THE SCENE WAS SET for a battle in Augusta, but the battlefield was in questionable shape. It had rained overnight, and it was still raining Thursday morning when the players woke up to prepare for their scheduled tee times. The tournament’s planned eight o’clock start was pushed back to 10:50 in the hope that the weather would clear long enough to get some play in.
The rain did stop briefly, long enough for players with early tee times to hit a few balls on the range, but then the skies opened up again. By 11 a.m. the decision had been made to send everyone home for the day and try to get the golf course into playable shape so that players could be sent off two tees at 7:30 Friday morning. It was the first time since 1939 that the opening round had been completely washed out by rain.
The Masters doesn’t like to break with tradition, and starting before eight in the morning and having players tee off on both the front and back nines simply isn’t done, unless there’s no choice. In this case, the weather forced a break in tradition.
Several years earlier, the club had abandoned the notion that it could play the entire tournament in twosomes and re-pair after the first round. Almost all golf tournaments send players out in threesomes for the first 36 holes and do not re-pair until the start of the third round, when the players are sent out in twosomes, the worst scores playing first, the best scores last.
Because pace of play on the PGA Tour had slowed so much throughout the 1990s, in 1999 the Masters finally gave up on twosomes for the first 36 holes, instead shifting to the more traditional threesomes and not re-pairing until after the second round when the cut had been made. But everyone still went off the first tee on Thursday and Friday rather than off the first and 10th as was done at most PGA Tour events. The Masters could afford the one-tee start because it rarely had more than ninety players in the field, compared to the 144 or 156 (depending on the time of year) in most other tournaments.
But the Thursday rainout left the Lords of Augusta with no choice: If players wanted to have any chance to complete the tournament by Sunday evening, they would have to start early Friday, go off two tees, and play as many holes as possible before it got dark Friday evening. The plan was to complete the second round on Saturday morning and—weather permitting—be back on schedule by the end of the third round Saturday evening.
The conditions weren’t pleasant Friday morning. The weather was still misty, and the temperature was in the forties when the players began warming up shortly after sunrise. The golf course would play long and hard because of the wet conditions, and walking up and down the Augusta hills would certainly not be a treat, especially since everyone expected to play at least 27 holes by day’s end.
“Not exactly the ideal way to start a major,” Mike Weir said. “But it was the same for everybody.”
Weir was paired for the first two rounds with two-time Masters champion Tom Watson and Irish Ryder Cupper Padraig Harrington.
For Weir and his caddy, Brennan Little, the pairing was both difficult and poignant. Bruce Edwards, who had been Watson’s caddy for most of thirty years, had been diagnosed in January with ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. Everyone in golf knew that Edwards had been handed a death sentence, and, in spite of his brave promises to caddy for Watson for another thirty years, they knew this would almost surely be Edwards’s last Masters on Watson’s bag.
“You could see how he was struggling, especially during that long day on Friday,” Weir said. “He was having trouble talking, and even though he would never admit it, you could see how tired he was getting, especially towards the end of the day. I was actually kind of relieved when it finally got dark and we had to stop.”
Weir played very solidly throughout the day. He shot a two-under-par 70 in the first round, which put him four shots behind leader Darren Clarke but only one shot behind Sergio Garcia and U.S. Amateur champion Ricky Barnes, who were tied for second place with 69s.
Weir’s group was able to play 12 holes in the afternoon—going off the 10th tee—and by the time the horn blew at dusk, stopping play for the day, Weir was three under par on his second round and leading the tournament at five under par.
“I felt good all day,” he said later. “I was finding fairways, which was important, because you didn’t want to play out of the rough, even the Augusta rough, with the golf course so wet. And my putter was there right from the beginning. That gave me a real jolt of confidence.”
ONE PERSON NOT FEELING at all confident when the horn blew on Friday was Tiger Woods. Right from the start, he had struggled. He wasn’t finding fairways with any consistency—and Augusta’s fairways are about as wide as any in golf—and he wasn’t making putts to save par the way he always seemed to do when he was in control of his game.
He shot a horrific, four-over-par 76 the first 18 holes, his worst round at Augusta as a professional, and was still four over par after 27 holes when play was stopped. As the players trudged wearily to their cars, knowing they all had to return to take their places on the golf course at 8:20 the next morning, Woods trailed Weir by nine shots and was in danger of missing the cut if he didn’t get his game in gear.
Woods’s play—not the play of Weir or of any of the other players near the lead—was the talk of the tournament that night. No one could remember seeing Woods fight his swing for so long at Augusta National since his win in 1997. That year, he had shot 40 on his first nine holes, only to come back and shoot 30 on the back nine. He had taken the lead on Friday afternoon that year and never looked back. After he had finished off his stunning 12-shot victory, he had been asked if there was any way he could have played better.
“Well,” he said with a shrug, “I did shoot 40 on my first nine holes.”
Because of who he is, no one was ready to count Woods out at the end of the first day. Nine shots down with two and a half rounds to go was not impossible for him. He had once come from eight shots down in the final round in a tournament overseas, catching Ernie Els—not exactly a club pro—to win.
