by Andy Farrell
His form early in 1996 was good but nothing special. His goal at the start of the Masters was simply to have a good week. Asked at the end of the week about his form of the last two seasons, during which he had dropped from first to 11th on the world rankings, and his Ryder Cup singles the previous autumn, he said: ‘The game just wasn’t as consistent. One of the things I felt was weak was eight-iron, nine-iron and in. You’ve got to get back to those shots and get them around the hole all the time. I simply didn’t play as well, swing as well. There’s a fine line in this game between shooting 68s and in the 70s.
‘To play at the Ryder Cup and have it partly on my shoulder for a short time was absolutely nerve-racking. That was the biggest pressure I’d played under for a couple of years. It was a good booster. But here, you’ve got to survive for four hours out there. My mouth was sore. I was having to swig water at nearly every shot.’
They say the Masters doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday. It is one of the most familiar clichés in the golfing lexicon, right up there with ‘never up, never in’. Television partly explains this. The Masters was first shown on CBS in America in 1956, with colour being added ten years later to better appreciate the Augusta scenery. At first, only the last few holes were televised. More holes were added over time but it was not until the mid 1970s that the entire back nine could be broadcast.
And although coverage was available from all 18 holes from 1984 onwards, it somehow became the norm to only show the leaders on the back nine – perhaps preceded by the last couple of holes on the front nine – even though it had become standard to show the whole of the leaders’ final rounds at the US Open since 1977. It took until 2002 for the Masters to follow suit. Old habits die hard, however, for many of the local patrons, as spectators at Augusta National are known. If they do not have positions secured on the back nine, many will watch the leaders through the turn and then flood out of the grounds to watch the rest on television.
By 1996, there was plenty of discussion in golf magazines and newspapers about extending the three-hour window for television coverage on the final day. Once again, it was brought up at the pre-tournament press conference given by the Augusta National chairman, Jackson Stephens. The previous year Stephens had promised to look into it. The answer: no change. ‘It’s been studied and the answer is that we’ll just stick with what we do.’ Emphasising that the three-hour broadcast was only interrupted by 12 minutes of commercials, Stephens added of the prospect of any additional airtime: ‘Until we can be sure of the same quality of television presentation, I just don’t think that it deserves further consideration.’ Another year, Stephens was asked if he watched the Super Bowl and replied, in his mighty slow, southern drawl: ‘Fourth quarter.’
Apart from a close finish to a Ryder Cup, the last couple of hours of Masters Sunday are the best golf television there is. But, as 1996 showed, plenty can happen on the front nine that is also essential viewing. Norman could have been out of sight, but instead, another classic afternoon of drama was in store.
It is the course itself, and in particular the sequence of holes on the back nine, that dictates the drama. The front nine plays marginally harder but things tend to happen very quickly after the turn. Historically, the 10th rates as the hardest hole on the course. The 11th is the second hardest and the 12th is the joint-third most difficult. While the third-round leaders, playing last of all, are confronting this stretch of beasts, those playing ahead have reached happier hunting grounds. Two of the next three holes, the reachable par-fives 13 and 15, rank as the two easiest on the course and while the 16th is no pushover, it has seen almost double the number of holes-in-one as the other three par-threes put together.
With this concertina effect, there are certain to be multiple changes on the leaderboard, as players drop shots over the stretch from 10 to 12 and recover them from 13 to 16. But with water in play at the 11th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th, disaster can await anyone so eagles and birdies sit side-by-side with bogeys, double bogeys and worse. Players have won the Masters by charging home in as little as 30 shots – witness Gary Player in 1978 and Jack Nicklaus in 1986 – and after stumbling back to the clubhouse in 40 – Player, again, in 1961, and Craig Stadler in 1982.
‘It is remarkable how rapidly the Masters is transformed from breathtaking sporting pageant among the glories of a Georgian spring into a savage challenge of a player’s ability and an assault on his composure ruthless enough to leave a scar on his soul,’ wrote Peter Corrigan in his preview of the 60th Masters in the Independent on Sunday. ‘The battle for the famous green jacket doesn’t really begin until the final nine holes and by then Augusta National has shed the trappings of paradise and takes on the character of a snake-infested swamp.’
