Defending champ far from spotlight
THERE was a 40-minute media conference call with ESPN broadcasters recently about the upcoming Masters and there was not one question about Danny Willett, the 2016 Masters champion. Not one.
There were questions about the 20th anniversary of Tiger Woods’ first Masters victory in 1997, and questions about Dustin Johnson, the hottest player in golf. There were even questions about whether Curtis Strange likes the pimento cheese sandwiches served at Augusta National, and what Scott Van Pelt’s favorite Masters routine might be. But there was not one question about Willett’s chances of becoming the first to win back-toback Masters since Woods in 20002001. Sorry, Danny. Let’s review. Willett became the first Englishman since Nick Faldo in 1996 to win the Green Jacket by posting a bogey-free 5-under-par 67 on Sunday to come from five shots back to win. But his first major championship was and continues to be overshadowed by the collapse of Jordan Spieth, who blew a fivestroke lead heading into the back nine.
After shooting 32 on the front nine and seemingly cruising to his second straight Green Jacket, Spieth bogeyed the 10th and 11th holes before the ultimate disaster at the par-3 12th, where he put two balls into the water and signed for a quadruple-bogey 7. He finished with a 73 to tie Lee Westwood for second place.
With much of the attention this week focused on Spieth’s mental health as he prepares to face Rae’s Creek again, Willett has become a footnote heading into the 81st Masters. Part of it is his fault.
Winning the Masters brings instant celebrity, more off-course opportunities and higher expectations. Willett had trouble balancing all of it. His son, Zachariah, was born the week before the Masters, creating the welcomed demands of fatherhood.
He won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic in July, but hasn’t done much since. He missed the cut at the Honda Classic this year and went 1-2 at the WGC Match Play last week. He admitted to becoming “tired” and “frustrated” with his game.
“We ended up playing about 32 events last year with a lot of traveling and a lot of commitments to media and other things,” Willett said. “If you top it up and throw a baby in the mix, there’s not a great deal of time off in there to relax and have some downtime to chill out.” The memory of his bogey-free final round at Augusta and the exhilaration he felt served as a standard that also proved difficult to repeat. Why couldn’t he play that well all the time? “You kind of begin to realize if you’re always gauging every week, compared to that week, every week is going to be a failure,” Willett adding, “I don’t think anything is going to feel as good as winning that first major.”
Through it all, he kept playing golf and trying to be a new dad. Even if he wanted to stay home, there were the Olympics and then the Ryder Cup where his brother, Pete, caused some unnecessary attention by calling American golf fans “classless bastards.” Willett could have used a vacation.
“I think a lot of it was because we didn’t really get the time off in the middle of the year we were hoping for,” he said. “Unfortunately — well, not unfortunately — with how things went we had a lot of things to do when we got back from Augusta and then we played a little bit more.”
He’ll play host to the Champion’s Dinner on Tuesday which has more people concerned about his menu than his chances of defending his championship. So be it. Willett plans to enjoy every minute of being this year’s defending Masters champion, even if everyone else is stressing about Jordan Spieth.