That said, no one had been prepared for the possibility that Woods would be fighting to make the cut on Saturday morning. He had missed the cut as an amateur in 1996 but since turning pro had been out of the top 10 just once in six Masters. He had three wins, a fifth, a tie for eighth, and a tie for 18th in 1999 when he had been going through his first major swing change. Now he was struggling to make the top 44 and ties (or to stay within 10 shots of Weir since the Masters has a 10-shot rule that allows anyone within 10 of the leader to play the last two rounds) in order to make the cut.
Len Mattiace hadn’t played much better than Woods on Friday, but, at the very least, he appeared to be in good shape to make the cut. He had shot a one-over-par 73 in the first round and was at three-over-par for the tournament, with four holes to play at dusk. It appeared that the cut would come at four or five over par and that it would be the top 44 and ties, because there were not that many players within 10 shots of Weir’s lead.
Saturday dawned clear and sunny, an almost perfect day for golf. The temperature was still a bit cool—in the low sixties—when the players returned to the spots where they had been when play was called, but the day was warming quickly with no clouds in sight.
Weir finished his second round solidly, shooting a four-under-par 68, which put him at six under par for 36 holes. No one else had been able to handle the new supersized golf course the way he had. Clarke had spun back after his 66, shooting 76, but was still in second place, trailing Weir by four shots. Phil Mickelson had shot 70 in the second round—only three players had broken 70, the same number as in the first round on the long, wet golf course—and had jumped into a tie for third at one under par with Ricky Barnes, the U.S. Amateur champion who had outplayed Woods while paired with him for two days.
Woods’s Saturday morning was a lot like his Friday had been. While everyone waited for him to make a move, he appeared to be running in place. He had teed off on the 10th hole for the second round, meaning he would finish his round on the ninth green. He arrived at the eighth tee appearing to be safely inside the cut line at four over par. The cut was almost certain to be five over at that point. Since the par-five eighth is a birdie hole for most players—more so for a long hitter like Woods—it seemed out of the question that Woods would play the final two holes at anything worse than even par.
That almost wasn’t the case. Woods’s drive missed the fairway at the eighth, and he had to lay up rather than go for the green in two. He hit a mediocre third shot to 50 feet and then, shockingly, three-putted for a bogey six. Instead of making birdie to have a two-shot cushion on the cut going into the ninth, he now had to par the ninth to make the cut. By now it was late morning, the course was bathed in brilliant sunshine, and thousands of spectators—most of them stunned by what they were seeing—were ringing the ninth green waiting for Woods.
The ninth is a deceptively difficult hole. It isn’t very long—460 yards with a drive straight down a hill—but the second shot is straight uphill, a blind shot to a tricky green that tilts back to front. Land a shot too close to the front, and the ball will spin right off the green and roll down the hill. Land it too far back, especially with a front-hole location, and you can be left with a very long putt that can twist in four different directions before it reaches the hole.
The flag that morning was front right, almost a sucker pin in the sense that a player trying to hit a shot directly at it could easily watch his shot land a few feet from the pin and roll back down the hill in front of the green.
Woods had no chance to fire at the flag because he pushed his drive into the pine straw underneath the grove of trees to the right of the fairway. From there, he had to try to punch a shot toward the left corner of the green, hoping to somehow get the ball up on the green and then stop it before it rolled all the way over. It was the kind of Houdini-like shot Woods has made famous.
Only this time, Woods wasn’t Houdini—he was human. The ball rocketed out of the trees, left of the green all the way, finishing in the left bunker. That made the math quite simple: Woods had to get up and down for par, or, for the first time in the twenty-five majors he had played as a pro, he would fail to make the cut.
The good news for Woods was that he had a lot of green to work with. He set his feet carefully and hit a wonderful shot from the bunker to within four feet of the hole. Not exactly a tap-in, but the kind of putt Woods rarely misses under pressure. This time was no exception: he rammed the putt into the center of the hole, took a deep breath, and headed to the champions locker room for a quick lunch.
WOODS WAS ONE OF the last players to finish the second round. There was a break of an hour and forty-five minutes before the third round began. Only four players were under par after 36 holes, led by Weir at six under. Then came Clarke, Mickelson, and Barnes, who not only held up quite well playing with Woods but had outplayed him by six shots. There was a host of big-name chasers not much further behind. Vijay Singh, two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal, and David Toms were among those at even par, and K. J. Choi, Jeff Maggert, and Ernie Els—who had shot 79–66—were at one-over-par 145. Len Mattiace had made the cut with two shots to spare at three-over-par 147.
When the players returned to start the third round at 12:50 in the afternoon, they found completely different conditions. The sun had dried the course, but it was still soft, meaning players could fire shots at flags knowing the ball was likely to stop quickly. The temperature was warm, now approaching eighty degrees, and the breeze was gentle. Ideal conditions for scoring.
Not surprisingly, the player who took advantage of the conditions first and foremost was Woods. Right from the start, playing in one of the first groups on the course, he looked like a different player. Starting on the 10th tee—the players again went off two tees in order to try to finish the round before dark—he drained a long birdie putt on the 11th and was off to the races. By the time he returned to the ninth green for the second time that day, he was six under par for the afternoon and was one under par for the tournament.
