Faldo/Norman

by Andy Farrell

  At the 10th, Faldo found a greenside bunker while Hoch’s approach finished 30 feet from the hole. Faldo came out to eight feet and then Hoch putted up to two feet. Rather than finish off, he elected to mark and let Faldo putt. The Englishman missed so he registered a bogey. Hoch now had his short putt for the victory but to the shock of everyone but Faldo he missed on the left and had to hole the one back from five feet to continue the playoff. It was his first three-putt of the week. ‘I never thought I was out of it, even when Scott had his two-footer,’ Faldo said at the time. ‘I know what was going through his mind. He’s got to make that to win the Masters. That doesn’t make it easy. This one was a battle of emotions.’

  Hoch never did win the Masters, or any other majors, and was inevitably asked to look back on his miss when he stepped into the interview room after the first round seven years later. ‘Oh, it’s something that I wish wouldn’t happen,’ he said. ‘It haunts you, guys and ladies. I look back on it two ways – that was probably one of my finest moments in golf and one of my worst all at the same time. I know I did everything that I wanted to do on the 10th hole to make that putt. I felt good about it, I thought I put a good stroke on it, I just must have lined it up left.’

  Many consider that Hoch handed Faldo his first Masters title and had the American missed his bogey putt, they would be right. But Faldo certainly did not want to win that way and by going to the 11th hole he got a chance to do something exceptional to seal the victory. In what was almost pitch dark, and with rain that had been falling for some time, Faldo, playing the 25th hole of a long day, had 209 yards for his second shot with the wind off the right and he hit what he considered to be the best three-iron of his life on to the green.

  Hoch, visibly shaken, missed the green on the right and did not pull off a Larry Mize chip-in. Faldo had a 25-footer for a three and probably only needed two putts for the win. He asked his caddie, Andy Prodger, for a line but all he got by way of reply was: ‘It’s all a bit of a blur to me, guv, you had better do this one on your own.’ So he did. ‘The putt came off perfect and then dived into the cup. That was the ultimate feeling,’ he said.

  A look of disbelief came onto his face as he raised his arms above his head, putter in his left hand, the fingers of his right hand spread wide, eyes skywards, mouth agape. It remains one of his favourite images from the game. ‘What was so sweet was the way my kids copied it,’ he told Golf International. ‘I can remember Natalie showing me her golf swing and she finished it with her arms raised over her head, like I did. She was just 18 months old, and that was part of the swing, as far as she could see. It was what daddy did.’

  A year later Faldo found himself in remarkably similar circumstances as he became the only player other than Nicklaus (1965–66) to defend the title successfully. Woods (2001–02) has managed the feat since. Faldo was playing with Nicklaus in the final round, which, thanks to a 66 on the third day, he started three behind Ray Floyd. He was four behind with six to play but then came his charge with birdies at the 13th, 15th and 16th holes, the last of those having been dreamt about by both Faldo and his new caddie Fanny Sunesson the night before. A 69 left Faldo at ten under par and after Floyd three-putted the 17th he also finished on the same mark.

  In the playoff at the 10th, Faldo was in the same greenside bunker as the previous year. This time he came out to four feet. Floyd was a far different proposition to Hoch. A four-time major winner, he had claimed the Masters title in a runaway procession in 1976. Although he was now 47, he had another Ryder Cup in him as a player, having been the US captain in 1989, but in his prime he would have simply stared his 15-foot birdie putt into the hole. Instead he came up short and Faldo holed out for the half. After their tee shots at the 11th, Floyd nipped into a Portaloo and seemed to have to rush to catch up to play his approach first, Faldo having hit the longer drive. In contrast to his fine approach at the previous hole, Floyd now yanked his second shot into the pond on the left of the green.

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s he done,’ Faldo thought. The Englishman now only had to avoid a similar mistake and hit a ‘half eight-iron’ 20 feet below the hole. Two putts were good enough for a successful defence. This was the fifth sudden-death playoff in Masters history and the fourth to end on the 11th green (and the last – now the playoff holes are the 18th and the 10th, on a loop if required).