But someone always makes a run and in 1996 it was Frank Nobilo. The Kiwi is the descendant of Italian pirates who made their merry way around their homeland and into the Balkans before decamping for New Zealand. Nobilo, 35, was a regular winner on the European Tour and since 1989 had sported a piratical beard, claiming that whenever he shaved it off he did not play as well. Though bothered by back problems, he had a fine swing and enjoyed playing on courses you could describe as ‘tough but fair’. He had been in the top ten at the last two US Opens and he had a simple answer to questions from the American media about why he was suddenly playing better in the majors – because now he was getting to play in them.
This was his second Masters and, having started the day tied for ninth, he birdied four holes in a row from the 8th. After a particularly fine approach at the 11th, he overshot the green at the short 12th but was on the fringe and elected to putt. He struck the putt far too hard and missed the one back. After his bogey there, he drove into the trees on the right at the 13th, and had to lay up, but holed from more than 20 feet for his fifth birdie in six holes. Nobilo was now five under for the tournament and sharing second place with Phil Mickelson. The left-hander had birdied the 6th to get to seven under, briefly level with Faldo and five behind Norman, but his hoped-for charge never materialised after he bogeyed the next two holes. There was little else to distract from the Faldo-Norman show.
Overall in the 77 Masters up to 2013, 49 of those leading with nine holes to play went on to win, while 37 lost (some inevitably as there can be co-leaders out on the course but not co-winners). Lee Westwood got himself into the lead on the 10th tee in 1999 and then out of it pretty quickly, finishing in a tie for sixth. ‘I felt sick,’ he recalled. ‘I feel nervous like anyone else, but that’s as nervous as I’ve ever felt. I didn’t handle that situation as well as I’d have liked to. That’s the first time I had ever experienced a lead in a major championship, so it’s bound to come as a bit of a shock.’
Norman twice failed to hold on to the lead with nine holes to play at Augusta, as did the last three 63-hole leaders, at time of writing. In 2013 Angel Cabrera went on to lose in a playoff to Adam Scott; the year before Louis Oosthuizen, out in front thanks to his albatross at the 2nd hole, lost in a playoff to Bubba Watson; and in 2011 Rory McIlroy just lost it totally. The young Northern Irishman had led for three days and despite an outward 37 still had his nose in front until his tee shot at the 10th. His drive finished between the Peek Cabin and the Berckmans Cabin – the latter named after the Belgian baron who founded the Fruitland Nurseries on the site in the 1850s – after hooking his drive into one of the 150-year-old pines and getting a horrid bounce backwards and farther left.
Never before had the CBS cameras had to focus their lenses on that area of the course and when they finally picked him out, the long-distance and unsteady pictures only added to the sense that we were intruding on a very private grief. McIlroy hacked his way to a triple-bogey seven, before three-putting the 11th for a bogey, four-putting the 12th for a double bogey and then pulling his drive at the 13th into the tributary of Rae’s Creek that runs up the left-hand side of the fairway. He slumped over his driver, close to tears. It was a desolate image that might have become a defining one. But it
turned out this was the moment the boy became a man. After an 80 he braved the media and said: ‘I just unravelled. It was a character-building day, put it that way.’ And two months later he won the US Open by eight strokes.
The only cabin a golfer in the Masters wants to end up in is the Butler Cabin, where the green jacket ceremony is performed for television. But since McIlroy’s miscue from the 10th tee, the cabins to the left of that fairway have become one of the visitor attractions for patrons, especially those on practice days for whom it might be their only time on the grounds. Another new spot that draws a crowd is way down the hill from the same tee, deep in the trees on the right. This is where Watson ended up when his left-handed drive failed to cut back to the fairway. In the perfect illustration of his self-proclaimed ‘Bubba golf’ – ‘If I have a swing, I have a shot’ – he then hit a miraculous recovery that took a right-hand turn halfway through its flight and ended up on the green. ‘As soon as I saw it, it just set up for a perfect draw, well, hook,’ Watson said. ‘It was only about 15 feet off the ground until it got under the tree and then it started rising, and hooked about 40 yards. Pretty easy.’