That put Woods on the leaderboard and had people talking about the greatest comebacks in major championship history. He had made up nine of the 11 shots by which he had trailed Weir, who struggled to a 75 in the afternoon round. That left Weir in second place at three under par behind the new leader, Jeff Maggert. Often a contender in major championships but never a winner, Maggert, who had birdied five of the last seven holes after a double bogey on the 11th, had equaled Woods in the third round with a 66 of his own and had jumped to the top of the leaderboard at five under par.
Maggert would be with Weir in the final pairing on Sunday. Singh and Toms, who were at two under par, would be in the second-to-last group. Woods and Olazabal, both at one under par, would go just after Mickelson, who was also at one under par, and Jim Furyk, who was at even par. Among those final eight players, four—Woods, Singh, Toms, and Olazabal—had won majors. Mickelson and Furyk were generally considered the best players in the world who had not won majors, and Maggert, even though he had only won twice on tour, had eleven finishes in the top seven at majors. Only Weir, with his 10th-place finish at the 1999 PGA, had not contended late on Sunday at a major.
The pairing directly in front of Mickelson and Furyk had even less experience in majors than Weir. Jonathan Byrd was twenty-five and playing in the first major championship of his life. He was even par through three rounds and would play the last 18 holes with Len Mattiace, who had played superbly on Saturday afternoon, shooting a 69 that put him at even par too, tied for eighth place with Byrd and Furyk—five shots behind Maggert.
Mattiace wasn’t really thinking in terms of winning at that point. A top-16 finish would guarantee him a spot in the ’04 Masters, and that was well within reach. Still, all week Kristen had been pushing the “mojo” of the house they were staying in.
“We actually rented two houses,” she said. “Len and I and the kids [Gracee was five and Noelle was two] were in one house, and our families were down the street. When we got to the house, there was a nice note from the lady who owned it saying that a lot of players who had stayed there had done really well in the tournament, including David Duval a couple of times. I kept saying to Len, ‘Breathe in that mojo. Let it work for you.’ ”
Most of the players were exhausted on Saturday evening. They had played 54 grueling holes in two days, and now they would have to wait until Sunday afternoon to play again. Maggert and Weir, the last pairing, would tee it up at 2:30. CBS would come on the air at two o’clock, which would give the network just enough time to set the scene before going to the first tee to show the two players who had the 2:10 tee time. That pairing would consist of two-time Masters champion Olazabal and—surprise—Tiger Woods.
MIKE WEIR WOKE UP earlier than he wanted to on Sunday morning, but that didn’t really bother him. He knew, even with a late tee time, that he would be too keyed up to sleep very late. He had talked to Bricia the night before, and they had decided that she should fly in to watch the last round, just in case.
“It wasn’t as if I was thinking, ‘I’m going to win,’ or anything like that,” Weir said. “But I did feel confident, even though I hadn’t made anything at all on Saturday afternoon. I thought if I could make a putt or two starting out and get some confidence going, I’d have a chance. I think we both thought that if I didn’t win, it would be nice for her to be there anyway, and if I did win, she certainly wouldn’t want to have missed it.”
Bricia was still en route when Weir left for the golf course, so he didn’t get a chance to see her before going out to warm up and then play. He was able to spot her in the crowd early in the round, though, helped by the fact that the biggest galleries were following the Woods-Olazabal and Mickelson-Furyk pairings.
Maggert and Weir did have one thing going for them as they stepped onto the first tee: the Masters winner had come from the final twosome on the golf course for twelve straight years. That said, there probably weren’t more than a handful of people wandering around Augusta National on a sun-splashed afternoon who thought that streak would continue.
The first true roar of the afternoon came for Mickelson. If there was anyone other than Woods that most fans wanted to see win, it was Mickelson. At age thirty-two, Mickelson was a true star. He had won on tour twenty-one times—the first time when he was still in college—and had finished second in the U.S. Open twice, third in the Masters three times, and second in the PGA once. But he still hadn’t won a major championship, and the questions about his inability to do so had started to bug him.
Unlike some players who have won a lot but never in a major, Mickelson didn’t rationalize the hole in his résumé. He didn’t claim, as Colin Montgomerie had once, that “I’ll have had a great career whether I win a major or not.” He clearly understood the difference between a lucrative career and a great one.
Mickelson parred the first hole but then pulled his drive way left into the trees at the par-five second hole, the ball finding a small stream. Forced to take a drop, Mickelson, always the risk taker, hit a driver from the woods for his third shot and threaded it through the trees and onto the front of the green about 80 feet from the hole. Even at that, he stood to lose a stroke to most of the field because number two is a birdie hole for most players. Mickelson promptly rolled the 80-footer into the center of the hole, which prompted a rare fist pump and a wide smile.
Maybe, finally, this would be his day on a major championship Sunday.
The leaderboard on most major Sundays is an ever-changing puzzle. Nowhere is that more true than at Augusta where most of the holes—especially on the back nine—offer risk-reward opportunities that can send players climbing upward or tumbling backward in a matter of minutes. Even though changes to the golf course have taken some of that away, almost nothing is certain on a Sunday at the Masters.
There really are few events in sports that TV treats with the reverence of the Masters. It is only in recent years that the club has loosened the reins on the telecast a little bit, allowing CBS, which has televised the tournament every year since 1956, to show the entire front nine and to expand its weekend telecasts so that fans can see the leaders play their entire rounds.
