Feeling flush
GOLF FROM PEE TO GREEN
BY NEIL SQUIRES AS Jordan Spieth’s Green Jacket hopes drowned to the bottom of Rae’s Creek, Danny Willett’s became a reality after going for a leak.
The Masters is all about the roars that sweep around Augusta National on the back nine on a Sunday.
But sometimes it is a different noise that carries through golf ’s most evocative landscape – the collective gasps of thousands of patrons providing the soundtrack to calamity.
The final-round meltdown as a Green Jacket slips through the fingers is the dark side of Augusta once experienced, never forgotten.
For Willett, the fate that befell Spieth four years ago around Amen Corner changed his life.
What was a five-shot cushion at the turn for the defending champion evaporated within three holes of his back nine as he found water twice at No.12.
There Willett, a new dad without a care in the world, was walking off the 15th green with his caddie Jonathan Smart when he found himself leading the Masters and on course for his first and only Major crown.
He said: “I’d just tapped in for par on 15 and as I gave Smarty the putter there was a big gasp.
“There’s a big board at 15. They had just popped Jordan’s score up from the 12th.
“Me and Smarty looked at it then had a cheeky double take.
“Jordan had been playing brilliantly and put some daylight between himself and the rest but all of a sudden I was one in front.
“I went for a pee at the back of 16 and told myself, ‘This is what I practise for’.
“You’re up at 7am practising and out till dark so hopefully when you get into position in a tournament all that work you put in helps you do something special. That was my time to prove to myself I could do it.
“It was unreal how calm I was. I was like that all week really. Something significant had just happened in my life and golf didn’t seem the be-all and end-all.”
Had Zachariah Willett arrived on time he would not have been there at all to tee it up.
But his birth 11 days ahead of schedule and the blessing of wife Nicole had meant a late dash down Magnolia Lane. Locked down in Florida with Zachariah, now four, and his two-year-old brother Noah, this has been a week to reminisce.
Willett said: “Nic woke up the other morning and said to me, ‘Happy Masters week.’ It’s a special week for us obviously.
“The birth had gone great, we had loads of friends and family nearby helping out. Nic said, ‘Go play. It’s the Masters. I’m fine at home’.
“I was always planning on taking four weeks off afterwards so I gave Nic a kiss on the
Monday and said goodbye to embark on a week that I don’t think anyone saw coming.
“I signed in as No.89 – last man – played 18 holes on Tuesday afternoon, the parthree course on Wednesday and used my yardage book from 2015.
“It was tricky conditions but I kept the ball in play nicely and never really put it into reverse.
“I never had any stupid numbers – I don’t think I threeputted that week – so that when I did eventually have my run on Sunday it was a run that propelled me into contention rather than into a nice finish.
“I still had to wait after I was done but when Jordan was messing up on 17 I was thinking, ‘F*** me this is going to happen here’.”
The party in Augusta, with Sir Alex Ferguson among the revellers, went on long and late before Willett retired to a rental house by Rae’s Creek.
When he awoke, there was another double take. “I opened my eyes and the jacket was there in my bedroom,” he said. “It was bonkers.”