by Andy Farrell
Though Woods has been the perennial favourite at Augusta for the last decade and a half, Mickelson, with his Normanesque impulse to go for broke, has been no less an important figure in providing drama at the Masters. Between them they dominated, claiming five titles out of six between 2001 and 2006. While there is no question Tiger is respected, Phil is loved. Part of the endearment is because he has messed up so many times. And he admitted when he screwed up. When he drove into the hospitality tents at Winged Foot in the 2006 US Open, and had a double bogey to lose to Geoff Ogilvy by one, he said: ‘I am such an idiot.’ For much of his first 46 majors, he held that unwanted tag of being the best player not to have won one. That changed at Augusta.
In 1996, Mickelson was playing in his fourth Masters. He had been seventh the year before and his eagle now at the 15th, combined with Nobilo bogeying the last to fall to fourth place on his own, gave Mickelson solo third place. ‘It gave me a real good opportunity of experiencing being in contention,’ said the 25-year-old. ‘I had it last year, too. If I can keep putting myself in that position, the odds say I’ll break through sometime.’
He had to be patient. His powerful yet sometimes wild game and his imaginative recovery skills seemed well suited to Augusta and he was already talked about as a champion-in-waiting. He finished 12th in 1998, sixth in 1999, seventh in 2000 and third in each of the next three years. It took his 12th attempt, in 2004, to get it right, after a thrilling ding-dong with Els, who was prowling the putting green waiting for a playoff when he heard the roar that meant Mickelson had holed from 18 feet on the final green and become only the sixth player to win the Masters by birdieing the last hole. ‘Oh, my God!’ he said as he hugged his wife, Amy, and their three children by the side of the green.
Mickelson won again two years later and for a third time in 2010, after a fine duel with Lee Westwood. The crucial shot came at the 13th, from the trees, off the pine straw, through a gap only Mickelson could see, from 207 yards with a six-iron, onto the green. This time the family celebration was all the more emotional since it was the first time Amy had been at a tournament since being diagnosed with breast cancer 11 months earlier.
Before the 2003 Masters, 40 years on since Bob Charles won the Open to become the only left-handed major champion, Mickelson was asked who would be the next lefty to win one. The American was more than a bit peeved and declined to answer. As great irony would have it, Mike Weir won that week to become Canada’s first male major winner and Charles’s successor. With Mickelson winning the following year, Weir sparked a run of five victories by left-handers at Augusta in the ten years up to Bubba Watson’s win in 2012. Given the lack of lefties at the highest level, it marked a gross over-representation and brought forward theories that the course is suited to playing the ‘wrong way round’. Martin Kaymer once said that he wished he ‘could play the other way round’ at Augusta. Mickelson, with a smile, retorted: ‘I would love Martin to play this tournament left-handed.’
As seen in the last chapter, the idea that the course favours players who hit the ball right to left is exaggerated. But recent course changes that require greater precision from players bring in the old Trevino saying that ‘you can talk to a fade but a hook won’t listen’. Luke Donald told the New York Times: ‘I certainly wouldn’t mind having Mickelson’s cut shot off many of those tees.’
‘There are an awful lot of holes that look more inviting if you stand over the ball as a left-hander. The golf course may have always demanded a certain right-to-left ball flight for the right-handed player, but considering where they’ve moved the tees, it’s exaggerated. It’s a harder shot for a right-hander. It’s just much harder to control a right-to-left draw. And when you have to hit it farther and control that shape longer like you do now on this golf course, well, the challenge is greater. It’s easier to set up for a left-to-right fade.’
Mickelson loves the 13th hole but says the 12th is another that gives him an advantage based on his shot dispersion as a left-hander. ‘If I pull a shot and aim at the centre of the green, it’s going to go long right or short left, which is exactly the way the green sits. It’s the opposite of a right-handed shot dispersion, which is why it is such a difficult hole. Long, left is trouble and short, right is in the water. You have to hit a perfect shot.