What hasn’t changed is the syrupy music, the hushed tones, and the sense that something slightly more important than the election of a president or a pope is about to happen.
And, of course, there are the “Augusta Rules.” There are no front nine and back nine at Augusta but, rather, a first nine and a second nine. There’s no rough but, rather, a first cut and a second cut. The Masters, unlike the other three majors, is not a championship—it is a tournament or, as ex-club chairman Hootie Johnson always called it, a “toonamint.” And you had better believe there are no fans or galleries watching the toonamint. There are, and always will be, “patrons.”
Several years ago when Sean McDonough was still working for CBS, he slipped one afternoon and referred to the crowd around the 16th green. Horrified and concerned he might go the way of Jack Whitaker (who once famously referred to the patrons around the 18th green as “a mob” and was banished forever) or Gary McCord (who referred to “bikini-waxed greens,” and “body bags” behind the 17th green, for those who were foolish enough to go over the green, and was also banned), McDonough announced to anyone who would listen in the clubhouse the next morning that “there are going to be patrons everywhere at 16 today. There will be patrons behind the green, around the green, and perhaps on the green. There may be patrons swimming in the water next to the green.”
The patrons had a big day at 16, and McDonough survived. Along with crowds, there is also no mention of money at the Masters. The total purse in 2003 was $6 million, with the winner getting $1,080,000 (those numbers had jumped to $7.5 million and $1,350,000, respectively, by 2009), but if you watch CBS you might think the players are playing strictly for the green jacket.
“Will it be a day that defines a man’s career?” Jim Nantz said in his melodramatic opening. “Or will it be another day for a man who has defined his sport?”
Cue syrupy music.
Of course, there is some truth in all the syrup and breathlessness. As huge as the prize money is, what drives players on the last day of a major is knowing that a victory makes them a part of golf history. And that was the way Weir was thinking as he walked to the first tee on Sunday.
“I thought I was ready to handle the pressure of the last day of a major,” he said. “In 1999, I hadn’t been ready. Now, I thought I was. That didn’t mean I was going to win, but I did think I was going to play well.”
Weir and Maggert provided striking contrasts as they walked to the first tee: Weir in a black shirt, Maggert in a white one. Weir isn’t exactly Lee Trevino, but he is friendly and warm to most people. Maggert was described by Nantz as “the taciturn Texan.”
Both men overcame their nerves to hit good drives on number one, but Maggert was short and right with his second shot, and Weir was long and left, the ball skidding just over the green about 40 feet from the hole. Maggert pitched to 10 feet and made his putt. Weir’s birdie putt rolled five feet past, but after a long look he also made his par putt.
“That was a key putt,” he said. “Because the greens had really gotten fast by Sunday afternoon, and I knew I was going to be looking at putts like that all day, and I was going to have to make them if I wanted to win.”
Up ahead, Woods had reached the second green in two and had made birdie to get to two under to tie Mickelson. Vijay Singh had also birdied the second and was tied with Weir at three under. As he had done throughout the tournament, Weir laid up at the second, then hit a wedge to two feet for a birdie that put him at four under. As they walked to the third tee, Weir trailed Maggert, who had failed to birdie the second, by one shot.
By the time they got there, the hole had already changed the tone of the day, and the tournament. Lanny Wadkins, who was CBS’s lead analyst at the time, described number three as “the toughest short hole I have ever played in golf.”
It is, indeed, a short but treacherous par-four, just 350 yards long. It is called “Flowering Peach” (each hole at Augusta National is named for a flower), and with the tees up, longer hitters can drive the green. The championship committee, which sets the tees and the hole locations each morning, had moved a number of tees up on Sunday to tempt players to go for spectacular shots.
The first person to give in to that temptation, surprisingly, was Woods. Very rarely does Woods make a mental mistake on the golf course. But he walked to the third tee brimming with confidence after his two-putt birdie at the second hole. He hadn’t made a bogey since the eighth hole in the second round on Saturday morning, and he was feeling good about his swing. So was Steve Williams, his caddy. Except when talking to his boss or someone he deems important, Williams is one of the more unpleasant men you are likely to meet in any walk of life. His colleagues have dubbed him “the vigilante caddy,” since he often takes it upon himself to yell at professional photographers for doing their job or to destroy cameras owned by fans who are not authorized to have them on the golf course.
He is, however, an excellent caddy. Sensing his player’s confidence, Williams suggested to Woods that he go for the green, no doubt thinking he might pull off an eagle and, at worst, would get up and down from somewhere near the green for a birdie. Woods would later tell CBS that it had been Williams’s idea—“Stevie talked me into it” were his exact words—but would take the hit for the decision himself since, in the end, it was his decision.
As soon as he saw Woods pull the driver, Lanny Wadkins questioned his choice. “I think this is a bad gamble,” he said. He was right.
The shot never had a chance. It went straight right, smacked off a tree, and came to a stop in the middle of the trees that line the right side of the fairway. From there, even though he was only 103 yards from the flag, Woods had no chance to get the ball on the green, but managed to pitch it out from the trees to a spot a few yards short.
On most holes he would have had a reasonable chance for par. But Flowering Peach isn’t most holes. The green is very shallow from front to back and has swales running through it. Finding a pin placement on a flat area can be a challenge. With the flag tucked on the left side, getting the ball close was tough. Woods tried to hit a pitch and run, but the ball never stopped. It ran all the way through the green, coming to rest on the fringe, leaving him with a straight downhill shot coming back.
