Chapter Nine

Sunday, April 13, 1997

This was what I had worked for: a nine-shot lead with one round to go, a situation any golfer would dream of heading into the last round. At the same time, it would be a nightmare to lose such a lead, like Norman had the year before. Losing that big a lead, even though I was still young and relatively inexperienced at Augusta, would follow me the rest of my career. My plan was simple: Make no bogeys and handle the par-5s, and always play the shot so if I miss it, I missed it in the right spot. If I made no bogeys, Costantino would have had to shoot 63 to tie me. If I handled the par-5s and made a couple of birdies, he would have had to shoot 61. Nobody had ever shot 61 in the Masters. Nobody had ever shot 62 at the Masters, or in any major.

I’d read and seen enough about the Masters to know that it was possible to lose a big lead. The six-shot lead that Greg Norman had lost was the most obvious, but there were also other times a big lead had evaporated. Seve in 1980 had a seven-shot lead going into the last round. No way would he lose that big a lead, or at least that was what everybody assumed. He’d won the Open Championship the year before, and, sure, he had only just turned twenty-three during the Masters, but he was already a superstar. His seven-shot lead increased to ten as he headed into Amen Corner on that Sunday after he shot 33 on the front side. But his lead was only three over the Australian player Jack Newton by the time Seve had finished the thirteenth hole. Crazy things could happen down there in Amen Corner: big numbers, birdies, and eagles that could lead to big shifts on the leaderboard. Seve got himself together and ended up winning by four shots, but it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park for him. He was asked what he was thinking after he lost those seven shots, and said, “The fight was on the inside for me. What I say was ‘son of beech.’”

Moving forward to the 2016 Masters, look what happened to Jordan Spieth. He was five shots ahead after the front nine the last day, and he then bogeyed the tenth and eleventh holes and made a quad on the twelfth after hitting his tee shot into Rae’s Creek, then took a drop and hit another ball in there. Meanwhile, Danny Willett was birdieing the thirteenth and fourteenth ahead of him. It took all of forty minutes for Spieth to lose eight shots, and eventually Willett won.

Writing from the vantage point of twenty years after I won the 1997 Masters, I see that the lessons of Augusta keep repeating themselves. My dad was right when we spoke that Saturday night. I would have to play an efficient last round and not get caught up in anything except trying to execute my plan. It had been only a year since I had taken a nine-shot lead into the last round of the NCAA Championships at the Honors Course near Chattanooga and shot 80. I still won the individual title by three shots. But 80? I was angry and disappointed in myself.

I knew something about efficiency, having learned a good lesson when I was eleven years old and playing the Optimist Junior World Championship at Mission Bay Golf Course in San Diego. I came up against a kid who was a few inches taller than I was, and he looked strong. He drove the green on the first hole, a short par-4. I had never seen a kid my age hit the ball that far, and it threw me completely off my game. I basically quit after his tee shot, because I felt I couldn’t beat him.

When I told my dad what happened later, after he got home from work, he asked what I made on the first hole. I made par. He asked what the other kid made. He made birdie. I had mentally quit for the round. Right then and there, Pop told me I couldn’t control what anyone else did, not in golf and not in life. The only things I could control were my heart, my will, and my effort and my own skill. That was part of being efficient, or, maybe, even ruthless. I then won the Junior World the next year, and I won it in every age bracket after that. If I did fail in a tournament—and I did—that was okay as long as I tried my best. Mom and Dad never made me feel pressure to succeed. My job was to give it everything I had, on every shot. Their constant encouragement and belief in me gave me a quiet, strong confidence that I could not only win, but also dominate.

Nothing changed in my routine. We had gone to Arby’s on the way home after the third round, as usual. Then, the night before the final round, I slept really well, getting eight or nine hours. I would usually sleep this well only when I took a lead into the final round of a tournament. My mind was at ease and I had no concerns about my game. There wasn’t much to worry about, because I didn’t think my swing or concentration would leave me. I knew that anything can go wrong anytime in golf, but that was a distant thought. By the time I went to bed, I had banished the notion from my mind that I could lose a nine-shot lead.

My sleeping patterns had started changing when I went to Stanford, because our team was always on the road. We didn’t have matches at home, and Stanford prided itself on putting a semester’s load of work into a quarter. There was only one way: to pull all-nighters. I often pulled two or three all-nighters in a row, to try to catch up. I likened it to when somebody was studying to be a doctor and working twenty hours a day during a residency. You have no choice, and you learn not to sleep. I was also competing against people who were smarter than I was—Stanford was full of brilliant students—and they didn’t have traveling obligations. How was I going to compete against them? I was traveling to play in college tournaments while still trying to keep up with my studies. We traveled nationally, too, which only made it that much more difficult to keep up. It was another challenge, and I accepted it. I didn’t necessarily like it, but I wasn’t going to flunk out. Nevertheless, I loved Stanford and I missed it.

