Finau feeling no pain, among early leaders
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Anyone who has ever dislocated or sprained an ankle knows how painful it is.
The ankle feels thick, as mobile as a piece of wood, and putting weight on it is agony. Wrapping it or wearing a brace helps, but unless you spend the day on the couch with it propped up on a pillow, you’re going to be miserable.
Imagine playing one of the longest golf courses on the PGA Tour on a dislocated ankle, one so hilly it would test a mountain goat. It would be a miserable five hours, and just finishing would be considered something of a victory.
When your arms still have scars from fire-knife dancing as a child, however, pain is relative.
A day after dislocating his left ankle during the Par-3 Contest and popping it back into place, Tony Finau not only played the Masters, he played it better than almost anyone else. In his first appearance at Augusta National, Finau shot a 68 that has him in a tie for second, two strokes behind Jordan Spieth.
“To be in this position I’m at now, (from) when I woke up (Thursday) morning, it’s nothing short of a miracle, if you ask me,” Finau said. “I could barely put any pressure on it. I could barely walk.
“I looked forward to this week for a really long time, and to see the possibility of that slipping away — I had the confidence that I would come back, but I wanted to play now and I want to play this week,” he added. “Waiting for another opportunity to play my first Masters, whether it was next year or another time, was going to be hard for me to swallow.”
So he taped up his ankle and found a way to make it work.
Just as he always has. