by Andy Farrell
Another is the 11th hole at Augusta National.
For his first two Masters wins, in 1989 and 1990, Faldo found 72 holes were not enough. Each time he was forced into a sudden-death playoff and it took two extra holes to prevail. By the time he did so, he was standing on the 11th green, far from the clubhouse, in the gloaming and, on at least one occasion, in the rain. His hallelujah moments came in Amen Corner. The 11th green was also the exact spot of Larry Mize’s outrageous chip at the 1987 Masters.
If Augusta only ever became a scene of recurring nightmares for Greg Norman, it was always a dreamland to Faldo, from the moment when colour television first brought the sights and sounds of the golfing funfair to a 13-year-old watching late into the night over the weekend of Easter 1971. ‘Even though the game and the great players were completely unknown to me, Jack Nicklaus made a clear impression on me,’ Faldo wrote in his 1994 book Faldo – In Search of Perfection. Tony Jacklin’s Open victory of two years earlier had clearly passed him by. But now Nicklaus ‘drew my attention like a magnet’, even though the Golden Bear did not win, finishing joint second with Johnny Miller, two behind Charles Coody.
‘I was struck that weekend,’ Faldo went on, ‘by the same things that hit everyone who experiences Augusta for the first time: the tall, dark pines, the green grass and the colourful golfers. What most impressed me, however, was the sound. Not the whooping of the crowds – though that is thrilling the first time – but the very sound of the club on ball and the rush of air as the ball set off. I suppose the closeness and height of the trees exaggerates the sound, but I was very aware of that wonderful swoosh – the hit and the ball’s launch are really all one noise. When I took up the game, one of the things I was seeking was to recreate that unique sound. It was a long time – a year or so – before I hit one properly and heard it again.’
That was doubtless on the practice range at Welwyn Garden City Golf Club, in Hertfordshire, where the teenager virtually took up residence, swiftly making a dent in the 10,000 hours of purposeful practice that is the basic requirement for expertise, according to popular recent theories. Swimming, athletics and cycling never had the hold on the youngster that golf did and in 1973 Faldo and his father, George, set off for Troon and his first visit to the Open. Sleeping at a campsite at night, the not-quite 16-year-old spent the long hours of daylight watching as much golf as he could find, being particularly impressed by watching Tom Weiskopf ‘pinging’ iron shots on the range while wearing only regular shoes, without any grip. ‘That’s impressive, he’s going to win,’ Faldo-the-future-television-analyst said to himself and he was right.
Three years later and Faldo was playing in the Open. He made his debut in the Masters in 1979 although after that he did not return to Augusta until 1983. That season he went on to win five times on the European Tour and claimed the Harry Vardon Trophy as the leading money winner. His success, which up until then also included three PGA Championships in four years from 1978, was helped by his putting, which could be brilliant but streaky and inconsistent. Tall and handsome, his swing was upright, flowing and graceful. ‘In those days he had a long overswing, a tremendous, willowy hip slide, a typically young man’s action which propelled the ball enormous distances, not always in the desired direction,’ wrote Peter Dobereiner.
A tendency to break down under the greatest pressure became apparent, however. At Birkdale in the 1983 Open, he led briefly during the final round but crashed to a 73 to finish five behind Tom Watson. At the 1984 Masters, he was in contention on the last day but went out in 40 and a 76 left him eight behind Ben Crenshaw. ‘By halfway through Sunday’s final round, the greens could have been written in hieroglyphics such was the difficulty I was experiencing in reading them, while the fairways, previously so accommodating, suddenly appeared narrower than a ten pin bowling alley,’ Faldo wrote in Life Swings.
It was late in 1984, at Sun City, in South Africa, that Faldo met a man making his way as an instructor, David Leadbetter. Faldo admits to a fascination with taking things apart to see how they work – one of the things he found most enjoyable about cycling was getting a new bike, taking it apart and putting it back together again – and he had always taken the same approach to his swing. In Leadbetter he found someone on a similar wavelength. They started working together properly in 1985 and for 18 months remodelled every part of Faldo’s swing – backswing, downswing, follow-through and everything in between. ‘What gave me encouragement,’ Faldo said, ‘that I was on the right track was that suddenly I could hit a shot or a series of shots that were better than anything before. I’d hit a drive with real penetration or some iron shots which went where they should go. They were the stepping stones, the little boosts that kept me going.’
His form in tournaments naturally suffered at first. In 1987, he did not qualify for the Masters but happened to be going through Atlanta Airport, on his way to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, when he bumped into a bunch of European players and officials, and representatives of Her Majesty’s Press, who were in transit to Augusta. ‘The golfing world was assembling for the Masters and I was heading for a tumbleweed town in the woods somewhere,’ Faldo wrote in Life Swings. ‘I felt grievously humiliated.’
Instead of heading to the first major of the year, Faldo was entered into the Deposit Guaranty Classic, along with everyone else who had not qualified for Augusta. Still, it was a turning point, with four consecutive rounds of 67 leaving him second to David Ogrin. He returned to Europe to win the Spanish Open, and then that summer he claimed the Open for the first time at Muirfield. ‘I had finally proved to myself that I had been right all along to go back to the beginning and start again,’ he said. ‘I had now achieved more with the new version than I ever could have done with the old.’
The following April, Faldo was back at Augusta and finished tied for 30th in the 1988 Masters. After his round he went up on to the balcony of the clubhouse to watch the closing stages of Sandy Lyle’s victory alongside the BBC’s Steve Rider. Lyle, with his effortless power and easy grace, seemed to be ahead of Faldo at every stage of their careers. Lyle won the Open first, in 1985, and now that Faldo had a claret jug, Lyle had added a green jacket. Mind you, if you were European and a golfer and swinging a club in the 1980s or 1990s, you weren’t anyone if you didn’t have a green jacket.
Between 1980 and 1999, Europeans won 11 out of the 20 Masters contested (in contrast to no triumphs at the US Open and the US PGA during the same span). Seve Ballesteros led the way in 1980 and 1983, Bernhard Langer followed in 1985 and 1993, while José María Olazábal was another double winner in 1994 and 1999. For four years in a row the winner of the Masters was British: Lyle in 1988, Faldo in 1989 and 1990 and Ian Woosnam in 1991. It was an unprecedented run of success, yet no European has won at Augusta in the new millennium. And although seven Open Championships were claimed in 14 years from 1979 to 1992, it is really at Augusta that the dominance of this group of players had to be acknowledged by the world.
Since the days of Harry Vardon and the Great Triumvirate had ended, all the leading players had been American, with the notable exceptions of the likes of Henry Cotton, Bobby Locke, Peter Thomson and Gary Player. But suddenly, a new generation of European stars all arrived at once, and brought along with them the likes of Norman and Nick Price for good measure. Ballesteros was born in April 1957, Faldo in July 1957, Langer in August 1957, Lyle in February 1958 and Woosnam in March 1958. They were Europe’s ‘Big Five’. Olazábal came along later, born in 1966, but from the moment he made his debut in the 1987 Ryder Cup as Seve’s protégé, he was put on a par with the others.
Ryder Cup victories from 1985 onwards showed that the balance of power was shifting (Europeans joined the competition in 1979 to help Great Britain and Ireland, who had not beaten the Americans since 1957). But it was quite another thing to storm the great citadel of American golf, Augusta National, founded by the immortal Bobby Jones, quite so breathtakingly. How did it happen?
One theory Faldo subscribed
to was that although Augusta might have become spiritually the home of American golf, the test on offer was quite different from that at other major venues in the States, or on the week-to-week PGA Tour. ‘It’s so different from everywhere else anyone plays, we all have to adapt,’ he said. Europeans, it was felt, were at an advantage because instead of getting used to the same conditions every week, they had to adapt wherever they travelled, be it from the British seaside across to continental Europe or travelling around the world to Africa, Australia, perhaps Japan or South America as well as in the States. While the modern European Tour travels all over the globe virtually every week of the year, back then it stayed in Europe and was only open for business between April and October. To get ahead, Europe’s best had to travel the world.