I got to the range my usual hour and twenty minutes ahead of my time, and set up at the far left. Butchie was there. Fred Couples was at that end, and we joked around while I warmed up. I was eager to get the round started, a round that my dad said the night before at the house would be the hardest one of my life. He was tired after the long week, but he wanted to be sure we had a talk before the last round. He had always been there for me, and he was going to make sure he was at my side the night before I played the final round. I went into his room late at night to check up on him. Everybody had gone to bed.

We were going through the rundown of the tournament through three rounds when he brought up the idea that the last eighteen holes would be the most difficult I had ever faced. He was trying to help me see that it could be hard work to do everything the right way, and not get lackadaisical because of a big lead. I had faced tough competition before, but in match play. If I made a 12 on a hole in match play, it was no big deal. I lost one hole. Who cares? I could come back on the next hole and win that one. Pop told me I had everything to gain, and also everything to lose, and that I should think only about each moment and each shot, and not ahead. Do that, he said, and I would get the job done. He wanted me to go into my world and focus on what I needed to do. I should be myself—and if I could do that, the last round would be one of the most rewarding I had ever played.

My dad knew me so well, and he knew how to say the right thing at the right time. After we lost him in 2006, I missed that the most. I knew him really well, too. We could get on each other and talk about anything we wanted. He had made sure from when I was a kid that he didn’t talk down to me, and he went so far as to lean down to my height when I was a little guy, something I do with Sam and Charlie. We planned strategy at tournaments as far back as when I was five years old. There are pictures of me standing on a course with my golf bag on my shoulders, and there’s my dad, bending down to speak to me at eye level.

I tried not to think too much about my dad as I prepared mentally for the last round after our talk on Saturday night. Thoughts of him came and went, which was fine. I didn’t dwell on them, though. That would have made me too emotional, and I needed to keep my feelings at bay. I needed to do everything I could to give myself the best chance of playing a clinical round of golf—to be that cold-blooded assassin. I could have easily gotten too emotional heading into the last round if I had thought too much about my dad. I wanted to do him and my mom proud, but to do that, I needed to create some emotional distance for Sunday. It wasn’t easy, because Pop was not feeling well during the tournament. There were moments when he was himself, but he was out of it for most of the tournament as he drifted off to sleep.

Part of the task I set for myself Sunday was to let thoughts of what was swirling around me drift through my mind. It would have been foolish of me, and not productive, to try to force thoughts out of my mind. My attitude was to let them wash over me. I was asked after my round on Saturday how many times I had closed my eyes and imagined walking up the eighteenth fairway in the lead and with the roar of the crowd. I tried to steer the conversation away from that, and I answered that I focused on playing the holes before eighteen well to set up that walk up the last fairway to the green. But, really, I went much further back as I readied myself for the last round. I thought about the tee shot at the first hole.

Still, thoughts of winning the Masters did flit through my mind, and sometimes for a minute or two. Could this really happen? Was I about to become the youngest golfer to win the Masters? Would winning create opportunities in golf for minorities, as many people were suggesting? What would winning mean to the black golfers before me who had suffered in a world where the color of their skin mattered to people, and in which they didn’t have the opportunities I had, not even close? Would winning a golf tournament, even the Masters, really have the social significance that was predicted? The only way we would find out was if I went out and stuck to my game plan and won that green jacket.

I started the final round at 3:08, which has always been right around the time the leader begins. That meant I had played four straight rounds in midafternoon, wire to wire. That’s unusual, but Augusta re-paired the players after the first round, and because I’d recovered and shot 70, I was going to be in one of the last half-dozen or so twosomes on Friday. I had a lot of time on my hands every day. I always played very early in pro-ams—usually first off—and if I had my choice, I would have played early in the tournament rounds. But, of course, that’s not the way tournament golf worked. If you were playing early on the weekend, you weren’t doing well. Playing late left a lot of time. There was no television coverage of the Masters until midafternoon, so it wasn’t as if I could see how the guys were doing and maybe get a read on how the course was playing.

Butchie and I made sure, as always, that my last shot on the range was the one I wanted to hit on the first tee. As I was practicing some chipping before the round, I spotted Lee Elder. He had flown up to Atlanta with his wife, Rose, from their home in Florida and then driven to Augusta. He wished me well for the round, and that made me even more determined to take care of business. I had been thinking about Lee and Grandpa Charlie and Ted Rhodes on Saturday night.

Later I learned that Augusta staff members, many of them African-Americans, came out to the oak tree on the lawn near the first tee to watch me start. Other staff members were also there. It was time for me to do something at the Masters that had never been done. The thought crossed my mind as I approached the first tee, and then it slipped away. I had fallen into my bubble of concentration.

I was wearing my red shirt, which I always wore on Sundays in tournaments; a superstition that started with my mom. Red is one of Mom’s colors. Every day in Thai tradition is represented by a color, and red is for Sunday. She wanted me to wear it, although I had proven to her that I could win with different colors. When I won a junior tournament while wearing red, Mom said, “See, you play better when you wear red!” During the next tournament I won, I wore blue, but when I wore red I always seemed to win by more strokes. When I got to the ’94 U.S. Amateur at Sawgrass, I didn’t have any red shirts because I’d forgotten to bring one, so I thought that maybe orange would work in its place. I came from six down in the last match to win. Then, ironically, the colors of the three schools I was looking at, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Arizona State, and Stanford, were all red. We wore black shorts and red shirts at Stanford. They were our final-day colors. How could I argue with Mom? The red shirt I was wearing in my final round did have some black in it, but that would still work well. Or it was supposed to, anyway.