‘But conversely, 16 plays the exact opposite. It’s probably the hardest shot for me, whereas the average right-hander can aim at the middle of the green and if he pulls it, he still carries the water. If he comes out short, right, a lot of times it’ll catch that swale and come down to give you a chance for a par. Whereas, for me, short, left is in the water and long, right is up top.
‘So shot dispersion does make the golf course play differently depending what side you stand on. However, it seems to be a very equal test. It seems to me there are holes that favour one side but there seem to be an equal number of holes that favour the other.’
When Mickelson won the Open at Muirfield at his 20th attempt in 2013, with a closing 66 that included four birdies in the last six holes, his coach Butch Harmon said: ‘I always thought when Greg [Norman] won in ’93 it was the best round to win an Open. But I think this tops it. When you consider the course was playing so tough, so hard and fast, and the circumstances, to go out and suck it up in the way he did was phenomenal.’
Harmon enjoyed some of the biggest highs in golf working with Norman, Woods and Mickelson but the 1996 Masters was not one of them. Later that summer he parted company from Norman as the Australian tried his luck with Faldo’s tune-up man, David Leadbetter, and Harmon himself concentrated more on Woods. He had few answers as to what happened to the then world number one on that Sunday at Augusta. ‘It was devastating,’ Harmon told Lauren St John in Greg Norman – The Biography. ‘I walked around with Laura and Morgan-Leigh and it was one of those things where, as you watched it happen, you couldn’t believe it. The man had played so well for three rounds. He just had such total control, not only of his swing but of his emotions. He had done everything right and to see it all start to come apart was very difficult for a teacher to watch. More difficult for the hurt that not only he was going through, but his family was.’
As Faldo and Norman approached the green at the 15th, they both received a standing ovation. Temporarily, the mood had lightened again. Both had driven into the fairway and had gone for the green in two. Neither had hit it. Faldo went first, from the shadows cast well into the fairway by the pines on the left. He had 212 yards to the flag and hit a four-iron. It landed at the front of the green but must have hit a patch of ground even harder than the rest of the course. His ball sped on through the green and came to rest down the incline behind it. Norman was hitting from 200 yards with a six-iron and went at the flag, which was on the right edge on the green. He came up a little short and right, just short of the bunker on the right and his ball started rolling back down a bank. The pond awaited but on the line his ball was travelling there was a little dell and it stopped in it, short of the water.
Both men now played delicate chip shots. Norman was first up. ‘If we can make this for eagle, we’ll be right back in it,’ he told his caddie. An eagle would have put the pressure back on Faldo and made his chip look even harder. Norman’s ball ran past the right edge of the hole but pulled up only two feet farther on. It must have looked good all the way because Norman buckled at the knees, fell to the ground and rolled over, a hand instinctively holding the Akubra hat in place. ‘When that chip shot missed, I just went limp,’ he said. ‘My mind left my body and my body left my mind.’
Faldo’s chip was a classic Augusta conundrum – too short or too timid and the ball would come back to his feet; too far and bold and it would never stop before charging down the bank at the front of the green and into the water. He played it as a bump-and-run and it came off perfectly. In Life Swings, he wrote, with all due modesty: ‘With the adrenaline coursing through my veins and my throat like parchment, I made it look ridiculously easy by judging the chip to absol
ute perfection. The ball trickled ever so slowly towards the target, coming to rest three feet from the flag.’
Faldo popped in his putt for a birdie and Norman followed suit. As at the 13th, Norman had done his bit by birdieing the hole for the fourth successive day. Faldo, who played the 15th in two pars and two birdies for the week, had matched him again, however. There had still only been one hole where Norman had gained a stroke on Faldo and that was back at the 5th. Faldo was on 11 under, Norman was 9 under par. There had been no Sarazen magic for the Australian this time round.
Redbud
Hole 16
Yards 170; Par 3
WITH THREE HOLES to play, just one water hazard stood between Nick Faldo and victory at the 60th Masters. Alas, the pond at the 16th also needed to be cleared by Greg Norman in order to avoid total capitulation. It was not to be. For all that the scorecard said there had been nothing to split the pair over the previous three holes, Faldo had matched the Australian’s two birdies at a time when Norman needed a big swing in his direction. Faldo had sensed how critical it was not to let Norman regain any momentum at the par-fives. By covering his opponent there, not giving an inch, his reward was a doubling of his lead from two to four strokes at the 16th. With a six-iron to the heart of the green, safely above ground, the job was done. Ladbrokes in London had Faldo 1-4 and Norman 11-4 after the 15th hole. After the 16th, they closed the book.
