insight
A Week to
Savour
HK Golfer correspondent Lewine Mair reports from a memorable seven days at Augusta National PHOTOGRAPHY BY AFP
T
wenty years from now, Tiger Woods might well look back with gratitude to the Wednesday of the 2010 Masters when he was given a good old-fashioned dressing-down from the Augusta chairman. Rather more than a month in a rehabilitation clinic, Billy Payne’s words may have prompted a level of soul-searching which could prove pivotal in the player’s renewal. Yet, in a world where everyone is wary of telling anyone off for anything, it goes without saying that Payne’s very public admonition of the world number one had a mixed reception. Some thought him brave. Brave for saying what he said and brave for deciding that he was the one to say it. Others were less comfortable with such goings-on and, in particular, with the timing of the reprimand. In keeping with the endless analogies between Augusta and heaven, there was the entirely understandable view that anything the chairman wanted to say could have been said – and relayed to the world at large – before Woods passed through the club’s pearly gates. By leaving things till his Wednesday address, he rekindled the Tiger debate long after the player and his fellow competitors thought that the time had come when they could finally move on. Angel Cabrera had summed it up perfectly when, at the end of Tiger’s own press conference two days earlier, he came up with a feeling “Amen to all that….”
The Champions' Dinner As a way to welcome new members into their club, winners of the Masters get together for dinner Tuesday night before the tournament starts, with the previous year's champion getting to choose what goes on the menu. Following Sandy Lyle's choice of Haggis with Neeps and Taddies (1989), Nick Faldo's Fish and Chips (1997) and Tiger Woods' Cheeseburgers and Strawberry Milkshakes (1998), beefy Argentine Angel Cabrera put on an appropriately meaty spread, which, sources say, went down a treat. Here's what the 2009 champion served up: ∙ Beef Empanadas with Scallions and Olives ∙ Argentine Stew made from Corn, Beans, Bacon, Beef and Chorizo ∙ Grilled Meats (including Blood Sausage, Filet Mignon and Flank Steak) ∙ A choice of five salads ∙ Tocino del Cielo (Flan con Caramelo) ∙ Panqueque de Dulce de Leche All this was washed down with fine Argentinean Malbec. Grappa accompanied dessert. –Alex Jenkins
62
HK Golfer・Jun/Jul 2010
HKGOLFER.COM
To recap, the eloquent Payne gave due credit to Woods for having reached the point where he was being mentioned in the same breath as Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer before moving on to the down-side. Woods, he said, had somehow lost sight of the fact “that with fame and fortune comes responsibility, not invisibility… It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here; it is the fact that he disappointed all of us and, more importantly, our kids and our grand kids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children. “Is there a way forward? I hope so, yes. I think yes. But certainly his future will never HKGOLFER.COM
again be measured only by his performance against par; but measured by the sincerity of his efforts to change.” Tiger’s reaction to what Payne had to say? Hardly surprisingly, he did not want to discuss. He went no further than to mutter a brief, “I was disappointed in myself.”
Thursday
Finally something happened to balance the ledger. In the lead up to the 2010 Masters, everything was about Tiger. Now, to the relief of 99 per cent of the media, old golfing hands and new were making a good fist of chipping away
Fan favourite: Mickelson swipes one down the eighteenth enroute to a brilliant victory HK Golfer・Jun/Jul 2010
63
Old Master and Young Maestro (left to right): Perhaps not surprisingly, Woods, playing in the company of KJ Choi for four rounds, wasn't firing on all cylinders at Augusta; Manassero followed up his bright showing at Turnberry last year with another mature performance. He would turn pro just weeks later, signing up with IMG.