Things didn’t get any better after that. His next pitch ran through the green again, stopping 17 feet from the hole. He putted from there, missing by six inches, and tapped in for a double-bogey six. Just like that, he had gone from three shots behind Maggert to five shots back.
Neither Weir nor Maggert hit the ball long enough to even think about hitting driver at the third. Weir hit an iron that ended up rolling just into the rough (first cut) on the right. Maggert’s tee shot found the front of the fairway bunker on the left.
At the moment Maggert stepped into the bunker, Woods was three-putting the par-three fourth hole from 30 feet to fall another shot back. Mattiace, who had birdied number two and number three, was walking off the fifth green, having just saved par by holing a 12-foot putt. He was at two under par, tied with Mickelson and Toms, trailing Singh by one, Weir by two, and Maggert by three.
Maggert had a difficult shot. He had to clear the lip of the bunker and still hit the ball far enough to reach the green, which was 137 yards away, and get the ball to stop once it got there. Perhaps overthinking, Maggert hit the ball thin, and it didn’t carry the lip. But that wasn’t the worst thing about the shot. Before Maggert knew what had happened, the ball ricocheted off the lip and hit him in the chest.
Stunned, Maggert stared down at the ball, which now rested at his feet. It took a moment for him—and for everyone else—to realize what had happened. When he did, Maggert immediately called Weir over.
“The ball hit me,” he said. “I’m going to call for an official.”
Maggert was fairly certain he knew the rule, but he wanted to be sure. Too often on tour, players assume they know the rules, don’t call for an official, and end up making a mistake. This rule was simple: if you get hit with your own golf ball, the penalty is two shots.
“Needless to say, I was stunned,” Weir said. “I really didn’t see what happened, but when Jeff called me over, I had a feeling maybe the ball had hit him. Otherwise, why would he need me?”
Players frequently check with other players if they are unsure about a rule or to inform them when they are going to penalize themselves. Weir knew the rule but didn’t argue when Maggert said he wanted to ask an official. “The last thing you want to do is give a guy bad information,” he said. “Jeff never asked me, but if he had I think I’d have said, ‘I think it’s two shots and play it as it lies, but let’s check.’ ”
After confirming the two-shot penalty, Maggert played what was now his fifth shot from the bunker. He hit a superb shot, the ball rolling just over the green about 50 feet from the flag. Still a little bit shaken by what he had seen, Weir managed to put a pitching wedge on the green and two-putted from there for a par he was very happy to make. Maggert’s first putt rolled 15 feet past the hole. Just when it looked as if he might take an X, he rammed in his second putt for what was the closest thing one could make to a “good” seven.
Suddenly, the entire tenor and mood of the tournament had swung because of one innocent-looking little par-four. Weir was now the leader at four under par, with Singh one shot back. Maggert had dropped to two under, and Woods was now behind a large group of players and was at one over par. What’s more, the confidence he had felt standing on the third tee was in reverse.
The last six holes of the front nine at Augusta National are, generally speaking, not the place to try to make a move. The fourth and the sixth are two of the more difficult par-threes in the world; the fifth is a long, difficult par-four; and the seventh and ninth are shorter par-fours with treacherous greens. Only the par-five eighth is a birdie hole, and it is the longest and least reachable of the golf course’s par-fives.
Every player in contention at the Masters on Sunday knows this. Barring a lucky or brilliant shot, the general approach is to hope to pick up shots at the two par-fives and be happy with par at the other seven holes. It can be tempting to attack the third because of its length, but as Woods and Maggert learned, any bold play can be disastrous.
Almost everyone in the field had some sort of hiccup working their way through the four through nine minefield. Mickelson hit his tee shot long and right at the sixth and made a bogey to drop back to one under. Singh made his first bogey of the day at the fifth to drop to two under. Toms missed the fairway at the seventh and bogeyed to fall to one under. Woods found the front bunker at the seventh and made bogey from there, and then, remarkably, bogeyed the eighth for a second straight day after driving his ball into the right fairway bunker. That left him at three over par and, shockingly, out of contention, barring a miraculous back nine. The disgusted look on his face as he walked to the ninth tee made that seem unlikely, even for him.
The three players who did the best job of not losing ground during the rest of the front nine were Weir, Mattiace, and, surprisingly, Maggert, who somehow managed not to lose his composure after the debacle at number three. He made a great par save at number four and then rolled in a 30-footer for a rare birdie at the fifth to get back to three under. That kept him within one shot of Weir who was doing what he knew he needed to do: make putts to save par.
At the fourth, Weir’s 30-foot birdie putt went 10 feet past the hole, causing David Feherty to say, “That’s the first real mistake he’s made so far today.” Weir quickly erased the error, though, by making the putt coming back. At five, he looked destined to make bogey when his tee shot found the left bunker and his second shot came up well short of the green. From there, he had a pitch-and-run shot that, seemingly, was almost impossible to get close. He cozied it to three feet and made the putt to maintain a one-shot lead over Maggert and Mattiace, who had just made a remarkable birdie at the eighth.
