SANDY LYLE EXCLUSIVE
SCOT RECALLS HIS AUGUSTA GLORY 30 YEARS ON:
Even now, people tell me exactly where they watched it
Even on his 60th birthday in February, someone asked him about that bunker shot. Thirty years ago it was now, but still they keep asking.
For golfers of a certain age — and on the Champions Tour in America, where Sandy Lyle now plays, the pro-am partners are nearly all of a certain age — it’s a time capsule back to when they were young.
‘It’s funny, they ask about the bunker shot and then they tell me where they were watching it and reminisce about what was happening in their own lives,’ said Lyle, chuckling to himself. ‘Some were in hotel rooms, enjoying a vacation or on business. Some were enjoying a beverage with their pals at the golf club or simply watching it at home. What’s amazing to me is they all remember exactly what they were doing.’
In Britain, the hour was almost midnight and a nation held its breath. either that, or heads were being held in hands. The best opportunity a British golfer had ever had to win a green jacket, and Sandy, the golden child in every sense with his flaxon hair and Claret Jug victory in 1985, was blowing it. So comfortable for so long, calamity had struck.
Bogey at 11. Double at 12. no wonder they say the Masters doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday. Then, after fighting back so bravely, he had only gone and driven the damn ball into one of those terrifying bunkers down the left-hand side at 18.
A par was needed for a play-off but few players back then got a par from those forbidding hazards. He appeared doomed.
‘It was certainly a back nine where I put myself through the wringer,’ said Lyle, recalling it like it happened a couple of weeks ago. ‘In terms of fighting my emotions, it was the worst mental battle that I had in my career, and by the time I got to the 18th I was almost spent. And then I drove into the bunker.’
With his last ounce of mental strength, he followed it with THe bunker shot, one of those jawdropping moments that you know instinctively will come to define the man, whatever they go on to achieve.
Up against the shallow face of the first bunker, he also had to clear the steep lip of the second directly in front of it. He did so with the most perfectly struck seven iron of his career. ‘even now, I go back to that spot and wonder how he did it,’ said Mark Calcavecchia, the runner-up in 1988, a couple of years ago.
Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw added: ‘It has rightly gone down as one of the most incredible blows in Masters history.’
It might not have been so heralded if Lyle hadn’t holed the 12ft putt that followed for a scarcely-conceivable birdie, and a one-stroke victory. He threw his arms in the air and did a little Scottish jig. Or so we thought. ‘I think I was really trying to do somersaults but didn’t have the energy,’ he said.
How did he manage to get the job done? I take him back a couple of years to 1986 and playing with Jack nicklaus in the final round when the Golden Bear completed arguably the greatest of his 18 major triumphs. Was there anything Lyle learned that day that prepared him for his own conquest?
‘You know, I’ve thought about that a lot over the years and I think it must have,’ he said. ‘Watching nicklaus play that back nine was a great experience. What stuck with me was how he never changed anything. Some guys start moving quicker, or breathing heavier but not Jack. He was playing to the picture of what he wanted to do, like he was playing a practice round but with a crowd. I definitely picked up on that.’
Lyle lives these days in Jacksonville, Florida, and was wearing a T-shirt with the Players Championship logo — another tournament he was the first Brit to win, in 1987 — on the day we spoke.
Among the Scots he had an affectionate nickname of ‘the daft laddie’, and gave an example of how it was earned when revealing that he should have been playing in a Champions Tour event that day but hadn’t committed before the deadline. He did play in one in February where he celebrated his 60th birthday alongside Ian Woosnam, whom he grew up playing alongside in Shropshire. How remarkable that both would go on to win the Masters.
HOW even more remarkable that their triumphs in 1988 and 1991 should sandwich two more British successes, for nick Faldo in 1989 and 1990. Four wins in a row at Augusta must rank among the greatest British sporting achievements of all time.
Lyle and Woosie will see each other again this week, of course, as two of the tournament’s elder statesmen, and Faldo will commentate for American television once more. There has been speculation that this will be Lyle’s last appearance but he discounts such talk. ‘I’ve got at least a couple more in me yet,’ he said. ‘I remember Woosie saying two years ago that was it and yet here he still is. Obviously, I can’t play the course the way Rory McIlroy will play it, but I think I can still get round there in par or better, playing the old-fashioned way.’
He will make his last appearance at the Open this year, however, where he has reached the age limit granted to past champions. How fitting that it will be in Scotland, although he sounds like he would rather it had been somewhere other than brutal Carnoustie.
‘In some ways I’m glad it’s coming to an end because it’s been quite miserable the last few years when I’ve not been competitive, and I think my time has come for that tournament, if I’m honest,’ he said. ‘As for Carnoustie, I’ve had some rough times round there as well but I’ll put up with it. even if I don’t make the halfway cut, it will be a tearjerker, I’m sure.’
It will be an emotional occasion this week as well, with plenty of family members in attendance. As well as wife Jolande, his daughter Lonneke will be there and will caddie for him in the par-three tournament. His eldest son Stuart is also flying in for what will be Lyle’s 34th consecutive appearance, and 37th in all.
‘I know they don’t give you any medals for playing so many but it’s still something to cherish,’ he said. ‘It’s still a special place to go and play, beginning with the Champions Dinner on Tuesday. I’m sure there will be a few tears that night with Sergio Garcia the host, after he won it on what would have been Seve Ballesteros’s 60th birthday. It will take quite a few of us back to the days when Seve played at Augusta, and paved the way with his victories for the rest of us.’
Ballesteros once described Lyle as the most talented golfer he saw and no finer example of his gifts exists than that bunker shot.
A couple of years ago, Lyle was walking across to the clubhouse at Augusta when the then club chairman Billy Payne called him over. Lyle wondered what he had done wrong. ‘Do you know that every guest who plays here for the first time still walks over to that bunker and wants to play your shot,’ said Payne, laughing.
Lyle smiles at the memory. ‘You can’t beat being a part of Masters history, can you?’ he said.