I could sense the anticipation in the massive gallery as I hit a few putts before going to the first tee. All eyes were on me. I felt a powerful current of support. To many in the gallery, I’m sure I was an object of curiosity, not only because of my skin color, but also because of how I had played for the first three rounds and the lead I had. My comfort level was high as I waited on the first tee for my name to be called.

My first tee shot mirrored my last tee shot on the range. It flew over the bunker on the right side and left me a wedge into the green. I two-putted for par. No stress. No sweat. I took the bunker on two out of play, and hit my drive over that and caught the downslope. That left me an eight-iron into the green. I two-putted for birdie. This was just the start I wanted. Pars on three and four kept me still nine shots ahead of Costantino. It didn’t look like he was going to make mistakes. He hit this baby cut out there, what I would call a shrimp little low cut, which was perfect. Every shot was solid, but I had a big enough cushion that I wouldn’t allow him to put any heat on me if I kept to my game plan. He couldn’t have been more pleasant to play with, giving me complimentary nods and gestures. He didn’t speak a lot of English, but his gestures were their own language. I played the Sunday singles match against him later that year in the Ryder Cup, and he spanked me pretty good.

Costantino was a very good player. Golfers remembered when he came to the last hole at the 1995 Open in St Andrews, needing to birdie the hole to get into a play-off against John Daly. His drive came up just short of the green, but he then chunked a long chip shot from the Valley of Sin. The ball came back nearly to his feet, sixty-five feet from the hole. The tournament looked over, but Costantino chose a putter for his third shot and holed it for the birdie he needed. He got down to the ground after the ball fell, pounding the turf in exhilaration. He and Daly went out for the four-hole play-off that is used in the Open. Daly won, but Costantino had come to the golf world’s attention. His reaction to holing the shot that got him into the play-off became part of golfing lore. I couldn’t imagine a better guy to have with me in the last twosome at the Masters.

My first bogey in thirty-eight holes came at the fifth, where I hit wedge over the green into the back bunker. The rhythm on my swing was slightly off, and as soon as I hit it, I knew that my approach into the green was going to be long. I had too much speed at the bottom and hit the ball too far. I twisted my body left as soon as I finished my swing, because I knew I’d made a mistake. Maybe I was too fired up. It was a wake-up call, because, while I felt calm, I was also feeding off the adrenaline of leading in the final round. The adrenaline came on the course, never on the range, and so I needed to make sure that Fluff and I were aware of this when we were picking clubs.

Meanwhile, I had very little green to work with, because the hole was cut toward the back of it. I opened up my sixty-degree wedge, and hit a shot that was about as good as I could do from there. But I still left myself ten feet past the hole, and missed that. Costantino made par and picked up a shot. I was eight ahead.

The fairways were lined with spectators, surrounding every green. It had been that way all week, but this time I could sense an air of expectancy. I could hear people saying things like “great playing,” and “keep it going,” while my ears were almost ringing from people saying “Tiger, Tiger,” as I walked up the fairways. I acknowledged them quietly with a tip of my cap, and I tried not to look at anybody directly. It was as if I was looking at a portrait of thousands, where I couldn’t make out distinguishing features of any one person. I knew Mom was following every shot, but I didn’t see her. She’s only about five feet tall, but I doubt I’d have spotted her if she were taller. I also didn’t see Phil Knight from Nike, or Lee Elder, who was following me on the front nine. I was looking at a haze of humanity. I saw only the hole I was playing and felt only the shots I had in mind.

The pin was back right on the shelf at the sixth hole. What a great hole. You’re way above the green, and spectators you can’t see are sitting on the hill below the tee. It was breezy, which made it hard to pick a club. The hole was playing 188 yards. Costantino hit first after his par on the fifth against my bogey, and he came up short and right, and he grunted. He was an expressive golfer. I hit what I thought was a pretty good shot, along a line to the right side of the green. Fluff sensed that it might come up short of the shelf. “Be there, be there,” he said, as the ball was in the air. It was there, but not all the way there, and finished just on the fringe. I left myself a thirty-five-foot uphill putt, with the last part being up to the shelf. I two-putted for par, while Costantino bogeyed after coming up eight feet short on his chip shot. I was again nine shots ahead.