Mattiace had missed the fairway to the right with his drive, and, after pitching out, his third shot had come up well short and left of the green, leaving him with a tough pitch, especially since the flag was tucked behind a bunker on the green’s left side. He pitched the ball onto the front of the green, hoping it would stop somewhere within 10 feet of the flag to give him a reasonable shot at par. Instead, the ball bounced onto the green and took a hop to the left. From there, it just kept rolling until it hit the flagstick and dropped in for a stunning birdie.
“I saw it with my own eyes, and I still couldn’t believe it,” Jonathan Byrd said. “He hit a really good shot with a lot of touch, but the way it bounced left was amazing.”
Mattiace couldn’t even see the ball go in from where he was, but he heard the shocked roar from the crowd and thrust a fist into the air. He walked onto the green with the kind of grin that is usually seen when someone talks a cop into letting him off with a warning. But in this case, the cop had handed Mattiace a $100 bill and said, “If you get stopped again, use this to pay the fine.”
Until that moment, Mattiace had been gliding along unnoticed, even by the other players on the leaderboard. Weir and Maggert were waiting for one of the big names to start making a move, but Mattiace was now three under par for the day and tied for second with Maggert.
Weir expanded his lead to two shots when he hit a brilliant six-iron to four feet at the sixth, easily the best shot of the day at a hole where most players were thrilled to be within 30 feet. He made another miraculous par at the seventh, wedging to five feet from the same front bunker where Woods had found himself twenty minutes earlier.
Weir also missed the eighth green. After a mediocre layup, his chip from 70 yards came up short of the green, about 80 feet from the hole. His chip rolled six feet past, but he made the putt for par. At that moment, Weir had hit only three of eight greens, but he was two under par for the round.
“Which is what you have to do on the last day of a major, no matter which one it is,” he said later. “You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to miss fairways and greens. How you handle yourself on those holes is what ultimately decides your fate on the day.”
The one person who was continuing to make it look relatively easy was Mattiace. After he parred the ninth, his second shot from the 10th fairway came up 80 feet short and right of the flag. The hole location on the 10th is almost always the same on Sunday: back left. If you go for the flag and carry the ball too far, you may find yourself with an almost impossible shot from behind the green. Most players take the conservative approach, trying to land on the front of the green, hoping the ball will roll to a reasonable distance. No one complains about making par on the tenth.
Mattiace’s second shot had finished in a spot almost identical to where Ben Crenshaw’s second shot had ended up on Sunday in 1984. From there, Crenshaw had rolled in what was arguably the most famous putt of his career, the putt bending right to left and diving into the hole. That birdie had given Crenshaw the momentum that carried him to his first major victory and the first of two Masters wins.
Mattiace wasn’t thinking about Crenshaw as he lined up the putt; rather, he was thinking that he would be very happy to two-putt and run to the 11th tee. Only he didn’t two-putt. The putt tracked almost the identical path that Crenshaw’s had taken nineteen years earlier with the exact same result: the ball rolled into the center of the cup, for Mattiace’s second breathtaking birdie in three holes.
Ever alert, CBS producer Lance Barrow almost instantly came up with tape of Crenshaw’s putt to show the viewers how close to identical the two putts had been.
Playing the eighth hole at that moment, Weir and Maggert heard the roar for Mattiace’s birdie but had no idea what or who it was for. “To be honest, I had no clue,” Weir said. “You hear a roar that loud, there’s a tendency to think it’s Tiger or Phil, but I knew Tiger had dropped back some and Phil was probably still on the ninth, and the roar didn’t come from there. So, I just didn’t know.”
The birdie at 10 put Mattiace alone in second place, one shot behind Weir. With everyone having made the turn except for Weir and Maggert, who were on the ninth, the standings looked like this: Weir at five under; Mattiace at four under; Maggert at three under; and Mickelson, Furyk, Singh, and Toms all still lurking at two under. Olazabal and Rich Beem were one shot further back.
One of the oldest clichés in golf is that “the Masters doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday.” The reason that statement had always applied to the Masters more than to the other majors is the way Bob Jones and Alistair McKenzie designed the last (second) nine holes. There is water in play at five of the nine holes (11, 12, 13, 15, and 16), and players have risk-reward options on a number of holes, most notably the two par-fives—13 and 15. Those holes are often referred to as “par-four-and-a-halfs,” because they often can be reached in two but not without dealing with potential water troubles.
Even with the lengthening of the golf course, 13 and 15 were still holes where players could make a major move in one direction or another. The two par-threes often play an important role in deciding winners and losers. The tiny par-three 12th almost never requires more than an eight-iron off the tee and is often played with a wedge, depending on the wind. But the green is narrow, and there are water and bunkers in front, and bunkers and a flower bed behind. Any error, any gust of wind one way or the other, and a player can be in deep trouble. The 16th isn’t nearly as daunting, and the Sunday pin is often back left, near the water, but in a spot where a shot that lands right of the flag may funnel toward the hole if it lands in the correct spot.
There had already been talk that the lengthening of the golf course had taken some of the romance out of the back nine. More players were laying up at 13 and 15 than in the past, and 18, once a hole with some birdie potential, had been stretched out to the point where birdies were few and far between.
Even so, with a tightly bunched leaderboard—there were nine players within four shots of the lead, five of them past major champions—it was clear that this was one Masters that would be won on the back nine on Sunday.
