Lloyd Mangrum called the 12th “the meanest little hole in the world.” Jack Nicklaus calls it “the hardest tournament hole in golf.” Fuzzy Zoeller calls it “the spookiest little par-3 we play.”
More green jackets have been lost at the 12th than at the Augusta City Dry Cleaners. When the Masters comes to shove next Sunday, you can bet somebody is going to walk away from 12 looking as though he had just heard from the IRS. Or 60 Minutes . Tom Weiskopf made a 13 there once. He bounced back the next day with a 7. That was the last time anybody saw him with hair
Love me some Masters. There are two golf tournaments that to me are must watch, the US Open and the Masters. They play entirely differently most years. The US Open is usually a battle to survive whereas the Masters is won by someone who has to make some aggressive moves at some point. The back nine at the Masters on Sunday is golf at it’s best.
The new method of showing many of the commercials on half the screen while continuing to show golf (or other sports) on the other side is an interesting change. And I do often record golf for watching later in the day.
So when I turned the TV off yesterday to go to work Phil had just dumped it into the water on 11. I figured he was done. He finished at -5, and today Spieth is -5 for the round. And right now the leaderboard is about as good as it can get.
I just about missed this as I had no idea they were starting early this morning. Turned on the TV and Tiger was playing 15, I thought for a few minutes it had been rained out and I was watching an old replay.
The real winner is the PGA. Tiger has always been a money maker for the tour but his winning the Masters will translate into billions of dollars for the PGA. They have to be loving this big time.
This story from 2016 by Wright Thompson, Tiger at the nadir of everything, really helps to put today into perspective. It is simply an excellent biographical profile of a human being’s fall from grace, written by one of the best writers in any medium out there right now.
Before The Incident, it seemed the silliest thing in the sporting world to ask if Tiger was going to surpass Nicklaus in terms of number of majors. It was only a question of when. And then Tiger’s personal and professional life nosedived for a solid decade, and the dream was dead.
It’ll be interesting to see what the odds are like tomorrow.