But I pulled my two-iron tee shot on the seventh hole into the trees. The trunk of one tree was on a direct line to the green, and other trees meant I couldn’t put the ball in the air and try to carry the bunkers in front of the green. I had an opening between a couple of trees, but toward the fairway. Here came a feel shot. Yardage didn’t matter. I set my hands ahead of the clubhead, hooded the blade, and hit a low hook that finished in the front middle bunker. I left myself a brutal angle to the hole, and while I hit a good shot over the high lip, it was nearly impossible to get the ball close. I left myself an eight-footer for par and missed that, so now I had bogeyed two of the last three holes. Golf’s that way. I thought I was in total control; I felt in command of my game, my emotions, and my thoughts, and then, just like that, things were getting away from me. Costantino parred the seventh, and so I was back to eight shots ahead of him.

I wasn’t worried, but I was paying attention. It felt as though the ghost of Norman in ’96 was there, but it hadn’t gotten close. That helped, or at least I thought it did after I hit a big drive into the middle of the eighth fairway, opposite the bunker and at its far end. I could reach the green from there, and Fluff and I decided a four-iron was the right club. But, just like on my drive on seven, I pulled the shot and it finished in the rough just short of the pine straw and the trees, and about thirty-five yards from the hole. I had a clear shot to the green but had to come over a big hump on my line. The smart shot was a chip and run with my pitching wedge, and it came off exactly as I wanted. The ball ran up the mound and down to the green, about three feet from the hole. It was a hell of a pitch. I was trying to bump the ball over the hill and let gravity take it onto the green. It would bounce left before going up the hill, and then straighten out. I saw that the ball would do a hard right as it got over the hill. I wanted to make sure I got the ball over the hill and then let gravity be my friend. I enjoyed that little shot. The short birdie putt got me back to even for the day, and nine shots clear of Costantino after he parred the hole.

As short as the birdie putt was, it told me I was on my game on the greens. I felt the little hinge in my right hand as the putter neared the ball that I liked, and then I released it. Anybody who was watching my right hand closely could see it load. The putt was only three feet, but I still had that little bit of hit in my stroke. I had always played with a hit in my stroke, even as a kid. The greens on the public courses I played growing up were kind of slow, so it was important that I had some kind of hit. The greens at Augusta were superfast, but I still wanted that hit. I couldn’t putt any other way. The rhythm in my putting was fine, as that three-footer on eight showed me. It was important on Augusta’s greens to be decisive, by which I mean you had to pick your line, which would determine your speed, and then ensure there was no breakdown through impact. The putter head had to flow right through the ball, and finish relatively high and directly at the line you picked. That’s what happened when I made the three-footer.

My tee shot on the ninth was fifteen yards left of where I wanted it, because the pin was toward the left side of the green, behind the steep bunker at the front left. It was directly between me and the hole, but there was no way I was going to play at the hole. I had ninety yards to the hole, and my target was fifteen feet to the right. I hit my spot and left myself a birdie putt of twelve feet. Over the ball, I took my three practice strokes and then hit the putt. It came up just short, so I had shot even-par 36 on the front nine and taken a nine-shot lead over Costantino to the back side. My plan was working well, especially considering that I had played the back nine 13 under par in the first three rounds.

I had played sixty-three holes, and had nine more to go. Fifty-four holes ago, I had stood on the tenth tee 4 over par after shooting that 40 on the opening nine holes. It was three days later now, and I had gone 19 under since then. It had all started during the short walk from the ninth green to the tenth tee on Thursday, when I thought about the way I had swung the club the week before at Isleworth while shooting 59. A lot had changed, but my job wasn’t over, not with nine holes to play. I had some thoughts from the ninth green to the tenth tee that were different from what had run through my mind on Thursday, when they were all swing related because I needed to fix whatever had gone wrong.

This time on the walk my mind went to my dad, who was back at the house watching, because he wasn’t well enough to follow me around. I thought of Mom, who I knew was walking the whole way around, as she had done for just about every tournament round I had played since I was a little guy. In my mind’s eye I saw Lee Elder. Thoughts of Grandpa Charlie, Ted Rhodes, and everybody who had paved the way for me drifted through my mind. I didn’t try to push these thoughts out, because they made me feel good. They were sweet, warm thoughts, and I smiled inside. To the outside, I’m sure I looked extremely focused, and I was. But there was room to enjoy the moment, to appreciate what was happening, and to appreciate the people who had come before me and who had accompanied me on my journey. I thought of the many times my dad had walked along with me, when he was healthy and wanted me to know he was there. He was my protector, and, like Mom, my teacher. There were so many times he was in the gallery watching me, at a small local Southern California tournament, or a U.S. Junior, or a college tournament, or a U.S. Amateur. When he wanted me to know that he was there, to reassure me he was behind me no matter how I did, he called out, “Sam.” I knew that was Pop by his distinctive voice. He used the name off the course as well. It always made me smile.

Just as on the tenth hole Thursday, I chose a two-iron for my tee shot. I had gone back and forth between a two-iron and three-wood in the first three rounds, and I felt I could get to the bottom of the hill because I was swinging well. I felt in balance throughout my swing. But I didn’t quite turn the two-iron like I wanted to, so the ball didn’t catch the slope in the fairway that would have moved the ball down to the bottom. I left myself 220 yards to the hole, and from there I wanted to leave myself below the hole. I didn’t even care how far below the hole. The one thing I didn’t want to do was finish past the hole or over the green. I hit a five-iron that finished forty feet short of the hole, which was cut toward the back left of the green—its traditional Sunday position.