Faldo had left the confines of Welwyn Garden City when he grasped the need to challenge himself to an even greater degree. In his mind, he turned a relatively featureless north London parkland course into a major-championship worthy test by imagining water hazards and out of bounds features. Still, his first trips to the States were an eye-opener. ‘When I first came to America,’ he said, ‘water scared me because you didn’t see it as much in Europe. For a while, you really had to get over that. In Europe, you could miss a green by 30 to 40 yards and if you were a good chipper you could still get up and down. But in the States, plonk, you are in the water, you are dropping out and taking a double bogey when you are just two yards off the side of the green. It came as a real shock.’
Augusta National has its share of treacherous water hazards but in comparison to courses such as Oakmont and Winged Foot and other typical venues for the US Open or the US PGA Championship, there was not the thick rough just off the fairways and greens. There still isn’t, although a bordering ‘second cut’ was introduced in 1999 that is as pristine as most courses’ fairways. Someone like Ballesteros was constrained at the other US majors, with his off-line driving severely punished and his exquisite short game neutralised by long grass just off the greens. At Augusta, he was able to give full expression to his skills.
‘The best players win on the fairest courses and Augusta National is, of all the courses used for majors in America, the fairest – by a considerable distance,’ wrote David Davies in Golf Weekly just before the 1992 Masters. ‘Augusta National feels no need to defend itself by growing debilitating rough. All the course asks you to do is to drive into the right place in order to have the easiest second shot. A bad drive is its own penalty, for it will make that second shot exceedingly difficult. Should you miss the green, the difficulty in making par is imposed by the speed, and the gradient, of the greens. Thus Augusta removes the element of chance attendant in golf, while the other two US majors enhance that element, and emphasize it.
‘The best players will flourish where their skills are allowed to be expressed, and it is arguable that all the European winners of the Masters, with the possible exception of Ballesteros in 1980, were, at the time, one of the top-three players in the world. Given a course on which they could express their talents, it is perhaps not so surprising that they have won so frequently.’
It is a tribute to the genius of the design by Jones and MacKenzie that Augusta has always churned out quality champions. It is also the secret to why the tournament has become so popular with players and fans alike. For the first few decades of the Masters, the best players were all American, then they were suddenly European. Michael McDonnell, in Golf World’s Masters preview for 1992, also pointed out: ‘Perhaps the most important factor in this run of victories has been the domino effect of success itself. More exactly, it is the if-he-can-so-can-I attitude which not only prompts each rival into action but also reduces the awe in which previously he held the grand title that his mate has now won.’
Ballesteros was the one who showed the rest it was possible. Price told Golf Digest: ‘A lot of us who would win majors – me, Greg, Faldo, Sandy, Langer – were the same age, but Seve was our benchmark. He won four majors before any of us won any and he had immense charisma.’
‘Seve was golf’s Cirque du Soleil,’ Faldo said upon the Spaniard’s retirement in 2007, singling out the final round of the 1988 Open, when Ballesteros beat both Faldo and Price, as the greatest he had seen. ‘The passion, artistry, skill, drama, that was Seve. It was the swashbuckling way he played. He hit it and chased after it and hit it again, but no two follow-throughs were ever the same. You just had to stand back and admire it. We had great respect for each other.’
Ballesteros loved nothing more than beating Americans at golf, and he also loved it when the likes of Lyle and Faldo followed suit. A mark of his greatness was not just his own achievements but what he made possible for others. ‘I led them all,’ the Spaniard said, ‘winning the Masters, winning the Open, winning the Ryder Cup, winning in America. If anybody asked me what my biggest achievement is, I always say that I am very proud that I was the first to do all those things.’
When Player made his great back-nine charge in 1978, Ballesteros was playing alongside the South African. On the 13th hole, Player told him: ‘Seve, these people don’t think I can win. You watch. I’ll show them.’ It was exactly the attitude the Spaniard would adopt and two years later, having already won his first Open at Lytham, Ballesteros went into the final round leading by seven strokes. What would Norman, 16 years on, have given for a start that included three birdies in the first five holes? Seve was ten ahead at the turn but such is the back nine at Augusta that moments later it was a very different situation. He bogeyed the 10th, then found the water at the 12th for a double bogey and was wet again at the 13th which cost a bogey six. Meanwhile Jack Newton had made three birdies and was now only three strokes behind. Soon, Gibby Gilbert was only two adrift but Ballesteros pulled himself together and eventually won by four.
