Slaying the Tiger

by Shane Ryan

  —

  Spieth wanted to leave Augusta as quickly as possible as the sun went down on Saturday, so the print and TV media combined into one horde as he spoke about his patience, and how he had worked hard to curb his aggressive tendencies through fifty-four holes. While other rookies succumbed to the tricks and traps of the course, Spieth played it safe, used what knowledge he had—some of it from Carl Jackson, Ben Crenshaw’s caddy—and made a few putts to give himself a legitimate shot at what would surely be the most famous Masters victory since Tiger in ’97. He nearly slipped at one point, almost calling Crenshaw by his first name before correcting himself with the usual honorific. Later, at the press conference, he was asked whether he’d call Bubba “Mr. Watson,” and he laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “just because it will mess with him.”

  As for Bubba, the snappy tendencies that typically manifested after a bad day were somewhat tempered by the circumstances—whatever else had happened, he was heading into the final round tied with the lead. When told that Spieth joked about calling him “Mr. Watson,” he joked back, saying he’d be hitting it past him all day—a classic Bubba joke, the purpose of which was mainly to bolster his ego. He told us he planned to sleep late, drink lots of water, play with his son in the morning, and suffer through Sunday’s nerves the best he could.

  Considering that Bubba had a coin-flip possibility of imploding at some point the next day, it began to seem like Spieth might actually have a shot. Couples, the ’92 champ, spoke for nearly everyone when he praised Bubba’s young challenger, who he had captained in the President’s Cup. He did, however, add one major caveat. “Tomorrow, obviously, is going to be a really, really hard day to try to win this.”

  If anything could faze the seemingly unshakable Spieth, it was the final round pressure at Augusta. When the last rays disappeared behind the magnolias, a question hung over the grounds: In the blinding light of an Augusta Sunday, could twenty-year-old Jordan Spieth keep his head?

  —

  After a night that was understandably a bit restless, Spieth walked out the locker room door and onto the driving range at 1:32, almost exactly seventy minutes before his tee time. Dressed in a light green shirt and blue pants with a white Under Armour hat, he walked alone to the putting green—past Justin Rose and Lee Westwood and John Senden and Miguel Angel Jimenez and Thomas Bjorn and Kevin Stadler—applauded all the way by the excited patrons sitting in the stands. He met Ted Scott on the green, and when Michael Greller joined them moments later, Scott teased his friend and fellow caddy for letting Spieth come out alone. Bubba appeared moments later to his own round of applause, and he and Spieth shook hands. With hundreds looking on, they chatted, and they tried to ignore the massive nerves they’d face in an hour.

  “We’re at 2:20, right?” Greller asked Watson and Scott, purposefully getting the 2:40 tee time wrong.

  “Same as you,” said Scott.

  “Why’d you tell him an earlier time?” Spieth asked, recognizing a joke gone awry.

  “Oh, right,” said Greller. “It’s 3:20.”

  Spieth and Watson spoke about Jeff Knox, the amateur “marker” the club used to make up an odd-numbered field, who had played with and beaten Rory McIlroy a day before. Spieth twirled his putter like a baton, and Bubba laughed the nerves away.

  When they moved back to the range, only Matt Kuchar and Jonas Blixt remained. Bubba was particularly chatty, talking to the caddies, Kuchar, Spieth, and anyone else who would listen. Blixt stayed by himself, looking like the classic European also-ran that seems to appear in the final groups at Augusta every year, but never wins (José Mariah Olazabal was the last European to win the Masters, in 1999). Spieth and Watson faced each other, hitting iron shots at a flag in the distance. A camera on a crane hovered near them, and when Blixt and Kuchar left, they were alone. Their shots soared past the pine trees, onto the Bermuda grass fairway. In the background the bulbous Augusta water tower marked the end of this strange anachronistic golf oasis and the beginning of a very real, very unglamorous American city.

  The magnitude of what awaited them both hung over the scene. When Jordan left to go hit shots from the bunker onto the practice green, Bubba took out the pink driver that would make or break his day. At 2:22, he walked down the cement path, ignoring the hands reaching out to him, his face taking on that taut, red complexion that lets you know the butterflies are churning. He sat in the front seat of the cart that would drive him to the first tee, quiet at last. Spieth left a moment later, slapping five with the kids and smiling as he drove off.