I’d seen video of the sixty-foot putt that Ben Crenshaw had made on the tenth green in the last round of the 1984 Masters, to that same pin. Ben started the last round two shots behind Tom Kite, shot 68, and won by two shots over Tom Watson. Ben’s an emotional player, and he believed there was a touch of fate in that putt that started him on the way to his first Masters win. He also won in 1995, only a week after his lifelong coach and friend Harvey Penick died. Ben and Tom Kite had been pallbearers at his funeral in Austin, Texas, on the Wednesday before the first round of the Masters. Then he won the Masters, after playing poorly all year. Maybe Bobby Jones was right when he wrote that at some point in a tournament, it seemed destined that one particular player would win.

The putt I faced on the tenth green was a big breaker. I had to start the ball about twelve feet right of the hole, and let the slope feed it back. Even my twenty-one-year-old eyes couldn’t see the hole without Fluff attending the flagstick. The putt ran and ran and finished three feet past the hole, which wasn’t what I wanted. It was close enough, from that distance, but it was also downhill to the hole. I got down on my haunches, in a baseball catcher’s position, framed my eyes on either side with my hands, and examined the putt. This wasn’t a putt to take for granted. There isn’t such a putt at Augusta. I settled in, took my three practice strokes, shuffled my feet into the ground as I always did, and then forward-pressed to start my stroke. I holed the putt and moved on to the eleventh tee, only a few yards left of the green.

I loved it that the tees and greens were close to one another at Augusta. This was part of what Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie wanted to achieve when designing an inland links. The greens and tees at the Old Course, and at links courses everywhere, were so close to one another that a player could sometimes walk off a green and be at the next tee in only a few seconds. This feature of the Old Course and Augusta National was in its death throes, though. As the ball, and golfers, got longer, the tees on some holes were moved so that it became a trek to get to them.

My tee shot on the eleventh was just what I wanted, long and up the right side. It rolled a long way. The course was drying out after some overnight rain, and I could feel a cold front starting to move in. I had an ideal angle to the pin, which was on the front left of the green only a few paces from the water. The plan was to be right of the hole, that was for sure. This wasn’t the time to attack the hole, even though I had only 130 yards in. My wedge finished fifteen feet right of the hole. I rolled the birdie putt in and raised my left hand and putter as the ball dropped. I had a ten-shot lead.

Fluff and I walked the few yards to one of the most intriguing par-3s, and settings, in the game. The patrons—I find it difficult to use that word for the spectators, because it doesn’t feel natural—were gathered in the thousands behind the tee. The tee itself seems almost in a fairway. It’s simply part of the ground, hardly raised at all. You look from there across Rae’s Creek to the twelfth green, and out of the corner of your eye you see the thirteenth tee behind and to the right of the green. Nobody but the players, their caddies, and walking officials go there. You’re about to leave a place where many people gather to a place where only a few people go. The change felt surreal to me the first time I experienced it during the ’95 Masters, and it’s the way I have always felt in that corner of the course.

At the same time, the spectators who collect behind the twelfth tee are like all the people who attend the Masters. There’s not another tournament where the spectators are so respectful of the players, or where the silence as you play is so noticeable. The applause was there as I walked to the tee, and it then stopped just like that as I stepped on the tee and got ready to play. I had been given a prolonged standing ovation as soon as I started to walk to the tee, and acknowledged this with assorted smiles, waves, tipping my cap, and then taking it off. I put my tee in the ground and placed the ball on it before standing on the left side, where Fluff and I discussed the shot. The pin was on the far right of the green, over the edge of the bunker. That wasn’t close to my target, which was far to the left so that I would take the bunker out of play.

The tee shot at the twelfth is one of the most demanding and confusing in golf, because of the wind and where the green is situated, across Rae’s Creek with woods behind. There’s so much to the shot. I stood on the tee, checking the wind. It was hard to believe, even after playing in the Masters twice, but it was true that the flags on the eleventh and twelfth greens often looked like they were waving in different directions. Or one would be limp, while the other was moving at a good clip. You couldn’t pick a hole where the wind swirled more than the twelfth.

I played there with Davis Love in the final round one year. The flags on the eleventh and twelfth were whipping and the wind was howling. Davis decided to hit six-iron, and to hit a softie to take spin off the shot. He hit the shot and the flag at the green just went pfft. It laid down completely. I looked over at the flag on the eleventh, and it was still pumping straight into us. Davis’s ball flew over the bunker and up into the bushes behind the green. I was wondering, “Okay, what am I supposed to do?” I pulled out a six-iron and hit a softie myself. All of a sudden I saw the ripples in the water, which meant the wind was back in my face. My ball stalled out and landed just in the front part of the bunker. I was on the downslope, to the back right pin. The tee shot at the twelfth is so tricky. You have to time your swing around the winds, and you have to get lucky.