The last question at Norman’s press conference that evening was to ask when he finally realised that it was not going to happen this year? He said: ‘16.’ What else could he say?
What he really meant was the start of the 16th hole, not the end. He later admitted to Lauren St John that he knew it was over after the chip at the 15th had not gone in the hole for an eagle. He was about to commit one of golf’s cardinal errors – still thinking about the shot before the one you are actually playing.
After dropping five strokes in four holes, from the 9th to the 12th, Norman responded in the only way he knew how, by going in search of birdies. A two-shot deficit with six holes to play at Augusta is nothing. He was able to pick up a couple of birdies, but they did not do him any good. Had his chip at the 15th gone in for an eagle, who knows what that would have done to Faldo? There might have been a two-shot swing there and they would have been level. But it did not happen. It was a brilliantly played shot and he had just played his best sequence of holes of the day but he could find no encouragement.
In her biography of Norman, St John quoted him as saying: ‘I hit the most perfect shot. I put all my energies into it. I visualised it. Everything I know that I’m good at – feel, not executing till you are ready to go. And then when it didn’t go in, I thought, “Oh, shit.” Then Faldo hit a great shot, too, so I didn’t even make up a shot. So that’s when I knew. And the next shot was indicative of the emotions going out of my system.’
A stream that cut in front of the 16th green was transformed into a pond in 1947 and nearly 50 years later it claimed one of its most celebrated victims. The pond covers the front and left-hand side of the green and the tee shot, due to the angle, is played all the way over the water. On practice days, players entertain the gallery by skimming shots over the surface of the pond, doing a ‘Barnes Wallis’, earning a cheer if a ball skips up onto the green, a groan if it runs out of pace, dies and sinks.
The pin was on the back-left portion of the green. One of the three bunkers around the green protects the back-left section from the pond but Norman’s tee shot was so far left that it missed not just the green but the sand as well. It was the most awful-looking thing and Norman’s eyes only tracked its path for a fraction of its flight before he ducked his head so as not to see the inevitable splash. ‘I just tried to hook a six-iron in there,’ he said, ‘and I hooked it all right.’
Suddenly the brief spark of energy the gallery had tried to instil in Norman had dissipated. Everyone was stunned. Even Faldo lowered his gaze and scratched the back of his head as if trying to figure it all out. ‘It was a riveting unravelling,’ wrote Gary Van Sickle in Golf World (US). ‘You didn’t want to watch but you couldn’t stop watching.’
A deathly hush descended. As the Philadelphia Inquirer stated: ‘If you took any pleasure at all in witnessing that then your heart is as hard as a tombstone.’ Bob Verdi wrote in the Chicago Tribune: ‘It’s quite a feat, strangling yourself in broad daylight while also attempting to swing a golf club.’ The LA Times’s Jim Murray added: ‘There is only one golfer on the planet that can regularly beat Greg Norman in a major tournament. That’s Greg Norman.’
Norman walked forwards, swinging his club round and in front of him along the ground to clean the clubface of any debris. He dropped another ball and hit his third to ten feet, a fine shot under the circumstances but too little, too late.
The traditional Masters Sunday pin at the 16th is very accessible for a hole-in-one; Ray Floyd did just that earlier in the day. He hit a five-iron up the right side of the green, the ball beginning to run out of steam once it was level with the hole and then took a sharp left-hand turn, accelerating down the slope and making a sideway entrance into the cup. ‘I aimed at the TV tower and it never left the line,’ he said.
‘When it first landed, I thought it would stay up on the right. But it got closer and closer, it teetered and teetered, and then there was this crescendo from the crowd, they could see the line. I saw beer, sodas and sandwich wrappers go flying. That’s when I knew it went in. It’s my first hole-in-one here. It’s a nice memory to take home.’ It was the seventh hole-in-one at the 16th in the Masters. It took eight years for there to be another one but then there were eight in nine years.