Player, the three-time champion, was the only other overseas player to have won the Masters. Now Seve was the first European winner and, at 23, the youngest ever champion (and would remain so until the 21-year-old Tiger Woods won in 1997). He repeated the feat three years later, again winning by four strokes after starting the final round birdie-eagle-par-birdie.
More Masters titles should have followed for Ballesteros but he missed out due to the four-iron into the pond at the 15th in 1986 and his exit at the first playoff hole in 1987. Instead, it was Langer who was the next European to don the green jacket on Easter Sunday in 1985 – teamed with his red trousers the German said it made him look like a Christmas tree.
Lyle had played alongside Nicklaus on the magical afternoon in 1986 when the Bear won his sixth Masters. Two years later Lyle led after 54 holes and despite leading the US money list and having won the previous week at the Greater Greensboro Open, he admitted in his autobiography To the Fairway Born: ‘With dawn came the same sheer gut-wrenching panic I used to feel as a child while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room contemplating the pain to come and fully aware that it might be even more intense than my worst imaginings.’
He added: ‘The difference between sporting triumph and disaster, always a very, very thin line, is even more slender at Augusta.’ At the 18th hole, Lyle drove into a bunker but he just had enough clearance from the high lip to hit a seven-iron that flew majestically over the flagstick and then trickled back down from the top tier of the green ever closer to the hole. He made the putt to beat Mark Calcavecchia by a stroke, and the Scot became only the fourth player at the time to have won the Masters with a birdie at the last, following Art Wall (1959), Arnold Palmer (1960) and Player (1978). Mark O’Meara and Phil Mickelson have managed it since, in 1998 and 2004.
Lyle helped Faldo into a green jacket in 1989, and Faldo did the same for Woosnam in 1991, after the Welshman had holed a vital par putt at the last to beat Olazábal by a stroke. After Langer won for a second time in 1993, this time coordinating his outfit with a yellow shirt, Olazábal won the first of his two jackets in 1994 by two strokes from Tom Lehman. Ballesteros had left a note for his countryman before the final round
: ‘Be patient. You know exactly how to play this course. Allow the others to become nervous. You are the best player in the world.’
When Seve said something like that, you listened up. Coincidentally, at the Champions Dinner before the 1999 Masters, Player had Olazábal up against a wall reminding him of what a great golfer he was. Player is another who must be believed and victory duly followed. Faldo never needed anyone else to give him such a pep talk. What Seve told Olazábal was what Faldo always told himself.
It took until Faldo’s sixth appearance at Augusta in 1989, ten years after his debut, to get comfortable with the course. Lee Trevino was making his 18th appearance and still did not like the course – the six-time major winner was never better than tenth in the Masters – but he took the lead by one over Faldo on the first day and the pair were tied at the halfway stage. It was the only time when the Englishman topped the leaderboard after one of the first three rounds of the Masters. Faldo actually led by three at the turn on Friday but as the weather got ever colder and wetter, his form shrivelled. Six under for the first 27 holes, he was eight over for the next 27. A third-round of 77 was completed on Sunday morning after returning to the course and playing the last five holes in two over par.
He was now five behind Crenshaw and spent the short break between rounds trying out a new putter on the practice green and working on a tip he had received from fellow tour player Mike Hulbert a week earlier: left hand back, right hand through. It worked. He holed from 25 feet on the 1st green and produced the round of the day with a seven-under 65. He was still three behind with four to play but birdied the par-five 15th, the 16th, holing a slick 15-foot downhiller with enormous break, and the 17th, where he popped one in from 35 feet up the slope. It gave the Englishman the clubhouse lead at five under and then he had to wait as others finished behind him. Ballesteros went in the pond at the 16th and took a double bogey while Scott Hoch, who had been leading by one, bogeyed the 17th and finished level with Faldo. Norman and Crenshaw both had the chance to birdie the last to win but ended up with bogeys so it was just the twosome of Hoch and Faldo in the playoff.