at the world number one's headlines. 50-yearold Fred Couples led the way, handing in the 66 which left him one ahead of Tom Watson, Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson, YE Yang and KJ Choi. Couples, as per usual, was looking like a man plucked straight from the pages of a PG Wodehouse novel. Though he marches smartly enough between shots, there were all the usual yawns and stretches which can have him resembling a tired man out for a quiet nine holes. Again there were times when you half expected to see him pulling his clubs from a shabby leather pencil-bag. He was, of course, working his socks off – at least he would have been working them off had he not opted for no socks and a pair of sloppy black sneakers with slippery rubber soles. (Not, incidentally, by way of adding to the ‘Couples effect’ but with a view to trying to keep his old back injuries in check.) The 60-year-old Watson who had been openly critical of Woods’ errant ways, had a meagre 24 putts in returning his best Masters round in 20 years. He was responding to an instruction from his son Michael, who was carrying his bag. “Dad,” he had said, “show me you can still play this course.” Ian Poulter, round in the same 68 as Woods, might as well have been dressed in sackcloth rather than mint and pink for the amount of
notice people took of him at the start. The mass of spectators cared only about getting in position to watch Woods’ drives coming to ground. Poulter being Poulter, he adopted a propriatorial stance towards the multitude. “The buzz was terrific,” he said. If the mint and pink was not enough in itself to get him noticed, his assorted birdies eventually did the trick – three in the last five holes. Woods’ opening shot had been as interesting as any. Your correspondent was standing next to Hank Haney, his coach. “So, Hank, how’s he going to play?” queried the man on our left. “We’ll soon see,” came the coach’s wry response. When Woods bisected the fairway, Haney followed the flight better than most and accordingly provided the commentary. “One of the best shots I’ve ever seen him hit at this hole,” he said. Every newspaper and magazine had a correspondent who was under instruction to follow Woods and see if he was succeeding in his bid to be more fan-friendly. It has to be difficult to adopt a Mickelson-type smile overnight and, in any case, his mind was on the job. Certainly, though, he was acknowledging those who voiced support. “I never stopped saying ‘Thanks’”, he said. So why was the reception so good for a public figure whose behaviour had had so many up in arms? A New Yorker seemed to hit the proverbial nail on the head. “Where I come from, no-one gives a damn about his private life. If the wife sticks with him she sticks with him. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t. It’s their business, not ours…”
Friday
All week, Westwood was coming across as a player in perfect shape, mentally as much as physically. Today, though, there was a brief – and not unpromising – crack in the player’s general cool when he came in for the press conference which marked his share of the halfway lead with Poulter. An older statesman among the US journalists had asked if he and Poulter were serving up a reminder that the English could play a bit at this level. Lee’s tart response was that the pressman concerned had obviously not bothered to study his rankings. “There are three Englishmen in the world’s top ten and we’re not up there by mistake,” he snapped. One way and another, it was an incident to put people in mind of those occasions when Woods has used a perceived slight to his advantage. Take, for example, that never-to-be-forgotten day when he was due to play Stephen Ames in the Accenture after Ames had said that he thought he had a chance because Woods’ driving was a bit awry. 64
HK Golfer・Jun/Jul 2010
HKGOLFER.COM
Woods sloshed him to the tune of 9 and 8. Though this was only the second day, the Low Amateur award was decided when the 16-year-old Matteo Manassero – one of three Italians in the field – was the lone amateur to make the cut. Chang-Won Han, the Asian Amateur champion, and Byeong-Hun An, the US Amateur champion, had as hard a time of it as each other, both finishing at 13 over to Manassero’s three over for the two rounds. Golfing Italians are a changed breed. Just as KJ Choi had been talking of how travelling the Asian Tour had helped to prepare the Koreans for the world stage, so the Italians have done their share of learning across the years. Not too long ago, they would struggle to tear themselves away from home and home cooking, while they and their Mediterranean neighbours were not always blessed with the best of temperaments. Seve Ballesteros’s Latin ways worked for him but not a few of the Europeans were just too excitable for their own good. Chubby Chandler, who manages such as Westwood and Rory McIlroy, said the junior game in Europe had helped to make the difference. “These kids go from one land to another from a very early age and they soon get the message, "Excitable doesn’t work". “All the different countries,” he continued, “have been picking up tips from each other – and the only people being left behind are the Americans because they don’t want to go outside America.”
