WORLD No1 QUITS WITHOUT PLAYING A SINGLE SHOT!
He did what a champion does and sucked up the pressure
THE Masters giveth, and the Masters taketh away. Yesterday, for a time, the Masters threatened to take Danny Willett, its newest champion, to the cleaners.
There are some games in which two sixes are a positive outcome. Monopoly, for instance, you get to throw again. In craps, two sixes preceded by a cry of ‘boxcars’ mean good money. Even during tarot readings, two sixes are a fine omen, suggesting a person will show kindness to you. There is little kind about two sixes at Augusta. At the Masters, two sixes are quite horrid: certainly, when they are the first numbers on your scorecard.
That was Willett’s fate getting reacquainted with the scene of his greatest triumph, a year on. Double bogey at the first, bogey at the second. Six and six again. It is to Willett’s tremendous credit that such a start did not sink him. Indeed, in the circumstances, his round became something of a triumph. Maybe it’s the roast beef that Willett served at his champions’ dinner. They are made of strong stuff in Yorkshire.
Everything about Augusta reveres its former champions; everything bar the course. Willett drove through gate three, up Magnolia Drive, the magnificent vista of the clubhouse before him. He parked on the special side of the car park, reserved for champions, climbed the staircase to the locker room, reserved for champions. He had never been there until this week, he said. Had never returned to Augusta since the win.
He had selected an all-white ensemble for his debut as defending champion, the same outfit he wore on his last outing here. White hooded jacket. Slim fit white trousers, like a scar of chalk amid the lush greens. Everything about his appearance suggested confidence. Look at me, his attire announced. I’m back.
An hour or so later, Willett was peering, forlornly and in vain, through trees for sight of a green. His tee shot, his first as champion, had been sliced right. Significantly right. An aerial map showed it closer to a service road near the old media centre than the fairway.
Willett tried to blast his way out, and failed, so his third shot was also played from pine straw.
The cosseted sanctuary of the champions route now seemed a very long way back. It took him three more shots to get down.
He is not in the best form, 17th in the world rankings as opposed to ninth at Augusta last year. Even so, this was a worrying start. Willett marched towards the second tee and respite. Nice fairway, the second. Hard to miss.
Not impossible, though, as he demonstrated. Not wide by as much as the first, but by enough. Then he found sand. It’s a par five, Augusta’s second hole, the chance to get a friendly splash of red on the scorecard, representing birdie. Willett went blue for bogey instead. Another six. After the fantasy of 2016, here was a bad dream. It is hard to retain the Masters, and only the greatest of the greats have done it: Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo, Tiger Woods. But to miss the cut?
The first reigning Master champion since Mike Weir in 2004? That wouldn’t be cool. If Willett had doubts in that moment, he would not have been the only one. The Augusta
Chronicle devoted all of its broadsheet page nine to tournament predictions and it would have made very dispiriting reading over breakfast for Willett.
One section divided up the field into groups of five: five favourites, five first-timers ready to win, five worth mentioning, five picks from the heart, plenty of positivity for plenty of golfers, and barely one who did not get an agreeable mention. At the bottom, Willett’s picture was flanked by Bubba Watson, Martin Kaymer, Andy Sullivan and Webb Simpson. Willett was one of the five for whom it was ‘not gonna happen’. And in that moment, it looked as if The
Augusta Chronicle were very good judges indeed.
So Willett did what a champion does. He dug in. He knuckled down. He sucked up the pressure of the occasion and introduced some consistency to his game. He found the fairway and drained a 13-foot birdie putt on the third.
He made six consecutive pars through the remaining front nine. He played his shot of the round, a 180-yard fairway iron to within eight inches to birdie the tenth. And, yes, he gave a little back at the 11th, too. But that happens. Despite picturesque appearances to the contrary on television sets back home, this was a tough old day at Augusta.
The sky with its fluffy clouds may have resembled the opening titles of The Simpsons, but the wind was chill and awkward and under-par rounds were the substantial minority. At the 15th, it blew Willett’s ball off the green, towards the water, only the residue of Wednesday’s rain preventing disaster. Proper parky as they might say around Willett’s way. It picked up more in the afternoon, too, as Willett made his way home. And it was there, surrounded by the famous azaleas on the par-five 13th green, that the Masters and its champion fell in love again. An eagle. A lovely big eagle to return his score to level par and to make this a truly impressive round, one that befitted the status of a man who parks his car that little nearer, and gets dressed upstairs.
Willett kept the good side of the creek down the left of the fairway and then hit a screamer of a second, 218 yards to within 11 feet of the hole. He’d been unfortunate with a few of the shorter ones this far: a 12-foot birdie putt gone awry at five, a seven-footer missed on the ninth, but this one dropped. The only eagle at the hole all day.
In that moment, Willett entered the top 15 on the leaderboard, within three shots of the early pacesetters. A bullish approach on the 18th green proved costly, three putting to finish the day one over par with a 73 but it was still some fightback. Indeed, given those sixes, one might even say it were champion.