  Traditionally the previous year’s winner hands the green jacket to the new champion. Had Faldo lost, he would not only have had to graciously shake hands with his conqueror on the green but patiently hang around for the presentation ceremony in Butler Cabin – incentive enough not to ‘let go of the jacket’. Instead, the club chairman, Hord Hardin, did the honours for Faldo although secretly the double-winner would have liked Nicklaus to have performed the task. Like the man who had inspired him to take up the game in the first place, Faldo was now the dominant player and he almost won three majors in a row, just missing a playoff for the US Open by a stroke before claiming the Open at the home of golf. Only Woods in 2005 has matched the feat of winning at Augusta National and on the Old Course at St Andrews in the same year.

  Faldo could not win the 1996 Masters at the 11th hole, as he had his two previous titles, but he could take another step towards victory. Norman, having lost a Masters here in grievous fashion in 1987, seemed more than a step closer to again losing what he coveted most.

  Before the trees were added to pinch in the right side of the fairway in 2004, the landing area for the drive seemed wide open. But Faldo would aim for a groove that ran down the centre of the fairway. With a mid or short iron, there was no need to obey Ben Hogan’s maxim that the second shot should be played to deliberately miss the green on the right. Hogan was talking when it was routine to face a long-iron or even a fairway-wood shot for the approach and the pond on the left, added in 1950, was to be avoided at all costs. Hogan would say that if he was on the green you knew he had ‘missed’ his shot. With the hole now extended back to 505 yards, 50 yards longer than in 1996, and in cool conditions, certain players still need to head right of the green and rely on a chip-and-putt.

  But on that hot Sunday afternoon with the course running as fast as it ever has, Faldo, the first to play his approach, just needed a wedge. The hole was cut only four paces from the pond on the left of the green but Faldo went right for it. His ball came up just over 15 feet short of the hole but he had an uphill putt. Norman then hit his best approach since the 7th and finished pin-high right, just under 15 feet away. Faldo putted up just past the hole and marked, a tap-in only required for his four. Norman’s problem was that his putt was downhill on one of the fastest greens on the course. He had found that out on Friday when he raced a short birdie putt well past the hole.

  This time he did not race the putt but after it touched the right-hand side of the cup, the high side, the ball just kept on dribbling away from the hole. His par putt was almost three feet and this time it lipped out on the low side. A bogey five, his third in a row. Faldo tapped in and for the fourth hole in a row he had gained a stroke. In fact, he had gained six shots in 11 holes and Norman’s advantage had been wiped out. For the first time since early on Thursday he was not leading on his own. ‘This is where golf, pedestrian game that it is, can be so cruel,’ said Peter Alliss as the television cameras focused on Norman. ‘What demons are flying though his brain at the moment?’

  Golden Bell

  Hole 12

  Yards 155; Par 3

  ALL-SQUARE with seven holes to play, this was not a sudden-death playoff for the 60th Masters but it was a classic matchplay confrontation. Or, it would have been if there was not the feeling that a death had, in fact, already taken place. Amen Corner is usually abuzz on Masters Sunday but now there was silence. ‘People were streaming back up the hill at the 11th,’ recalled golf writer Patricia Davies. ‘They could not watch any more.’

  As Nick Faldo tapped in for his par on the 11th green, leaving him tied for the lead on nine under par, Greg Norman was alread
y marching towards the 12th tee. Those in the gallery who had staked out their spots close to the tee were not moving yet and some had words of encouragement for the Australian. ‘Hang in there, Greg’ and ‘Let’s go, Shark’ they shouted. But it was Faldo with the honour so Norman had to wait.

  On this devilish par-three, having the honour is not always to be recommended. But now Faldo embraced the opportunity to put Norman under further pressure. His seven-iron found the heart of the green, 15 feet from the hole. The pin was on the right of the green, as it usually is on the last day of the Masters, that portion being angled slightly farther away. It is a sucker pin and plenty have gone for it and come up short in Rae’s Creek. Faldo had aimed left of the flag, over the front bunker, the ball landing between that and the two bunkers at the back.