Saturday
When Greg Norman, at 53, came so close to winning the 2008 Open, plenty put it down to the championship coinciding with the best weeks of his brief marriage to Chris Evert. The Australian was wildly in love with the tennis player and his inner steel was reflected in his every shot. Saturday at the Masters brought forth a burst of brilliance – eagle, eagle, birdie - from Mickelson which just as surely came from the heart. At the start of the week, he had spoken of how, though his wife’s long-term prognosis for her cancer was good, she was suffering badly with the treatment. He was not sure that Amy and the children would be coming to Augusta but he was still hoping that they would be there for the par three curtain-raiser, “because it’s really a special time to have my kids caddie for me… We have pictures taken and do an annual collage for the wall at home. It makes for really cool memories.” The family came and they stayed. Amy was too poorly to be out and about but she watched TV back at the house they had taken in the town. HKGOLFER.COM
Westwood did not let the unmistakable roars that went with Mickelson’s five-under-par run – it was from the thirteenth to the fifteenth – dent his composure. “I can’t be worrying about what Phil is doing. I can only look after myself,” he said later. There had been an interesting chat with John Westwood, Lee’s father, going down the seventh… When Lee hit into the trees, John watched with interest to see what he would do. While Billy Foster, the caddie, was clearly suggesting his man should hip back on to the fairway, the golfer was just as obviously eyeing a gap through the trees. “He’s going to go for it,” said his father, without so much as a hint of alarm. After Lee had threaded the ball safely through the woods and landed it on the green, John, an erstwhile maths teacher, touched on the business of how his son had always been a risk-taker. HK Golfer・Jun/Jul 2010
65
“There have been plenty of occasions,” he recalled, “when Lee’s been in the hunt and has gone for the green at some par five and knocked his ball in the water. People would come up to me at school and in the supermarket and ask 'Why?' and every time I would tell them the same thing: that the reason Lee’s won as much as he has is because he is adventurous. If he pulls off the seemingly impossible one time out of three, it’s a pretty good success rate.” Tiger Woods, two off lead at the end of the day, chuckled when asked if he liked his position. “Yeah, I do,” he said.
Sunday
Play did not start until 10.40 but spectators could be heard leaving hotel rooms at 6 a.m. to get to the front of a queue which would not be allowed through the gates until 7.30. Why? It’s all to do with the little green stools you see everywhere. The idea is to place your seat – it must be a green Masters’ version - in the optimum position. Having pitched it, you can disappear safe in the knowledge that noone will pinch it – or move it – before you return in late afternoon. There is a regulation saying you may not leave it unattended “for any inordinate length of time” but that, of course, is meaningless. Presumably, it suits the members. For the press it is all about remembering to don your Masters’ credentials. This is one week when those who would normally put their socks on first thing in the morning change their routine. You put your badge round your neck – and you take off the pressure. Augusta is not the kind of place where you can make your way through security with a series of good excuses. The last-day leaderboard was as brilliant as any in the recent past, with Westwood a shot ahead of Mickelson and four clear of Woods and Choi, who were paired together for the fourth day in a row. Choi made three birdies over the front nine to go to 11 under. And another at the tenth to tie Mickelson in the lead at 12-under. At this point, would you believe, ESPN put out a radio bulletin in which they 66
HK Golfer・Jun/Jul 2010
HKGOLFER.COM
HKGOLFER.COM
mentioned Choi, Mickelson and the fast advancing Anthony Kim but dropped Westwood. At the time, he was still only a shot off the pace. Had he been aware of that little insult, he might well have found it in him to toss a few more birdies into the mix. The fourteenth spelt the end for Woods and Choi. Woods, who was poised to go to ten under, missed his six-foot birdie putt and then failed with the tap-in. He dropped back to eight under as Choi’s bogey had him slipping to ten under. It all happened after Mickelson had played a thriller of a thirteenth hole, one in which he looked in dire trouble one minute but redeemed himself the next… There was drive in among pine needles followed by a second through the trees which left him four feet from the flag. (The shot deserves a plaque). He missed for the eagle but his birdie took him to 14 under and two ahead of Westwood and Kim. Woods could not begin to feign a smile at the end of his 69 and 11 under tally. “I’m not going to be smiling, I’m not going to be happy. I entered this event and I enter events to win. I didn’t get it done.” Quite simply, his rustiness had shown down the stretch. Fairly or unfairly, Mickelson has often been seen as a tad phoney as he works to stay on the right side of his fans. When he won this third green jacket, no-one was thinking along such lines. On what was the first time in 11 months that his spouse had joined him at a tournament, he struck a chord with almost everyone out there when he said a quietly emotional, “It means a lot for us to share some joy.”
Risk and reward: (left to right): Mickelson plays the shot of the year at the thirteenth in the final round - a 6-iron off the pine straw to within four feet of the flag; Westwood played better than anyone from tee to green at Augusta, but it still wasn't enough.
HK Golfer・Jun/Jul 2010
67