  —

  The biggest round of his life began with an erratic kind of luck. Off the first tee, Spieth released his right hand off the club—a universally bad sign—and the ball flew toward the trees on the left-hand side of the fairway. He recovered with a terrific punch shot that trickled onto the green, but on the second hole, the first par 5, his hand came off the 3-wood again, and the ball hit a pine tree on the left. Again, he saved himself from disaster, this time aided by the luck of the bounce. He laid up, hit a sand wedge to fifteen feet, and curled in a beautiful birdie. Bubba, meanwhile, found bunkers off both tees and had to scramble for pars.

  Up ahead, Matt Kuchar briefly tied Spieth for the lead on the third hole with his second straight birdie, but his history was one of toil and strife on major Sundays. Nobody quite believed he could muster a real run, and the sense that he would fade came true almost immediately, with a four-putt double bogey on the fourth hole that dropped him to -4. Jonas Blixt, trying to tame his nerves, was a par machine for the first six holes, and ended the front nine right where he began, at -4. Rickie Fowler got off to a quick start with a birdie, but a bogey on no. 2 put him at -3, which was as high as he’d get the rest of the day. It became clear that there would be no magic runs from the bottom of the leaderboard. The sun beat down on Augusta National, and the players realized they were in the midst of a grind.

  In the final group, the crushing pressure reached Bubba first. After annihilating a drive almost to the third green, 350 yards away, he opted to play an odd little bump-and-run shot that didn’t suit the terrain at all. The ball ran over the slick green, and the pitch back was almost as treacherous—Bubba’s third shot barely made it up the hill, leaving a long par putt that he missed. When Spieth’s approach tailed left toward the hole and left him an easy two-putt for par, the twenty-year-old held a solo lead at the Masters.

  The long par-3 fourth clocks in at 243 yards, and Spieth hit his third wayward tee shot of the afternoon, leaving it in the front bunker. Bubba responded with a pinpoint iron that stopped six feet from the hole, and it looked like he’d gain at least a stroke back, if not more. Facing a difficult second shot, Spieth stood in an ocean of sand, hoping to get it close enough for a realistic par chance. He blasted out, and the ball left his club like a heat-seeking missile. Spieth marched to the left, watching it track, and stared in disbelief when it dropped in the hole. He raised both arms in triumph—a birdie from the bunker.

  Facing a three-shot deficit, Bubba’s own birdie effort now looked a bit less comfortable. He stepped up and holed it under pressure, and at -5, he now stood alone in second place. With the rest of the challengers grappling just to make pars, the final group had the feel of a match play duel. They laughed on the way to the fifth tee, trying to ignore the tension. Spieth had the honors, and he sent yet another tee shot careening to the left. “Oh, Jordan, come on, not again!” he hissed to himself. “Hit softly…no, softly!” It headed toward a fairway bunker, and Bubba blasted his drive into the right rough.

  Both had started wild as hell, but there was a sense that although luck had favored Spieth early on, chaos and entropy were the province of Bubba. At some level, they were already playing on his turf. The twenty-year-old would need to level off, and soon.

  Spieth got lucky again when his drive came up short of the bunker. His approach wasn’t so lucky, skidding past the green and into the sand. He left himself a sweeping par putt that broke too far l
eft, and when Bubba salvaged a par, Spieth’s lead had dwindled to one. On the short par-3 sixth, Spieth had a long discussion about the wind with Greller—“Are you sure it’s not hurting right this second? It’s swirling…”—and stuck his iron to three feet. Bubba nodded at him, stiffly, and marched down the fairway. Facing a slippery right-to-left twelve-footer for birdie, he gave it a delicate little tap and watched it follow a perfect line and drop. Spieth canned his short birdie in response, and they joked to each other about how “easy” the par 3s were playing.