For any visitor to the Masters, whether newcomer or veteran, the first few steps onto the course, almost automatically, tend to be down the 10th before going on to catch the familiar vista of Amen Corner that opens up halfway down the 11th fairway. It is a magical walk. When the club opened in 1933, and for the first Masters the following year, this was how a round of golf at Augusta National started as well.
Dr Alister MacKenzie, the famous Scottish architect who designed the course with help from its founder Bobby Jones, originally intended the holes to play as they are numbered today. But just before the opening he and Jones reversed the nines, deciding that what now stands as the front nine was a far superior challenge. However, given that the National is only open in the winter, closing in the harsh southern summer, frost delays were a problem in the dell where Amen Corner sits. By starting on what is now familiar as the front nine, play could get underway earlier and by the time golfers got round to the 11th and 12th the winter sun had made them playable again.
Switching back was a fortunate move for the tournament as it has provided the opportunity for so much drama over the closing stages. But it was soon clear that the 10th hole could be improved. Originally the green sat at the bottom of the descent off the tee, near where the large, sprawling and tentacled bunker lies in the fairway seemingly not in play. It used to be a green-side trap. Moving the green farther back and up an incline made for a stronger hole and also avoided the flooding problems that plagued the original green. The old bunker in the fairway was once reached by a huge drive by Tom Weiskopf and today it is probably in range for the monster hitters – Watson’s drive into the trees was roughly level with the sand – but the hole requires a hard right-to-left shot to take advantage of the tilt of the fairway and the combination of modern driver head and ball are not conducive to shaping such a shot so players tend to hit a draw (or a fade for the lefties) with a three-wood.
When the defending champion at the 60th Masters was asked for his decisive hole at Augusta, Ben Crenshaw nominated the 10th: ‘Because it gets you in the mood for the back nine.’ He might say that, given he holed an outrageous putt from nearly 70 feet on the 10th green on the way to his first Masters victory in 1984. ‘It was absolutely off the charts,’ he said. ‘After it went in, I began to think it might be my day.’
Norman’s history at the hole was not as encouraging. In 1981, his first Masters, he was just off the lead when he hooked into the trees at the 10th and took a double bogey six. Five years later, he had a four-putt on the 10th green for another six on the Friday. On the Sunday, which he had started at the top of the leader-board, he was still in a share of the lead when he took another six at the 10th. His drive hit a tree on the left and he had a long way to go for his second, which he hit short and crooked. He then chipped from behind a pine over the green into a bunker and took three to get down from there. Up by the clubhouse, his wife Laura sighed: ‘Not the 10th again.’
It was the year, of course, of Nicklaus’s last golden afternoon at the Masters and the scene at the 10th was beautifully described by Peter Higgs, the Mail on Sunday golf correspondent who, having a day at leisure with his next deadline almost a week away, had walked the first nine holes with Sandy Lyle, who happened to be playing with Nicklaus. Although tempted to return to the cool of the media centre to watch the rest of the action on television, he made a surprising decision to stay on the course. ‘There seemed little point in trudging out into the countryside to stay with two players who were simply making up the field. But for some reason I did,’ Higgs wrote in an essay in the sporting anthology Moments of Greatness, Touches of Class.
‘The 10th is a wonderful long downhill par-four, which slopes up again to a green shaded by towering pine trees and decorated with dogwood and azaleas. It provided me with a lasting image of the day. I walked down the hill alone as my colleagues had hurried away to meet approaching deadlines or had given up this pair as a lost cause. By the time I reached the green, I had to stretch to see Nicklaus hole a 20-foot putt to go four under par. I remember being singularly unimpressed and having a feeling of contempt for the Americans all around me who were whooping and hollering and shouting: “Go get ’em, Jack”, and “Way to go, Jack.”
