The American Spectator

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The Dullest Masters

By Lawrence Henry on 4.18.08 @ 12:07AM

(Page 2 of 2)

Both Nicklaus and Watson hit the par five fifteenth in two. Nicklaus hit the hole with his eagle putt, settled for birdie. Watson eagled.

Ahead of them by a couple of pairings, Olazabal had pulled his score back, too, so much so that when he birdied the fifteenth himself, if it hadn't been for his quad, he would have been leading the tournament.

"Golf is all about what might have been" said the plummy-voiced Oxbridgian Ben Wright.

THE GREAT NICKLAUS three-birdie run seemed to have come to an end at the sixteenth. The par three flag was placed front right on the crest of a steep knob, with the entire green falling away steeply to the left. Hit the ball anywhere except right on that tabletop, and it would roll away thirty-five feet to the lower left.

Nicklaus and Watson both hit close to the flag, but not close enough, and their golf balls rolled down the slope, ending up close together at the bottom of the hill. Now began once of the most remarkable sequences ever seen at the Masters, or at any other golf tournament.

Nicklaus first. He rapped his putt hard up the hill, and as it lost speed and turned hard to the right, almost in a buttonhook, Ben Wright began to murmur, "That's an awfully good putt, Jack" and then to shout "what a great putt!" as the ball fell in the hole.

Jack took an amazed bow and did his "thank you" wave to the Heavens. Now Watson. With a devilish expression on his face, he stroked his putt hard up the hill too, and it, too, made the buttonhook turn and fell in the hole. All of Augusta National seemed to erupt in the roar, and Watson and Nicklaus, smiling at each other, headed for the seventeenth hole.

Right behind them came Fred Couples and Mark McCumber. McCumber and Couples hit near-identical tee shots to Watson and Nicklaus. ("Go in the hole!" yelled one fan after McCumber hit. "Naw, it's gonna go in the same place they all go, no matter where you hit it," McCumber said.)

Couples too made the impossible putt. ("Like shelling peas," Ben Wright chuckled.) McCumber came within an inch of doing it, and the four-putt drama ended with a Falstaffian guffaw. McCumber's caddy fell over backwards into the right-hand bunker when his man's putt curled to a stop just past the hole.

This entire episode has been lost to broadcast history. A year or two later, Ben Wright was forced to resign in disgrace from CBS for his oafish comments to a female reporter. He has not been seen around big-time golf since.

IN 2008, Trevor Immelman won. On Sunday, I actually stopped watching the Masters at the sixteenth hole. Immelman is a nice and talented young man, and I'm happy for him.

In 1991, Tom Watson and Ian Woosnam dueled down the stretch, with the tournament remaining undecided until the eighteenth hole. But I have written enough about 1991. I will note only that John Feinstein covered part of that Nicklaus-Watson pairing on Friday, when the two players walked up eighteen to a great ovation. It's in his book A Good Walk Spoiled.

And he got it all wrong. Ask me about it some time, and I'll tell you what really happened.

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