  The Masters rookie split the fairway with a driver on seven, and seemed to be in a full groove—the nerves had settled, both hands remained on the club, and he was ready to do battle over the next two hours and change. He stuck his approach, landing the ball short and watching it track uphill toward the flag. It left him a twelve-footer for birdie, moving slightly back to the left and slower than usual. He read it like a textbook, and drained it to reach -8. Bubba ended up in another bunker and used the backstop to spin his birdie attempt to three feet, but all he could do was save par.

  Spieth opted to leave his driver in the bag on the long par-5 eighth, and the move paid off when he found the fairway again. Despite some dodgy swings, he was -3 for the day and leading the Masters by two strokes.

  It had played out like a fantasy, and at that moment, before Bubba stepped up to the tee, Spieth had the world in his hands. Golf rarely gets this perfect, and dreams are rarely realized so early in life…ten and a half more holes of this, and he’d be in the clouds.

  He should have taken a snapshot, at that divine instant, because the cold reality of Masters Sunday was about to deliver a savage body blow.

  —

  Bubba, playing with the kind of productive rage only he can muster, bombed a drive that carried the bunkers 310 yards down the fairway. With 232 remaining to the hole, he ran his approach safely over the green. Spieth laid up to the right, and after aiming his third shot at the inside of the scoreboard beyond the green, he was shocked when the ball landed and checked, refusing to roll out to the hole. Bubba nearly holed his eagle chip, and Spieth, still fearing the speed of the greens, struck a weak birdie putt. He left himself just a few feet for par, but it was long enough to make him nervous.

  He missed. Around the green, the fans groaned, but the truth was that he had been lucky not to tally a bogey this long. When Bubba drained his short birdie, Spieth had suffered the dreaded two-shot swing. The lead vanished that quickly, and both players now stood at -7 heading into the final hole on the front side.

  Now with the honors, Bubba stepped up to the ninth tee infused with energy, and crushed a driver down the middle. Spieth stayed in the fairway, too, but wound up forty yards behind his opponent. On his approach, he failed to get the ball past the false front, and the CBS announcers were quick to mention Greg Norman making the same mistake in the midst of his Sunday collapse against Nick Faldo back in ’86. Bubba, feeding off the momentum, knocked his approach to eleven feet, and hit a bending right-to-left putt that snaked into the back of the hole for birdie. Spieth’s chip ran up to four feet—a good effort, especially under the circumstances—but his par putt hit the hole on the right and caromed around the edge before dying a feckless death on the grass. More groans, and more grimaces from Spieth.

  It was another two-shot swing. Spieth would enter the back nine at -6, one-under for the day but feeling like he had just lost everything. Meanwhile, at -8, Bubba had a death grip on the tournament yet again.

  Before the round began, Michael Greller overheard a fan tell a friend that when Bubba drove it straight, he was so long that he started with a three-shot advantage on the field. He knew it was true, and he knew on the first tee that they needed to pounce early.

  And they had. But Bubba had reacted with incredible resolve, pouring in four birdies to stem the charge and reassert control when it looked like Spieth’s momentum might bury him. Already, it had been the toughest performance of his career, and one look at Spieth told you all you needed to know about his mental state. He was deflated, and whether he admitted it to himself or not, the tournament was lost.

  On the CBS broadcast, Nick Faldo summed up the situation with a classic bit of English understatement: “This is a significant moment, isn’t it?”

  —

  The decisive blows came on the back nine in the form of two very different shots.

  The first happened on the 12th tee, when Spieth sized up the short par 3 in the heart of Amen Corner. In his book No Limits, Ian Poulter called this hole “one of the most volatile holes in the sport,” and compared it to “taking a penalty in a football match and looking at a goal that is only three feet by three feet.” The green offers a landing area of less than ten yards, and the wind is impossible to judge—even the flag on the 11th green can be deceptive.

  With the grandstands rising behind him, on the biggest stage of his life, Spieth pulled a 9-iron. Greller implored him to aim for the right side of the bunker, at a television tower, where a mistake wouldn’t hurt him too severely. Spieth didn’t believe the swirling wind was truly blowing at him, though. He felt the hole was actually playing downwind, and that if he hit his 9-iron perfectly on the safe line, it would fly into the back bunker and put him in a pickle.