“What’s hard about it is that there’s no chance to take a deep breath,” Weir said. “Part of it is the situation, but a lot of it is the golf course. There are birdie holes out there, but there isn’t a single hole where you can lose any concentration at all and not get burned by it. It can wear you out mentally.”
That’s why it isn’t at all uncommon to see players sneak up the leaderboard on Sunday and then suddenly plunge—undone by “Amen Corner,” or, almost as often, by other less famous holes.
Weir finished his front nine with a solid par at the ninth, hitting an eight-iron to 18 feet and two-putting to go out in 34, two under par. As he and Maggert (who had also parred the ninth) walked through the ropes that run behind the 18th green to get to the 10th tee, CBS showed a graphic on the highest finishes by Canadian players in major championships: George Knudson had tied for second in the ’69 Masters behind George Archer, and Dave Barr had tied for second, one shot behind Andy North, in the ’85 U.S. Open.
Weir was still a long way from matching or topping them as he walked to number 10. The 34 on the front nine meant that he had played the front nine in six under par for the tournament. Through three rounds, he was one over par on the back, including the three-over 39 on Saturday that had knocked him out of the lead.
He began the back nine with another par, while Maggert, who had been quietly hanging in, rolled in an 18-foot birdie putt to get to four under, one shot back. Singh was also at four under at that moment.
Up ahead, Mattiace had stayed away from trouble to make par at the 11th, and then caught the kind of break at the 12th that a Masters champion often needs. His eight-iron looked for a moment as if it might come up short of the green, but it landed just over the bank that would have almost guaranteed a wet finish and stopped 18 feet from the hole.
“That was four feet from disaster,” CBS’s Bobby Clampett said.
“He got away with one there,” Lanny Wadkins said in response.
“Looks like it’s turning into a magical day for Len Mattiace,” Clampett added.
Mattiace two-putted for par and walked to the 13th tee still trailing Weir by a shot. He hit a perfect drive, drawing the ball toward the corner where the hole doglegs left. From there he had 224 yards to the hole and decided to go for the green with a five-wood. He hit a gorgeous shot, the ball landing on the front of the green and rolling to within 10 feet of the cup. At that moment Mattiace was the twentieth player in the field to go for the 13th green in two on Sunday and only the second to find it.
The “patrons” were by now beginning to sense what Clampett had brought up on the 12th hole: that this was indeed becoming a magical day for Mattiace. With Woods out of contention and Mickelson still a couple of shots back but not making a big move, they were as happy to root for Mattiace as anyone else. When his eagle putt went into the hole putting him at six under par for the day and for the tournament, the cheers echoed off the giant trees all the way back to the 10th green, where Weir and Maggert were at that moment.
“I guessed that it was Len and that he’d made eagle because it wasn’t a birdie roar,” Weir said. “I could tell it was coming from 13 green, and I had a suspicion he’d just taken the lead.”
He had. Weir knew he had to stay patient and make sure he got through 11 and 12 without making a mistake. His chance at 13 would come soon enough, and there were still plenty of holes to play—for everyone.
Weir and Maggert both parred the 11th. Singh had birdied 11, but then bogeyed 12 from the back bunker and bogeyed 13 after a poor drive that forced him to hit his second shot left-handed. Olazabal and Beem had both gone into the water at 13. Mickelson and Furyk were still at two under par, along with Singh. It was beginning to look like it was a three-man tournament: Mattiace, Weir, and Maggert.
Weir found the green at the 12th and breathed a sigh of relief. The hole was playing longer than usual because of the wind, and Maggert decided to go with a seven-iron to make certain he didn’t come up short. He didn’t, but the ball flew into the back bunker. There may not be a more frightening bunker shot in golf than one played from the back bunker at the 12th hole, which has the innocent-sounding name “Golden Bell,” because the shot is straight downhill to the pin, and if you try to baby it you can leave the ball in the bunker. Play the ball boldly at all, and it can easily end up in the water.
That’s what happened to Maggert. His second shot rolled through the green and straight into the water. As a result, he had to walk all the way around the green and Rae’s Creek to the drop area between the tee and the green. Clearly unnerved, he plopped what was now his fourth shot into the water. Memories of Tom Weiskopf’s 13 on the tiny hole began to surface in people’s minds. Maggert finally found the green with his sixth shot. He missed his 20-foot putt for seven and tapped in for an eight.
Two holes—the shortest par-four on the course and the shortest par-three—had destroyed Maggert’s chance to win the Masters. As he walked off the 12th green, Maggert had played 10 holes in the last round in two under par. He had played the third and the 12th in eight over par, meaning he was six over par for the day and one over par for the tournament.
Weir watched Maggert unravel with some measure of shock and an equal measure of sympathy. He knew he had to keep his focus, which wasn’t easy since it took Maggert quite a while to play from bunker to water to water to green. Weir took a deep breath when Maggert finally found the green and began lining up his 60-foot birdie putt.
His putt went about five feet past the hole, but, just as he had done all day, he was rock solid on the putt coming back and walked to the 13th tee still trailing Mattiace by one.
At that moment, however, Mattiace was on 15. He had parred 14—often a difficult task for players pumped up after making an eagle at 13—and then hit a perfect drive at the 15th, leaving him only 219 yards from the hole.
