There was the eye-catching comeback of a Tiger.
The stirring revival from a crew from Down Under!
The excruciating collapse of a kid!
5 straight birdies on the back-nine by a former Major Champion!
And in the end, the championship crowning of a son of a South African chicken farmer named Charl Schwartzel!
Excuse my ignorance but who the heck is Charl Schwartzel? – and once again excuse my obtuseness – but how in God’s earth can a guy who looks like a shoe salesman win the most coveted golf event on the planet?
As the sun set on the luscious greenery at Augusta National Golf Club after the conclusion of the 75th Masters, amazed patrons struggled to take deep breaths. They had nothing left. It was a gut-wrenching day to be sure!
The world’s best golfers had just spent the afternoon delivering breathtaking shot after breathtaking shot. Nations united on a leader board – Antarctica was the only continent without a birdie-making ambassador in the chase – that was so jumbled and changed so often that it had a dizzying effect on its operators.
Fifty years to the day after South African Gary Player became the first international golfer to take home one of the famed green jackets, his similarly built countryman Charl Schwartzel (a super lightweight at 5-11, 140 pounds) out dueled the big hitters in what was one of the most exciting back nines in the tournament’s history. At different times throughout the proceedings 8 guys had their names atop the leaderboard for the 5 hour roller-coaster.
Days like Sunday are why the Masters is the best event in sports.
The Olympics come but every two years. Occasionally, a Super Bowl delivers last-minute drama. Every few years, a World Series is competitive. The NBA Finals sometimes has its moments. Every now and then, college football’s appointed finalists live up to the season-long debate. And the recent display at Reliant Stadium in Houston notwithstanding, teams in NCAA championship basketball games have been known to make a shot or two.
But time after time, year after year, the Masters delivers. It can’t get much better than this year’s edition. With so many players in and out and back in again, it had one of the more entertaining back nines Augusta has seen.
Sure, it was a Masters Sunday when you needed a defibrillator next to the couch, but in the end, what did we wind up with?
We got a green jacket being hung on the bony shoulders of 140-pound 26-year old and who knows if we’ll ever see HIM again. He seems like a work in progress. Even his first name is unfinished. Can you say “Louis Oosthuizen”??
This is the 10th different winner in the past 10 majors. It’s like golf is running some kind of contest. Hey, you. You just won the Masters. And I would bet on Congressional Country Club making it 11 for 11.
Tiger, please come back. The game misses you. Golf is so much better when Tiger is in contention – and he is so close to getting his game back – back to where it used to be!
When the final twosome reached the 12th hole, five players were tied at the top, and 10 were within two strokes of the lead. In all, eight players had at least a share of the lead at some point during the final round.
“Sometimes I would look at (the scoreboard) and not register what I saw,” the stunned winner said.
Schwartzel, a spell checker’s nightmare (Charl might be short a couple of letters, but it isn’t short for anything), earned the win with a magnificent final-round 66 – the best closing round in a victory since Nick Faldo’s 65 in 1989 – and a 14-under-par 274 total that beat Australians Jason Day and Adam Scott by two strokes.
Schwartzel began the day with a chip-in for birdie on the first hole and then holed out from 114 yards for eagle on No. 3 to move into a tie with third-round leader Rory McIlroy, who started the final 18 holes with a four-shot advantage.
Tiger Woods joined Schwartzel in challenging conventional wisdom that the tournament doesn’t really begin until the back nine Sunday by posting a brilliant 5-under-par 31 on the front, highlighted by an eagle at No. 8. It was the first time in a long time we had seen the Woods of old making noise on the leader board in the fourth round of a tournament.
There was a buzz that was so apparent I could feel it through my television – I felt the need to tell someone I was about the witness history. Tiger was down by 7 shots and he erased that deficit in fewer than 9 holes. Surely he would shoot 4 under on the “easy” back nine and win this tournament going away. Tiger had never won a major when he trailed by even ONE shot – but yesterday he was going to win while overcoming a 7-shot deficit. Or so I thought!
But then something weird, and normal, happened. The tournament really began. As you knew it would.
The winning story is typically the most compelling, and Schwartzel wowed with a birdie-birdie-birdie-birdie finish.
Schwartzel was first to ever finish with 4 straight birdies on the final day to win the trophy.
Not Rory’s day
But on this day, the sustained drama of the final round and even the roars accompanying a roaring Tiger were dimmed by the lack of roars for Rors.
Poor Rory McIlroy. The precocious 21-year-old Irishman teed off Sunday for what many expected to be his coronation as the game’s brightest young star. But instead of becoming the tournament’s second-youngest winner (behind Woods), he suffered through a difficult day, enduring a humiliation that this lovely but occasionally cruel game has bestowed upon golfers of all ages and skill.
McIlroy’s drive at the 10th found bark and didn’t bite, banging off a tree and settling between cottages that were not in Bobby Jones’ imagination as a possible launch spot for a second shot on that hole. It became almost unbearable to watch.
McIlroy, who led after each of the first three rounds, posted a triple bogey on the hole, a bogey on the 11th and a four-putt double bogey on the 12th. He finished with an 8-over-par 80, 10 shots off the pace.
“I was leading this golf tournament with nine holes to go, and I just unraveled,” McIlroy said.
Many will describe McIlroy’s experience as a teachable moment. But does anybody really need to go through what he went through – matching the highest final-round score of any 54-hole leader in tournament history – to learn something?
We witness the best in sport when accomplishment matches skill. The experts say McIlroy has the best swing in the game. He has the makings of a star player, a star personality. In this day, not all stars are champions. On this day, the young star didn’t take the championship.
But though he stumbled off the course with his shirt ruffled and his black mop of hair strewn about, he took his defeat like a champion.
It is a good bet that soon on some extraordinary day at Augusta National, at this tournament that doesn’t began until the back nine Sunday; McIlroy will have his championship day.
And it probably will be the best sporting event that year. Again.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
A Fitness, Tennis, Squash & Sports Blog by Mayfair Clubs 