  ‘It was like good old matchplay,’ Faldo said. ‘I got to go first and that was a breathtaking shot to hit across there. I hit a great shot and it went right where I wanted it to go. He had to hit it perfect.’

  He did not. Norman’s tee shot set off right at the flag. It looked like a high-tariff shot that was not struck with sufficient precision. In fact, he was never aiming at the flag, it was just badly hit. ‘I pushed it,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t trying to hit it at the flag. I pushed it probably 18 feet to the right and didn’t hit it hard enough to carry it all the way on that line. I was just trying to put it on the middle-right of the green and I pushed it.’

  The ball did not carry all the way onto the green but landed on the top of the bank in front of the putting surface. Down it rolled and the ripples as it entered the water soon fanned out. In the gallery behind the tee, Norman’s wife Laura and daughter Morgan-Leigh hugged each other in mutual shock. There were a few shouts but the excitement was gone. ‘It was unlike any Masters I’ve ever seen,’ one regular attendee told Steve Eubanks in Augusta, his history of the Masters. ‘The sounds were different. It was like a funeral out there. Nobody said anything. We were all just stunned.’

  Back up at the top of the hill, far from Amen Corner, Nick Price, Norman’s great friend, marched out of the clubhouse and said: ‘This is upsetting. It hurts to watch. It’s making me feel sick.’ He was not the only one.

  Amen Corner is the name given to the part of the course that includes the approach to the 11th hole, the short 12th and the tee shot at the 13th. Right about now for Norman it was more like, ‘Oh, man, corner’. The official label was bestowed by the great American golf writer Herb Warren Wind in 1958. He opened his report for Sports Illustrated: ‘On the afternoon before the start of the recent Masters golf tournament, a wonderfully evocative ceremony took place at the farthest reach of the Augusta National course – down in the Amen Corner where Rae’s Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee…’ Wind had got the phrase from the title of a song recorded by a Chicago jazz band led by Milton (Mezz) Messrow entitled Shouting in the Amen Corner. Whatever had taken place down there on the day before the tournament, it was the drama of the events at the 12th on the Sunday that helped Arnold Palmer to his first Masters title.

  Jack Nicklaus says Augusta’s 12th hole is the most dangerous in golf. The kidney-shaped green is extremely shallow, seemingly too wide for its depth. Rae’s Creek runs in front of the green, waiting to catch tee shots that are not struck properly or weakly pushed, as well as little pitch shots from the drop zone and, if the initial shot has gone over the green into one of the bunkers or up onto the bank behind, recovery attempts that come out far too strongly. The biggest problem with the tee shot is gauging the strength of the wind, and its direction since the breeze swirls manically in this corner of the course, trapped between the pines behind the green and those behind the tee. There have been three holes-in-one here, most recently by Curtis Strange in 1988, but also a 13 by Tom Weiskopf in 1980.

  Golden Bell is one of the most familiar holes in all of golf and Augusta National one of the most familiar courses thanks to its exposure year after year, the Masters being the only one of the four major championships to be played at the same venue. The First Annual Augusta National Invitation Tournament, as the event was initially known before co-founder Clifford Roberts persuaded Bobby Jones that everyone else knew it simply as ‘The Masters’, was played in 1934; the 77th version took place in 2013. Of the other major venues, the Old Course at St Andrews has hosted the Open 28 times up to 2010, while Prestwick, the birthplace of championship golf, has been stuck on 24 Opens since 1925.

  The Old Course has become familiar to many who have not even stepped foot there thanks to regular television coverage not just of the Open but, since 1985, the Alfred Dunhill Cup and the same sponsor’s Links Championship. But St Andrews is all about being there, experiencing the spirituality of the place, and does not look at its best on the television screen. Even when actually there, it can take some time to get to know, as Jones discovered when he failed to complete his first Open there in 1921. But he came to love the place, winning there in 1927 and setting his Grand Slam in motion with victory in the Amateur Championship in 1930.