I aimed at the tongue in the front bunker, planning to hit a straight ball to a draw with my nine-iron. I couldn’t cut the nine-iron and get it to the green, which meant I had to hit a draw to get it there. That would take me away from the flag, which would make me miss long and left, or pin-high. That was the shot. I drew it a little more than I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to hit a fiddly little eight-iron and try to cut it in there. I wasn’t going to mess around with hitting that shot. The idea was to just dump it left, trust my draw, and rely on my lag putting. I picked my spot and hit it. I took some water, and Fluff and I crossed the Hogan Bridge to total peace and quiet. If there’s a place in golf that is more of a sanctuary than that area of Augusta National, I’ve never found it. Back then, standing on the green, while the group ahead played from the thirteenth tee, I could hear the neat sound when a player hit a balata ball out of the middle of a persimmon driver. That’s how quiet it was at the twelfth green.

Two putts later I made my par and got out of there. I’d started Amen Corner—the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth—with a birdie and a par, and we walked back to the thirteenth tee in the corner of the course. Costantino had played ten, eleven, and twelve 1 over, and so I had picked up another two shots on him. I was up by eleven over him, and, after hitting three-wood, six-iron to the thirteenth, and two-putting for birdie, I was up by twelve. I hit three-wood off the tee again on fourteen, and then hit sand wedge for my second shot. There’s a backboard on the back left of the green, which I used. The ball spun back to eight feet. I made that for another birdie. I was 3 under for the round and 18 under for the tournament. There was water on the fifteenth and sixteenth, though, and I didn’t want to lose my focus.

Lee Elder had gone into the clubhouse after the front nine, where he watched a few holes. He returned to catch me making birdie on the fourteenth. Jerry had driven my dad to the course when I was playing fifteen. Pop went to the scorer’s tent before starting to watch on a television monitor behind the eighteenth green. I was still out there playing, but he was being interviewed. Watching later, it was apparent that he was getting emotional. Pop was asked about what I was doing on the course. He answered, “Truly magnificent. This is a culmination of a lot of hard work, years and years of training, dreams. It’s now turned into reality.” Asked what he was feeling, Pop answered, “Pride. Pride.”

Meanwhile, I was on the fifteenth tee and trying to hit a hard draw. It had cooled down quite a lot by then, and so I had put a sweater on—red, of course. I got stuck coming down—my old problem of my hips outracing my arms—and I pushed my drive way right. I hit a four-iron from there, right of right, right even of the right bunker, and I left my third shot short because I couldn’t get it on the green from there. I got up and down for par, making a six-footer.

One more hole, the sixteenth, with water to go. My tee shot on the sixteenth left me with a long putt that I had to start at nearly a ninety-degree angle to the hole. It took the curve and finished three feet from the hole. I made that putt, and for the first time I thought, “I’m good from here.” I was twelve shots ahead and could win from there. I made par on seventeen and had one more hole to win the Masters. Then, while I was making my swing on the eighteenth tee, a photographer clicked twice on my backswing. I flinched and hooked my tee shot well left of the fairway. I did have more than a few shots to play with, so I wasn’t exactly concerned. And my drive was to the left, and not in the trees to the right. I would have a clear shot to the green once the spectators made room for me to hit my second between them.

But where was Fluff? I couldn’t see him when I reached my ball. It turned out he was doing his job somewhere out in the fairway, trying to get a yardage for me. He had to be a mathematician to triangulate the distance, because I was so far to the left. But Fluff came up with the number. I’d called his name and jumped up and down to see where he was. The fans had also gotten into it, calling out, “Fluff, Fluff.” I was also looking for Costantino to figure out which of us was away and would play first. He was closer to the hole but played first, which was fine with me, and the right thing to do to keep play moving. I had 132 yards to the hole, which was cut behind the bunker on the front left side of the green. Two columns of fans formed leading from my ball toward the green. Lee was near the green. Mom was behind the green with Pop, standing to try to get a view of me after I hit my shot, which finished well up the left side of the green. Pop was smiling and Mom was clapping as I emerged from the crowd, holding my cap high in my right hand with my putter in my left hand. I kept my cap off, and held it and my putter together from the bottom of my left hand, holding it up in the air. Costantino was applauding as I reached the green. Mom was shaking her head, as if to say, “Look at what my son is doing.”

I was trying to enjoy the walk up the hill, but I soon saw that I had left my second shot in a bad spot on the green. I didn’t even know it was on the green until I got farther up the hill and saw it, because the gallery was in the way as the ball was about to land. The people did applaud as if I had gotten on the green, but I wasn’t sure. I knew I had flipped the shot a little left. But then I saw it on the green. It was not an easy putt. I was ticked off for leaving myself a putt that I had never hit before. I was in a trough, and I didn’t know what the putt did. I pretty much knew all the breaks on the course, but not that one, because I never thought I’d be there.