  As he stood over the ball, he convinced himself the wind was, at the very least, dead. He made the last-minute choice to play a fade, trying to work the ball at the hole. Up in the blue heights where the ball soared, though, the wind was indeed gusting toward the tee. It held up the little white orb just enough, and when it landed on the fringe in front of the green, it rolled back, slowly but inevitably, into Rae’s Creek. That’s where Spieth lost the tournament.

  The coup de grâce came from Bubba on the 13th tee. Instead of bothering with a draw onto the fairway, he decided that Sunday at the Masters would be a good time to bash a driver over the trees and cut off some distance. It was an audacious move even in an ordinary round, and borderline insane considering the situation, but it nearly worked to perfection. The ball grazed a tree somewhere along the way, but it was only a glancing blow—it came through the pines and dropped in the fairway. In the media room, a collective gasp echoed off the walls. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, including the writers who had been around for decades. The incredible risk produced an incredible reward—Bubba left himself a mere sand wedge into the green, at which point birdie on the par 5 was a formality.

  Seeing that, Spieth knew he was licked—they were playing a different game.

  —

  The rest of the round played out with a heavy sense of fate. Bubba hit drive after drive into the fairway, inexorable and straight, and Spieth couldn’t get the birdies to fall. Blixt fought back to -5 and a tie for second place, but Fowler and Kuchar couldn’t muster even a remote challenge.

  As the back nine wore on, Spieth’s lower body was out of sync with his torso, and his hand came off the club over and over. He began muttering to himself, and crouching defensively after bad shots. Only a strong short game kept him from total collapse, but that didn’t include the putter—which, at times, he looked like he wanted to throw.

  “Dangit, Jordan, God!” he hissed, when his 8-iron on 16 missed the magic spot that would let the ball trickle all the way to the hole. “Come on!” he moaned after a bad drive on the next tee. As he walked up 17, caught up in the emotion of the moment, he turned to Greller. “I’ve worked my whole life for this….” he said. He let the sentence trail off. Greller reminded him that there would be many more, but Spieth wasn’t in the mood for perspective.

  That afternoon, America had its first glimpse at Spieth’s tendency to let negative emotions overwhelm him. The problem isn’t anger, but self-pity—a weaker emotion that encourages its victims to give up. Before the year was over, I would watch it reduce Spieth to rubble twice more. Like Sergio Garcia, it transformed his whole affect, and changed the thrust of his game. Unlike Sergio, it never felt like Spieth was doomed to repeat the mistakes across the de
cades.

  —

  The cameras captured a beautiful image on the 18th tee, after Bubba hit a 3-wood into the fairway. He posed, silhouetted against the late-afternoon sun still burning through the clouds, with the towering pines behind him. Here, in the full blaze of his greatness, you could forget everything else and appreciate his sheer, unmistakable brilliance.

  After his approach from the fairway, he spun his iron emphatically, soaked in the adulation on his way to the green, two-putted for par, and sobbed onto Ted Scott’s shoulder. The boy from Bagdad, Florida, had won his second Masters by three strokes over Spieth and Blixt.

  In front of the cameras, Jordan held his head high and Bubba was up to his usual bluster—“a guy named Bubba from a small town,” he marveled, infused with wonder at himself and his victory.

  The mystery of the final round, in the end, could be summed up in the fickle virtuosity of the erratic lefty who slipped on the second green jacket of his career. In the most unpredictable moments, under overwhelming pressure, he can summon a terrific resilience that goes against all the thin-skinned blunders that dog him on his bad days. He stands massive on his favorite stage, swinging the mighty pink driver in audacious arcs—obliterating the poor ball—and sending it just where he wants. The two Bubbas congeal into one as the fear and insecurity disappear, and the genius that emerges, in that transcendent moment, is far greater than the sum of its parts.

  9

  A FEW THOUGHTS ON AUGUSTA NATIONAL

  “Gentlemanliness had been the very basis of the tournament founder’s life and of his golf; Cliff, the keen assistant, picked up on the boss’s strict standards of behavior, his love of honor. Roberts amplified Jones. Together, they made a fetish out of monitoring the behavior of everyone in or near their tournament.”