go to day care to get the kids.
“I knew it would be at least forty-five minutes before there was a playoff or before anything else happened. I wanted to get the kids back there. When I got back and realized there was probably going to be a playoff, I had two thoughts: how in the world is he going to be able to play after waiting that long, and there is no way I can walk down that tenth hole with the girls.”
The men in the green jackets understood and took her to the Bobby Jones Cabin. By then, Len was on the putting green waiting for Weir to finish.
THE TEE WAS COVERED in shadows by now, and Mattiace took his time looking for a spot to tee his ball up. He finally settled on a spot on the far right and, almost an hour after hitting his final tee shot on 18, cracked a perfect drive, drawing it down the middle so it would catch the hill and take a big bounce in the direction of the green. The drive was measured at 307 yards.
Weir decided that Mattiace’s spot was just right for him too, although he had to put the ball down a bit farther from the tee marker since he was left-handed. Weir was trying to become the second left-handed golfer in history to win a major—Bob Charles had been the first when he won the 1963 British Open. Like Weir, Charles was a righty who played the game left-handed. One of golf’s better trick trivia questions is to ask, “Who is the greatest lefty to ever play golf?” The answer is Ben Hogan—a lefty who played right-handed. Mattiace was also a lefty who played right-handed, and, while he had no dreams of matching Hogan, he now had a chance to be something that Hogan had been: a Masters champion.
Weir’s drive was almost identical to Mattiace’s, the ball bouncing down the hill and going exactly one yard farther than Mattiace’s drive had gone. The two men marched down the fairway into the fading sunlight, the temperature dropping as dusk approached. It was a spectacular setting for a moment that meant so much to the two players involved.
Mattiace was away by exactly one yard. The 10th, even though not as famous as some of Augusta National’s other holes, is historically and statistically the toughest hole on the golf course. It has been played through the years to an average of 4.29—one of six holes on the course that has played over par since the Masters began in 1934.
Mattiace had enjoyed more luck on the hole than Weir, having birdied it on both Saturday and Sunday, most recently with the Crenshaw-like 80-footer a couple of hours earlier. Weir had played the hole sixteen times in four Masters and had birdied it just once.
It was a lot cooler now than it had been when the players had come through the hole in the late-afternoon sun. Mattiace pulled a five-iron. He was 188 yards from the hole and, ideally, wanted to draw the ball into the middle of the green, hoping that it would bounce back someplace close to the pin.
Only instead of starting right and moving left, the ball started left and kept going left. In player terminology, he had “overcooked” the draw, the ball flying way left of the target and the green. It took a big hop into the swale left of the green and came to a stop almost directly behind one of the huge loblolly pine trees that casts the green in shadow, especially late in the day.
Mattiace stared at the ball as it headed left and muttered “Damn” when he realized how far off target the shot was. He knew he probably had to figure out a way to get up and down from a very difficult spot because now Weir could play for the center of the green.
Weir did just that, aiming a six-iron at the front of the green, not wanting to do anything fancy with the shot. His shot was right on line, but, much like at 18, he played it a little too conservatively. The ball bounced on the front of the green and skidded to a quick halt about 50 feet below the hole.
Not a great shot but, at that moment, plenty good enough given where Mattiace’s ball was located.
The two men continued their walk down the hill in the direction of the green, cheered every step of the way by the appreciative fans (patrons). As upset as Mattiace was with his second shot, he still paused to tip his white cap in response to the cheers. He walked over to check on his ball, then walked up on the green to survey his shot. It was not an encouraging sight. The flagstick was on the back left, meaning he had very little chance to stop the ball if he landed on the green, and he couldn’t put very much loft on the ball because it might go straight up into the trees and leave him completely dead. If he landed short, there was a distinct possibility that the ball wouldn’t even make it up the hill onto the green.
“It’s almost impossible for him to get this close,” Lanny Wadkins said. “He has to be sure he gets it on the green and hope he can make a 10- or 15-footer to save par.”
That was what Mattiace was thinking. He knew if he left the shot short, he would need a m
iracle chip-in to avoid bogey, and he was fairly certain that Weir wasn’t going to three-putt. He got over the ball and took three quick practice swings and a deep breath before drawing the club back.
His pitch landed on the green, but, even though he had put the ball as close to the fringe as he dared, it skittered all the way across the putting surface, leaving him a 20-foot putt for par.
Weir now had a huge advantage, knowing that if he two-putted he was likely to win the Masters. That advantage created pressure he hadn’t felt until that moment.
“They always teach you in match play to expect your opponent to do something when it’s least expected,” he said. “So, I told myself, ‘Lenny’s going to make the putt.’ I didn’t want to catch myself thinking a two-putt was good enough to win, because when you do that, all of a sudden two-putting can become really hard.”
His putt was on almost the same line as the one Mattiace had made earlier, though not as long. It was going to break hard to the left en route to the hole and pick up speed as it got close. As he lined the putt up, Wadkins noted that the 10th was traditionally one of the faster greens on the golf course because the trees kept it in almost constant shade.
What the players didn’t know—because no one had told them—was that the green had been rolled before the playoff began, making it lightning fast, especially with the close-to-dusk shadows now engulfing it.
Sure enough, trying to make certain he didn’t baby the putt, Weir put too much speed on it. The line was good, but the ball skipped past the hole, leaving him seven feet coming back. Regardless of how good Weir had been on those putts all day, Mattiace clearly had life again.
The problem for Mattiace was that his putt was straight downhill, and, like Weir, he had to assume his opponent wasn’t going to miss if he had a putt to win. He had watched from a few yards away while Weir banged in his putt on 18, a putt that involved a lot more pressure since a miss would have meant defeat. So, he tried to make the putt and, like Weir, put too much speed on it, especially given that it was downhill and playing fast.
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