‘As I stood there impassively I knew that this man could not possibly win. His fans were making fools of themselves.’ But they weren’t and he could. Higgs walked all 18 holes and saw all 65 shots that day played by the six-time champion and 18-time major winner.
Back to Norman and his adventures at the 10th: when he finished third behind Crenshaw in 1995 the Shark chipped in for a birdie here in the final round and afterwards boldly announced: ‘Anybody who writes that the 10th is my nemesis, I’ll wring their neck.’
In 1996 he parred the hole for the first three days. But it got him again on the Sunday. Faldo had the honour and his drive found the middle of the fairway. Norman hit a three-wood and came up some yards short of the Englishman. Norman’s approach was pulled, though it just stopped on top of a mound on the fringe to the left of the green rather than rolling down the bank towards the gallery. Faldo now stood over his second shot and Dave Marr on the BBC said: ‘This is not a man you want to be giving this much room to, by the way. He is a cold player when he plays and it is beautiful to watch how he takes apart a golf course.’ His nine-iron did not flirt with the left side of the green where the pin was but found the centre of the green, 18 to 20 feet short and right of the hole.
Norman then hit a stiff-wristed chip that came off far too hot and ran on ten feet past the hole. Asked later about his worst couple of mistakes, he would say: ‘If I had my second shot into 9, I’d have that again and just hit it six feet harder. And probably my chip at 10.’ Australian golfer and commentator Jack Newton noted to Golf Digest the comparison with the third hole of the four-hole playoff for the 1989 Open at Royal Troon, which Norman lost to Mark Calcavecchia. ‘Greg birdied the first two holes of the playoff,’ Newton said. ‘Then it got to the 17th hole and he hits it just off the back edge. He could have putted it, hit it with a seven-iron, anything. Instead, he tries to hit a fancy, spinning chip. Seven years later he tried the same fancy chip at the 10th hole in the final round at Augusta. He still wants to play the low-percentage shot he’d play in the first round, and that isn’t the way to win majors.’
Faldo’s birdie putt came up just a few inches short and, momentarily forgetting not to show any emotion, he turned away muttering to himself. But after he had walked up and tapped in for another comfortable, priceless par, the mask of inscrutability was back in place. Norman spent a long time standing over his putt with his left arm dangling freely, trying to ease away the tension, before regripping the putter with both hands. The par-save attempt was a poor one, the ball always on the low side. It was his second bogey in a row but the third hole in a row, and the fourth in five, where Faldo h
ad gained a stroke. The lead was now only one shot.
Lauren St John, of the Sunday Times, saw Norman’s manager Frank Williams ‘rushing numbly down the hill in the sultry heat, panicking about Laura’, Norman’s wife. ‘She’s a wreck,’ Williams said. That evening Faldo was asked when he sensed Norman was really in trouble. ‘I thought 10,’ he said. ‘It was down to a shot. He missed his chip shot, and I felt then we were getting tight.’ He added: ‘Once I realised that Greg was in trouble, then I was just getting harder. Not harder on myself, just doing everything a little bit better. I mean, the pressure was immense.’
Between 1970 and 1995, 20 times out of 26 the leader with nine holes to play went on to win the Masters. The two most recent times that had not been the case were in 1990 (Ray Floyd) and 1989 (Scott Hoch). On both occasions the eventual winner was Faldo.
White Dogwood
Hole 11
Yards 455; Par 4
NICK FALDO’s favourite golf course would be a composite including features such as the coastline at Pebble Beach, the of Augusta and the atmosphere of St Andrews. At the 2013 Open Championship, where Faldo was tempted out of retirement to play in his first event for three years, he added: ‘But then you have to think of memorability and I’ve got a pretty special place right here, the 18th green at Muirfield.’ Faldo won the Open at St Andrews in 1990 at a canter. But for his two victories at Muirfield in 1987 and 1992 he was racing flat-out until the tape, only confirming possession of the claret jug on the 18th green. No wonder it is one of his favourite places in golf.
