Gary D’Amato
Tony Finau didn’t let a dislocated ankle keep him out of his first Masters.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – There’s an old saying in golf: beware the injured golfer. Or, as it applies to Tony Finau: beware the golfer who dislocates an ankle while celebrating a hole-in-one in the Masters par-3 contest.
Check out the video, but only on an empty stomach.
One day after exuberance led to protuberance – his left ankle buckled and the bone popped out of its socket as he backpedaled and pointed at the crowd after his ace – Finau shot a 68 in his Augusta National debut Thursday to share second place in the first round of the 82nd Masters Tournament.
Jordan Spieth, the 2015 Masters champion, made five consecutive birdies on the back nine and finished with a 66 for the lead.
“To me, it’s a miracle,” Finau said. “My foot was out of place 24 hours ago and I sit here in second place at the Masters. It’s nothing short of a miracle for me.”
When he rolled the ankle, the pain was instantaneous and excruciating – 10 on a 10-point scale, he said – but the first thing that went
through his mind was saving face. He was a good high school basketball player, a 6-foot-4 center who turned down college scholarship offers to concentrate on golf. Jabari Parker is his cousin.
“I feel like I’m a good athlete,” he said, “and to see myself roll an ankle on an easy little backpedal wasn’t athletic.”
Instinctively and almost nonchalantly, he knelt and pushed the bone back into place.
“I saw where it was and I knew where it needed to be,” he said. “It would have been even more embarrassing being pulled out on a stretcher celebrating a hole-in-one. I just popped it back in place and I got up and tried to be as smooth as I could be.”
Finau wins the award for freakiest Masters eve injury, narrowly beating out Shoeless Dustin Johnson, who slipped and fell on stairs in his rental house last year, injured his back and withdrew as the pre-tournament favorite.
What a wimp, that D.J. Finau wasn’t going to let a little thing like a grotesquely dislocated ankle keep him out of his first Masters. After an MRI on Thursday morning revealed no structural damage and a doctor cleared him, he taped up and played.
“I looked forward to this week for a really long time,” he said. “Waiting for another opportunity to play my first Masters, whether it was next year or another time, that was going to be hard for me to swallow.”
Augusta National is not an easy walk. The only level lies are on the tee boxes and the course is much hillier than it appears to be on television. Dealing with uneven lies is hard enough for a golfer with two stable ankles. But Finau birdied all four par-5 holes and made two more birdies, against just two bogeys.
“It was mind over matter for me,” he said. “It seemed as each hole as we progressed it felt better and better. I was able to stay in the moment, I think, because of my foot. Every shot I hit I had to think about it a little bit.”
If Finau was dealing with some pain, he wasn’t alone. Sergio Garcia, the defending Masters champion, spun five consecutive shots back off the green and into the water on the par-5 15th hole and made a 13, the highest score ever on that hole and tied for the highest score on any hole in Masters history. He shot an 81.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Garcia said. “It’s the first time in my career where I make a 13 without missing a shot. I felt like I hit a lot of good shots and unfortunately the ball just didn’t want to stop.”
Four-time champion Tiger Woods, playing in his first Masters round in 1,089 days, appeared to be headed to an early exit after bogeys on Nos. 11 and 12 put him 3-over for the round, but he made two birdies coming in to salvage a 73.
Finau, though, was story of the day, at least until Spieth posted his 66 later in the afternoon. Best known for his prodigious length off the tee and for being the most accomplished golfer of Tongan and American Samoan descent, he has won just once on the PGA Tour, the 2016 Puerto Rican Open.
He had a modest upbringing in Salt Lake City and didn’t have much of an amateur pedigree. His father hung a mattress in the garage and Tony and his brother Gipper honed their golf swings by beating thousands of balls into it.
In 2007, a few weeks after Finau turned pro at 17, he fired a course-record 64 at Fire Ridge in Grafton, Wis., to qualify for the now-defunct U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee. At the time, he was the youngest player to qualify for a PGA Tour event in 17 years. Finau made the cut at Brown Deer Park and impressed touring pros with his power.
“I don’t mind being labeled as a bomber,” he said. “Length helps me everywhere I play, especially here at Augusta. But you have to have touch and you have to have good putting skills and I feel like those are the things that I’ve been able to sharpen throughout my career.”
Obviously, he’s not lacking in the mental toughness department, either.
“I feel like my back’s been up against the wall my whole life, so something like this is just another part of the story, I guess,” he said. “But to sit up here and say I’m surprised? Not really.”