  Augusta National tends to be love at first sight, though, whether on screen or in reality. Thanks to high definition and three-dimensional television, which bring out the gradients in a way regular 2D pictures can’t quite capture, the expectations are pretty high for the first-time visitor but they are always surpassed. It was the same for Jones when he first saw the old nursery site in the early 1930s. ‘It seemed that it had been lying there for years just waiting for someone to lay a golf course on it,’ Jones said. Dr Alister MacKenzie, responsible for such gems as Royal Melbourne and Cypress Point and, like Jones, a fan of St Andrews, set out the initial routing, with Jones hitting thousands of shots during the construction phase to get the course just right.

  The genius of the design was to offer a course that was enjoyable to play for any standard of golfer, that would not embarrass regular members and guests but, under tournament conditions, would test the finest players to the limit. ‘Our overall aim,’ Jones wrote in Golf is My Game, ‘has been to provide a golf course of considerable natural beauty, relatively easy for the average golfer to play and at the same time testing for the expert player striving to better par figures. We hope to make bogeys easy if frankly sought, pars readily obtainable by standard good play and birdies, except on the par-fives, dearly bought.’

  In contrast to many of the courses built in the early 20th century in America, with narrow fairways and thick, deep rough, where a ‘shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost’, in the words of William Fownes, whose father Henry created Oakmont, Augusta National offered open fairways and little in the way of rough. Hazards such as water and sand were minimal but strategically positioned to allow higher handicappers to tack around them but to challenge the better players going for a big shot such as trying to hit a par-five in two. Again, the contouring on the greens and mounds surrounding them tax those unwilling to accept the medicine they deserve for getting out of position. There was a route for everyone, even out of the trees, but always a well-positioned shot was rewarded with an easier next one.

  ‘MacKenzie and Jones both felt that Oakmont and other adamantly punitive courses rewarded straight, conservative shooting at the expense of the games more thrilling elements,’ David Owen wrote in The Making of the Masters. ‘A good golf course, they believed, is one that consistently supplies situations in which superior players can demonstrate their superiority. Houdini thrilled his audiences by escaping, not by being trapped.’ Golfing escapologists Arnold Palmer, Seve Ballesteros and Phil Mickelson, with nine green jackets among them, were thankful to be allowed to show off their thrilling skills to such good effect but each might have won more often if they had not got into trouble quite so much.

  British golf writer Leonard Crawley, a fine amateur golfer as well as the correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, played the course for the first time in 1947 and noted the St Andrews influence but added: ‘They have not copied one single hole on those maddeningly difficult and infinitely
fascinating links, but they built 18 great holes, every one of which is perfectly fair and provides a problem. It seems to me that each one demands that a player shall firstly and foremostly use his brains and not merely his physical and, in these days, mechanical ability to hit a target from a particular range. It restores the ideas of some of the old original golf links which furnished the world with those great players upon whose methods and tremendous skill the modern game is now based.’

  Since Jones retired after his Grand Slam in 1930, no one has used his golfing brain to better effect than Nicklaus, who holds the record of six Masters victories with four runner-up finishes to boot. ‘Augusta is one of the toughest golf courses as far as the mental challenge,’ Nicklaus said. ‘You have to think on each and every shot you hit. There are dangerous shots all over the course. I never felt there was a place you could relax at Augusta.’

  But it was a moment of luck that really propelled the Masters and Augusta into the limelight when the 1935 champion Gene Sarazen hit the ‘shot heard around the world’, a four-wood second shot at the 15th that went into the hole for an albatross. Instantly the shot, the course and the tournament found a place in the game’s folklore and it is has been building on it ever since. Wrote Owen: ‘The double eagle [as an albatross is known in America] is more than just a notable moment in Masters history; it is woven into the fabric of the course.

  ‘Every important shot is played against a backdrop that consists of every other important shot, all the way back to 1934. Every key drive, approach, chip and putt is footnoted and cross-referenced across decades of championship play. Every swing – good or bad – has a context. The history of the tournament is so vivid in the minds of the competitors and spectators that it almost has a physical reality on the course.’