WILLETT IN WONDERLAND
Vicar’s lad from Sheffield shows steel of a champion … and even Nicklaus is impressed
WILLOW CREEK, situated half a mile from the front entrance of Augusta National Golf Club, is the sort of exclusive enclave normally filled with a spectral silence come Sunday night. Not last Sunday night. The songs coming from the large house at the top of the cul-de-sac could be heard from some distance away. And when the man wearing the green jacket — and the broadest of grins — arrived at around 10.30pm, they couldn’t help themselves.
‘walking in a willett wonderland,’ they chanted at the top of their voices, over and over.
it was some celebration, as you can imagine, as an overwhelmed-looking Danny willett went around the tables of friends and clients of his management company.
everyone wanted their photo taken with the new Masters champion, the man who had ended the 20-year wait for a British winner. The man who had been the last to register, owing to the birth of his first child; who had come to Augusta and, as a golfer, truly arrived.
earlier, willett had attended a party of a less raucous kind in the clubhouse with the green jackets, as around 150 gathered to greet the newest member.
‘welcome to our family,’ the lad from Sheffield was told, while the rules of the club were politely explained. Please don’t have your photograph taken with the green jacket wearing jeans, was one. Don’t allow others to wear it, was another.
As if anyone could have got it off his back.
Across the marquee at willow Creek, the same word was uttered again and again: unbelievable. Unbelievable. And it was.
Just as liverpool fans left the ground in istanbul at half-time with their team 3-0 down in the Champions league final in 2005, there must have been plenty of golf fans who went to bed when Jordan Spieth established a five-stroke lead with nine holes to play.
what could go wrong, given the 22- year- old Texan’s awesome record? As willett said: ‘i knew i was playing very well but after every birdie i made i would look up at the leaderboard and find i’d somehow fallen further behind.’
Not when he looked up standing on the 16th tee. Beside the 15th green there is a massive leaderboard and he clocked the large groans emanating from the patrons who packed the grandstand.
willett admitted to a state of disbelief as Spieth’s score of five under after 11 holes was changed to one under after 12. A seven at that devilish par three meant he had dropped six shots in three holes. in the space of just 30 minutes he had thrown away his seemingly certain winner’s position. ‘My first reaction was that it was their little joke,’ said willett. ‘i was waiting for them to change it again and put it back to seven under.’
But they didn’t. And now willett had to compose himself and take in the realisation that he was three holes from home and leading the Masters.
How do you stay calm in those situations? Asked the question afterwards, his manager Chubby Chandler pointed reporters in the direction of Sportsmail’s article on willett a month ago, when he had talked about the influence of his father Steve, now the nation’s most famous Church of england vicar.
‘i’ve been to a few psychologists but the best one i know is my dad,’ willett had said. ‘what he says is so grounded and it is about whether you are doing right or wrong. i had a normal life growing up, where golf was hardly mentioned and i’m grateful for that. when i came home from playing it wasn’t about whether i’d shot 65 but whether i was feeling ok.’
That calmness and perspective served willett well over the final 45 minutes. He had been given the opportunity of a lifetime but it still needed seizing. Spieth might have gone but by willett’s side was lee westwood, who had chipped in at the 15th and was now just one behind.
At the 16th willett consulted his excellent caddie Jon Smart and then hit his favourite shot of the week, an eight iron that plunged eight feet from the flag. while westwood three-putted, willett nervelessly holed, and now the only man who could stop him was willett himself.
At the 17th he pulled his second shot to just over the green. ‘ That’s the last place you want to be,’ said Sir Nick Faldo, the last British winner of the Masters, on American television. Undaunted, willett showed wonderful touch and imagination to chip down to inches from the hole. it says everything about what a class act westwood is that he forgot his own disappointment as one more chance to win that elusive first major slipped away and gave a clenched fist salute in willett’s direction.
At the 18th, the patrons are allowed to stand too close to the tee, and particularly as the evening shadows lengthen. willett backed off his drive when one shadow moved but here again he composed himself and didn’t rush the shot. He consulted Smart once more and then struck the sweetest three wood down the heart of the narrow chute that leads to the fairway. A seven iron to the middle of the green and then willett, dressed all in white, took off his sweater to reveal a polo shirt of Masters green.
‘i was warm,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye, before revealing the real reason he had stripped off a
layer. ‘Besides, i just thought a little green looked better in the circumstances.’
it had all been a textbook example of what fellow Yorkshireman Pete Cowen, the leading golf coach who has steered willett from outside the world’s top 100 to inside the top 10, considers one of his best qualities. ‘Danny has that ability to feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations and that is very rare,’ he said.
For willett it was the culmination of a dream that had survived some rocky years during his mid-20s, when he was hampered badly by a seemingly chronic back complaint.
‘i can’t tell you how frustrating it was watching players i had been comfortably beating go past me,’ he said.
willett had played in the same walker Cup team as rory Mcilroy in 2007 and became the world’s No 1-ranked amateur.
But he put in the work and got to the bottom of his back problem. every month he gets the train from leeds to london to see his specialist and check everything is ok.
‘He is unbelievably dedicated in the way he lives his life and how hard he works,’ said Chandler.
All across America they were talking only of Spieth, of course, and the monumental meltdown. Shades of Greg Norman in 1996 and Mcilroy in 2011, and all that.
it was perfectly understandable, but trust the greatest golfer of all time to have a different view.
‘i’ve watched Danny willett play on television and i have thought, “well, this young man looks like a pretty darn good player”,’ wrote Jack Nicklaus. ‘He had moved to 12th in the world so he was obviously doing something right.
‘what impressed me so much is that when he realised he was in position to win, he finished it — and that’s the mark of a champion. what an amazing couple of weeks — from becoming a new father to becoming the latest Masters winner.
‘My congratulations go to Danny for what he did.’
Willett hoping to have daddy of all results at the Masters
From Sportsmail on March 3