I wrote a piece on The Masters this time last year.
What a stunning tournament it was and I am re-posting
it just to add to the stimulation and anticipation that is out there as we wait
for The Masters 2017.
The field is looking great and it’s beyond exciting as
we wait for the cliff-hanger moments over the next few days. No matter how much the sun may shine
and the call of the great outdoors beckons, I shall be glued to my telly,
scrutinising every move.
To Augusta, The Masters 2017 and the first major of
the golf season: bottoms up.
That (DAM) Masters
Anyone who’s anybody has
written something about somebody when it comes to The Masters - The Masters
2016, that is. The one that took
place seventh to tenth of April and is now packed up, all clean and shiny in
its Augusta foil wrap, and stowed away till next year. It’s done and dusted for most - but not
so me. I’m a “nobody” who has
nothing much to say about anybody, and I’m a bit slow off the mark when it
comes to in-your-face cutting edge commentary but that never stopped me and I
find I do have some things to say about some bodies, no matter how late it is.
There’s a defining
moment in every event – the one that sears itself into the memory bank, like a
hot knife through butter, to render it the key to unlocking all the other
memories associated with that event.
We’re talking memory map here and in the future, when The Masters 2016
has disappeared into the haze of history, I could not help but wonder what key
figure or feature would outshine all others and give this year’s Augusta its
pivotal moment of indelibility eons down the line.
Straight off the first
tee, Ernie Els was in contention for that “Defining Augusta Moment” (DAM)
title. Bang went his putter on the
first green. Six feet from the
hole, six times it pendulum-ed – or rather it yipping-well didn’t – and before
you could shout “Hammer House of Horrors”, his yip-blip, heebie-jeebies,
snakes-in-his-head moment had gone viral.
In a few deeply embarrassing swings of a putter, Ernie had morphed from
The Big Easy to The Big Difficulty and earned himself an ignoble first place in
The Masters’ records by carding a nine on a par-4. Oh my, he makes my game look professional!
Not satisfied with his
first day’s performance, second day out on the same hole, the endearingly
lovely Mr Els had another pop at destroying the record books at Augusta and
attempted to capture that DAM title again: he eventually finished the hole for
a double bogey six – three less than the day before - but only after he had
brained an unsuspecting spectator with a wayward second shot and that ended up
way left of the green. The magic
in those moments was not the extraordinarily high score but the grit of a man
whose love for the game and the venue kept him from belly crawling back to the
clubhouse in a red embarrassed blush and fortified him to stay and play the
entire round in the presence of Jason Day, knowing his every moved was being
televised. I died a thousand
deaths for him.
Next, Rickie Fowler gave
it his best shot. Rickie may hit
the greens in regulation with regularity but nobody could accuse him of
regularity when it comes to the regulation dress code. Like his golf, this dude has gone a
fair way to spicing up the somewhat stodgy, stale image of golf’s dress code
but, while he looked hot to trot out there on the august Augusta course, his
game was cool – that’s “cool” in the Oxford dictionary meaning of the word and
before the Urban dictionary had a shot at redefining it. Having carded 80 and 73 in his outings,
the nearest Rickie came to reaching that DAM moment was the speed with which he
exited at the cut. Rickie, get the
heat on in your game to make it through all four rounds. You are fun to watch.
Ripping it off the tee
box next came the triumvirate charge of Ireland’s Lowry, America’s Love III and
South Africa’s Oosthuizen
with a clutch of aces on the 16th in the
final round - and all within a two-hour space. Lowry showed the way with a perfectly pitched shot, followed
by the Love attempt. By that time,
the commentators were yawning and explaining to anyone who’d listen that it was
way too DAM easy to hole-out here until Louis threw a curved ball into the
equation by copping an “assist” on the green from the already well-placed ball
of his playing partner, JB Holmes, and made it look, for a tottering moment at
least, that he had abandoned his game of golf and was engaged in France’s
ancient game of pétanque as he cannoned his ball into JB’s and took the
deflection off it to sink his hole-in-one. That silenced the pundits’ yawns and lit up our
screens. Amen to those DAM aces,
Hat Trick Boys. Just keep them
coming.
The Jordan of Israel has
a record of biblical proportions.
The Jordan of golf has an equally biblical record. And it seemed a fittingly biblical
place that golfer Jordan’s game began to unravel at the aptly named Amen
Corner. So be it. That young man, seemingly possessed of
the patience of Job, had played a pretty faultless game till then but,
critically, dropped a point at hole 10; he dropped a point at the next hole
too. However, these bumps in the
landscape of Jordan’s game merely serve to re-focus him in a bounce-back run
that will always keep him in contention.
That’s the nature of his play.
That’s what we all expected.
That’s what should have happened – and it so easily could - but nobody
reckoned with Augusta’s most iconic hole deciding to re-assert its trickery and
pound out a new chapter in tournament history by scuppering Speith’s chance at
a consecutive green jacket. Twice
in Rae’s Creek went his ball while taking a divot the size of Mount Ararat on
his second “water” shot. The 80th
edition of the Masters could well be remember for that episode and, while
Jordan re-wrote the record books for the second year running, it was not the
sort of record he wanted to write this time out. Not by a long, card-shattering DAM shot! I usually shout advice at the telly but
I was beyond silence at this point.
And then came Danny
Willett and his grinder’s grit.
Flashing Sheffield steel and a white head-to-toe outfit, he plugged
away. Son of a preacher man,
Danny’s a Christian with a baby fresh out of the oven called Zachariah
(meaning: Yahweh has remembered) who happened to be playing the final round in
Augusta on his wife’s birthday and baby Zach’s original due date: oh Danny Boy,
who says there wasn’t biblical forces at play here too? Providence provided, it would
seem. Whether or not there was
divine intervention working in his favour, Danny Willett had the chutzpah to
confirm himself the implausible champion of The Masters 2016. He already had a Masters-green shirt
underneath that white outfit and all he needed was that Masters-green jacket to
complete his bedazzling look. He
DAM well succeeded. I am in awe.
But the other hero of
the hour never left England and provided us with rich tweets that defined every
passing DAM shot that Danny executed on the home run. As we watched those closing holes, hanging on the edge of
our seats, willing Willett to the win as he made three birdies on his final six
holes, his brilliant brother PJ ribbed and ripped us with his hilariously
insightful comments.
“Speith is lining up his
putt. If I’m quick, I can get a
beer, go to the toilet, and paint the spare room before he hits it.”
“Speith, you’ve won one
before. Wind your neck in.”
“Green makes you look
fat. Refuse the jacket.”
“If the boy does what he
should, I will be able to say “I’ve shared a bath with a Masters’ winner”. Brilliant.”
“Three putt this and you
might as well stay in America.”
And we laughed and cried
our way through those riotously pride, love and rivalry-filled comments as
Danny stormed it through those Defining Augusta Moments to the coveted green
jacket.
And that DAM win is best
expressed by PJ’s summation on Danny -
“Speechless. I once punched that kid in the head for
hurting my pet rat. Now look.”
Willett & Bro: I
can’t wait for the next outing of you winsome, wise, and wonderful wags. Roll on the US Open but I shudder to
think what PJ will make of the Ryder Cup.
After all, he won Twitter #TheMasters but he could break America with
his #RyderCup comments.
Bring it on.
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