Still, Fluff and I were smiling as we got ready for me to hit my putt. Costantino was closer but thoughtfully chose to putt first from thirty feet right of the hole. He putted down to about three feet, but missed that putt. I had two putts to shoot 270 and break the scoring record that Jack Nicklaus had set in the 1965 Masters and that Ray Floyd had tied in the 1976 Masters. I knew about the record, and I wanted to break it. But my focus was on my putt. I hadn’t three-putted the entire tournament, and I didn’t want to end up by three-putting the last green. The trouble was, I had never seen or practiced the putt I had, and I was looking at the line as I walked to the green and then to my ball. There was one more challenge, to get down in two putts.

I had been playing tournament golf for more than fifteen years, although I was only fifteen months removed from being a teenager. The one thing above all was that I enjoyed the feeling of being on edge. I enjoyed the rush of having everything on the line. I liked having a putt to win. It was on me. To me, that was fun. If I was playing a seventy-two-hole tournament, it had been a four-round marathon to get to one point, and to have it come down to one shot. What kid hasn’t done that on the course or putting green? We had all done that, and now, as professionals, we got to live it. I had the Masters won. That was obvious. But I wanted to get down in two putts. You hate to make a mistake on the last green, no matter how many shots you have in hand.

Three years later I took a ten-shot lead into the last round of the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble. My goal that day was not to make a bogey. I got into that mind-set of hating to make a bogey, and I was bogey free through the first fifteen holes. The way I played the sixteenth that day at Pebble was another example of my thinking on the eighteenth green at Augusta. At Pebble, as at Augusta, I didn’t know what my score was in relation to the other competitors. I knew I was winning, but I could not have cared less at that moment about that. That moment was about not making a bogey, in the same way the moment on the seventy-second green at Augusta was about not three-putting. I was going to get my goal at Augusta, and, three years later, I was going to get it at Pebble. To me, the sixteenth at Pebble was huge. I hit my second over the green from a flier lie in the first cut of rough. I caught a nuker there, a real heater, and missed it long, the only place you couldn’t miss it, because the pin was at the back of the green. I was back there in the rough and took a big swing for a shot of only about fifteen yards, trying to undercut it a lot. I didn’t realize the ground was hard underneath, and so the face bounced up into the ball and shot it fifteen feet past the hole. I made that right-to-left putt, with a four-inch break. I was seriously pumped after the putt fell, because I was saying to myself the entire time I was reading it, “No bogeys today. I’m not making a bogey today.” I parred the hole and parred in to win by fifteen shots. But as much as winning, at least for the moment, I got a big kick out of making that putt and getting through the last round bogey free.

A three-putt on eighteen to finish the Masters was not going to happen. It just wasn’t going to happen. The putt was a triple-breaker, maybe a quadruple-breaker. Going off the trough, it started left, and I read it that it would immediately take a quick right after a foot and a half. Looking from my ball down to the hole from the right side of the trough, where my ball was, I confirmed to myself that the little valley there would start kicking it left, and then it would go to the right. It would then come down the hill, and start going more left. There were all these little reads. I got it down there with decent pace, but didn’t hit my spot with the first putt, and it didn’t move as much right in the middle as I thought.

The five-footer I had for par, and not to three-putt, was nasty because I had to start it outside the hole. It wasn’t a hard putt if I could have kept it inside the hole. But I had to convince myself to start that short and fast a putt outside the hole, and to trust my read. I was going to start it outside the hole and make sure I had what I always looked for, cup speed. I had perfect cup speed, and it fell right in the center. I reacted with a right-arm uppercut. I had won by twelve shots and broken the Masters record for the low score in the tournament. Tom Kite shot 70 in the last round and finished second.

Fluff and I embraced on the green, and a minute later my dad and I were hugging and I was crying. I rarely ever cried. But at that moment, I did. My dad had flatlined a few months before. We’d almost lost him. And here he was, with my mom behind the eighteenth green. As we hugged, Pop said, “I love you, and I’m so proud of you.”

Those words kept coming back to me for years, and they still do. I keep going back to his words. I will always cherish and never forget the embraces I shared with Pop and Mom behind the eighteenth green, the moment after I won my first Masters. If my dad hadn’t given me that putting tip the night before the first round, it wasn’t likely that the week would have come off as it did. I made a few putts that opening round, which gave me energy, and then on the back nine I hit some good shots that fed my energy further. Then, suddenly, my putting and the rest of my game came together to produce a magical week. But the week would not have happened if I hadn’t putted well.

After signing my scorecard, I saw Lee Elder and thanked him for his sacrifices and what he meant to the game, how hard he fought to make it to the Masters in 1975. He had to earn a spot, and he did. He became the first black golfer to play the Masters in the year I was born. I had often thought of that.

I was taken to Butler Cabin for the traditional televised ceremony where the defending champion placed the green jacket on the winner’s shoulders. It fit well. I wondered how Nick Faldo felt about having to hang around all weekend after missing the cut. But you don’t bail out of Augusta for that reason. CBS’s lead announcer, Jim Nantz, in the early part of his time hosting the Masters telecast, was there, along with Augusta’s vice chairman, Joe Ford. Nantz asked me what my plan had been for the round, and then mentioned that I was the first African-American, and the first Asian-American, to win the Masters. He asked me what that meant to me, a question that many people had all week—if I won, that is.