“This may well be the most important shot of his life,” David Feherty told the TV audience as Mattiace lined up his four-iron on a slight downhill lie. The shot rocketed over the pond fronting the green and rolled just over the putting surface. Many players are so concerned with coming up short of the 15th green that they go over the green and find water on the other side. Mattiace was close enough to the green that he could putt, and he cozied the ball to within 18 inches of the cup for a tap-in birdie. He was seven under par and two shots clear of Weir. No one else was within three shots of him.
But Mattiace knew the tournament was far from over since Weir had yet to play 13 and 15. Weir knew exactly what the situation was at that moment. “I knew I had to at least make a birdie at 13 and make one at 15 and make sure I made no mistakes coming in,” he said. “Lenny had played a perfect round up until that point, but I still thought I could catch him.”
Unless Mattiace completely collapsed, it was unlikely anyone other than Weir was going to have a chance to catch him. Mickelson had reached both 13 and 15 in two but hadn’t converted either eagle putt. He was in third place at four under par, but the more likely birdie holes were behind him. Furyk was at three under. Everyone else had gone backward on the back nine.
Weir hit a good drive on 13, although it was a little bit left of an ideal spot, and he had to steer around some overhanging tree branches with his second shot. He hit a four-iron from 193 yards, and the ball bounced through the green into the deep swale to the left. Peter Kostis quickly noted how tough the shot was by pointing out that it was possible to put the ball into the water fronting the green if the shot was played too boldly.
Clearly aware of that, Weir decided to putt rather than chip from the swale. The ball tracked all the way across the green and barely stopped before reaching the fringe on the other side, leaving a tricky 12-footer for birdie. Fully aware of what was at stake, Weir stalked the putt for a while before calmly stroking it into the hole. As it went in, he shook his fist, as if to say, “This isn’t over yet.”
Which was exactly what he was thinking.
Mattiace had other ideas. Wanting to be sure not to come up the least bit short on the par-three 16th—“Redbud” on the scorecard—he took a five-iron, with the hole playing 183 yards to its normal Sunday back-left pin position. His ball landed in exactly the right spot, dead center on the green, and trickled left, stopping 8 feet under the hole. The birdie putt was never going anywhere but in the hole. At that moment on Sunday at the Masters, Mattiace had played 16 holes in eight under par. He led Weir by two and everyone else by at least four.
Mickelson and Furyk were in trouble. They both parred 16 and 17, leaving them too far back with too few holes to play. “Realistically, when I didn’t birdie 16 or 17, I knew it was over with Len [two groups ahead] on 18 at eight under,” said Mickelson, who would finish third for a third straight year. “I needed to birdie those two and the 18th and hope he made five at 18 to have any shot at all.”
Weir had parred 14 while Mattiace was playing 17. Seemingly nerveless, Mattiace had hit another perfect drive at 17—which CBS somehow missed showing live—and then watched his second shot from 156 yards roll just off the green. From 40 feet he calmly putted to within a foot and tapped in. A par at 18 would mean Weir would have to play the last four holes in two under par to catch him.
Mattiace stood on the 18th tee fully aware of where he was and what he was on the verge of doing. The course record at Augusta National is 63—before the extra length was added—held by Greg Norman (1986) and Nick Price (1993). Neither man had won the tournament that year. The low Sunday round by a winner was the 64 Gary Player had shot in 1978, years before the course was lengthened. Mattiace needed a par to shoot 64 and, in all likelihood, win the Masters. He had not made a bogey all day: he had one eagle, six birdies, and ten pars.
On the 18th tee, the moment finally got to him a little bit. His drive went right, bouncing into the trees and the pine straw on the right side of the fairway. If the ball had bounced differently, he might have had a shot to the green, but when he got to it he could see that he had no chance and no choice but to punch out and try to get up and down for par. He did so, leaving himself 120 yards to the flag, which was in a new location—back right. The usual Sunday placement was front left.
The new location had given the players fits all day. There had been one birdie—by 1998 champion Mark O’Meara—and a slew of bogeys. Trying to make sure he didn’t leave his wedge short of the upslope in front of the flag, Mattiace watched the shot fly over the flag and stop in the back fringe, 18 feet from the flag.
Badly wanting to make the putt, Mattiace looked at it from all angles and then, nerves clearly taking over now, left the putt a good seven feet short. All of a sudden he had a tough putt for bogey. He managed to slide that one into the hole. He breathed a deep sigh of relief, waved his cap in appreciation as the fans stood to cheer his remarkable round, and was in the scoring hut intently watching as Weir played the 15th hole.
Weir’s drive on 15 had faded a little bit left into the rough, forcing him to lay up—not the play he wanted under the circumstances but the only play he had. From 92 yards he was able to skid his wedge to a halt five feet away, and, as he had done all afternoon, he coolly nailed the putt to get to seven under. That meant he and Mattiace were tied. Weir was walking off the green when he heard the crowd murmuring. He looked behind him at the giant scoreboard that is right off the green and saw the red “7” next to Mattiace’s name, indicating he had bogeyed 18. He took a deep breath.
“New ball game,” Weir said to Little as they walked through the tunnel underneath the stands that leads to the 16th tee.