MAJORS CAN HAVE IMPACT IN DIFFERENT WAYS
Major champions today create memories for tomorrow. Some of them, anyway. Still to be determined is whether the grit Patrick Reed showed at Augusta National — holding off Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler in that order — resonates with a junior who is just getting into golf or motivates one of Reed’s peers.
“It’s such a nostalgic game,” McIlroy said last summer. “People remember when they watched Jack (Nicklaus) win a U.S. Open or Tom Watson chip in at Pebble Beach. Whatever generation it is, that’s what they’re going to remember and that’s their fondest memory.”
McIlroy was among five major champions who were asked about their fondest memory of a major (excluding those they won). REDEMPTION “I’m a big redemption person,” McIlroy said. “I’m big on someone winning who deserves it.”
The one major that stands out is Adam Scott winning the Masters in 2013, mainly because it came nine months after one of the most stunning collapses on the back nine in a major, even by Australian standards. Scott had a four-shot lead with four holes to play at Royal Lytham & St. Annes when he closed with four straight bogeys, and Ernie Els won his second British Open.
The next year, Scott holed a 20foot birdie putt on the final hole at Augusta National, and then won with a birdie on the second playoff hole.
“I thought that was awesome,” McIlroy said.
Perhaps he spoke from experience. McIlroy had a four-shot lead going into the final round of the 2011 Masters when he shot 80. He won the very next major, the U.S. Open, by eight shots at Congressional.
There was one another example of redemption: Sergio Garcia, one of McIlroy’s best friends, who went nearly 20 years before winning his first major.
“I cried,” McIlroy said. “I cried!
I was so happy for him.” BIG MOMENTS Jordan Spieth was 11, already honing his putter on a closely mown section of his front yard, when Tiger Woods won the Masters in 2005 for the fourth time. Spieth considers that his favorite major championship victory that wasn’t his own.
“It goes back to when Tiger holed that chip on 16 and ended up going to a playoff with Chris DiMarco,” Spieth said. “That Masters win because of that shot ... when you’re a kid, you want to go out right away and try some kind of similar shot that you saw someone hit.”
Nothing was remotely similar until he played Augusta National for the first time in the fall of 2013.
“The first thing I was interested in was going behind 16, putting the tee down wherever that pin was and hitting that shot,” he said.
Ten years after watching Woods win a fourth green jacket, Spieth won his first. And perhaps it was only fitting that in the final round, Spieth went long on the 16th and wound up in a similar spot from where Woods chipped in.