I told him that this Masters was all about the black golfers who had come before me, what they had done for me, and that I wasn’t a pioneer. They were the pioneers. I told him that, coming up eighteen, I had said a little prayer for them, and said thanks. I also said that I’d been thinking about my dad as I was going into the back nine, and thought to myself, “Let’s suck it up. Let’s do this.”

When I was fourteen, a reporter asked me what was the one tournament that had captured my imagination. I said the Masters, and he asked me why. Sitting in a cart, I answered, “The way blacks have been treated there, [that] they shouldn’t be there. And if I win that tournament, it would be really big for us.” Only seven years had passed since that interview, and the history of the club—which did run the best and most popular tournament in the world—was always in my mind. I tried to keep that thought as quiet as I could, especially during the Masters.

My objective was to win the tournament, so I had to set aside my feelings about it taking so long for Augusta to invite a black player to the Masters and to admit black members. I had to play. I couldn’t have gone to the first tee and let my mind dwell on these facts. I still had to hit a little fade off the tee, and I still had to post the lowest score. How could I do that if the thoughts swirling at the edges of my mind dug in deeper? I needed to put them in a box, and hit the shots. Walking up eighteen, though, and in the Butler Cabin, I let myself think about the people who had come before me and paved the way for me to play the Masters, and, really, to play at all as a tour pro.

The awards ceremony on the practice green behind the first tee followed the Butler Cabin presentation of the green jacket, which was for television. Faldo again put the jacket on me. Quite a few of Augusta’s staff, mostly black people, had left their posts and gathered outside on the lawn and on the verandah on the second floor. In all the years I’ve been to the Masters since, I have never seen it like that. They wanted to thank me, and I wanted to make sure they knew how thankful I was for their support. Many of them had worked at Augusta for years, and they were part of history. I’ve won the Masters three more times, but their presence while I spoke on the putting green that first time was significant in a way that couldn’t be repeated. A barrier had been broken. I’ve had many conversations with the staff over the years, and we’ve exchanged many high fives; it’s all the little things that we say and do every year that mean so much to me. The Masters has meant so much to me. It’s hard to fathom.

I knew that none of this meant, necessarily, that things would change dramatically for minorities in golf. I hoped that my win would encourage them to play, or to chase their dreams whatever they were. But it would have been naïve of me to think that my win would mean the end of “the Look” when a person from any minority walked into some golf clubs, especially the game’s private clubs. I only hoped my win, and how I won, might put a dent in the way others perceived black people.

While speaking on the green during the ceremony, I said that I hadn’t thought far enough into the moment to think about what I would say. My next move was to the media center, but I got a call just before I got there. President Bill Clinton was on the line. I took the call in a little room just off the interview area. He knew what the moment was all about, because he said the best thing he saw all day was my father and me embracing behind the eighteenth green. We chatted for a moment, and then I went into the interview room, wearing my green jacket. I said I had never played an entire tournament with my A game, but that this time, my play had been pretty close. I also said I hoped my win would open some doors for minorities. My biggest hope, though, was that we could one day see one another as people and people alone. I wanted us to be color-blind. Twenty years later, that has yet to happen.

I returned to the Butler Cabin after the press conference so that I could change into a jacket and tie for the dinner that night with Masters officials. Nobody knew what to expect at the dinner. Mom, Jerry, Mikey, Kathy Battaglia and Hughes Norton from IMG, and Dr. Gene McClung, my dad’s physician, were there. Jerry had driven Pop back to the house after the round, then returned with the suit and tie that I wore at the dinner. We met at Butler Cabin after I did my interviews. I asked Jerry to try on the jacket, but he said no, that it was mine, and that I won it. But I wanted him to try it on, because I wanted to share the experience.

We left the clubhouse after the dinner. Somebody got our car, and we piled into it, with Jerry driving and Mom in the backseat. After it ended, Augusta quickly became a ghost town. As loud and as big as that sporting event was with the tens of thousands of spectators, it was empty just two or three hours later. They wanted it back to being a club as fast as possible.

We had a CD by the hip-hop group Quad City DJ’s, and we put the song “C’Mon N’ Ride It (The Train)” on at full blast as we drove down Magnolia Lane to Washington Road, with the windows rolled down in the big Cadillac courtesy car Jerry had driven all week. That song had likely never been played while driving down Magnolia Lane—nor that loudly.

We stopped at Arby’s again and continued to the house. Phil Knight was there. He walked the last round, and he was giddy. He was more nervous than Pop. We all made toasts to Pop, and basically told him to get the hell out of there and go to bed, because, one, he shouldn’t have even been at the Masters given his condition; and two, he shouldn’t be up that late; and three, he wasn’t feeling very well and needed the rest; and four, we were about ready to blow the top off every bottle in the house. I wasn’t a big drinker, but I was the Masters champion, and everybody was going to town that night.

Later that night, after much celebration, I fell asleep fully clothed and hugging the green jacket like a blanket.