Faldo’s tee shot at the 16th was on the same line as Floyd’s but it was not long enough to reach the hole. Instead it rolled down the slope from right to left, leaving him a 20-foot putt for a birdie, the most straightforward putt on an otherwise complex green. He would not admit it until the final green but the worst was over now. He would have to do something spectacularly bad to lose it from here.
Norman had already done that for him. As he had stepped up to the tee, Frank Nobilo was being interviewed by Steve Rider on the BBC coverage, saying, ‘I saw Greg on the range this morning. He is bleeding. He is honestly bleeding. His expectations are as high if not higher than everyone else’s for him. He is in a totally unenviable situation. No one would like to be in this situation on this tee right now, blowing a six-shot lead. He’s got to come up with a great shot but, saying that, he is probably the one guy who is capable of it.’
After the tee shot, the commentators threw it back to Nobilo, who added: ‘Obviously, Greg’s had a few bad tee shots today. It’s not an enviable tee shot, when you look at where the pin is, all you really see is the right-hand edge of the trap and you have to hit all the way across the water. Normally, it’s a very makeable shot for Greg. You have to feel for the guy. Right now, he is going through purgatory.’
Two putts from each man brought a par for Faldo and a double bogey five for Norman. Faldo was still at 11 under for the tournament, four under for the round, Norman had slipped back to seven under for the tournament, six over for the day.
Purgatory is what Australians call getting up early on a Monday morning to watch the Masters. It is a long history of disappointment. In 1950, Jim Ferrier led with a round to play but lost by two to Jimmy Demaret after dropping five strokes in the last seven holes. Ferrier started out as a sportswriter who was a successful amateur golfer, winning four Australian Amateur Championships and the Australian Open twice. He then emigrated to America, turned professional and won the US PGA in 1947. But he never prevailed at Augusta, with seven top-seven finishes in 15 appearances.
Bruce Crampton was another Australian who based himself in America. He did not drink or smoke and played every week, in 1964 missing only one tournament when his golf equipment was stolen. He finished second in four major championships, each time to Jack Nicklaus, including the Masters in 1972.
Peter Thom
son, Australia’s most successful major winner with his five Open Championships, played only eight times in the Masters, with a best result of fifth in 1957. He was a master of fast-running courses, imaginatively controlling the ball on the ground, but enjoyed less the game through the air and only spent a small part of his career playing in America. A feeling in that country that he was overrated fuelled a brief but devastating spell on the US Seniors Tour, when he swept away all before him, only to return to other matters such as golf writing and course design.
Kel Nagle won the centenary Open at St Andrews in 1960, stopping Arnold Palmer picking up the third leg of a potential Grand Slam, but in nine appearances at Augusta his best finish was 15th. Jack Newton earned a share of second place at the 1980 Masters with a last round of 68, finishing four adrift of the runaway winner Seve Ballesteros. As well as Norman’s assaults in the 1980s and 90s, Craig Parry was the third-round leader in 1992. But little went right on the final day and a 78 left ‘Popeye’ in a tie for 13th, seven behind Fred Couples.
More recently, in 2007, Stuart Appleby led by one from Woods and Justin Rose but a closing 75 dropped him to joint seventh, four behind winner Zach Johnson. And then in 2011, Australia had two runners-up for the price of one as Adam Scott and Jason Day both had their chances to win only to be pipped by Charl Schwartzel birdieing the last four holes to win by two.
Norman’s three runner-up finishes at Augusta put him alongside Floyd, Tom Watson, Tom Kite and Johnny Miller, and one behind Ben Hogan, Nicklaus and Weiskopf. Weiskopf, Miller and Kite never had the compensation of winning the thing either. During the closing stages of the 1986 Masters, Weiskopf was asked on television what was going through Nicklaus’s mind during his late charge and the 1973 Open champion admitted that if he had any idea he might himself be wearing a green jacket.
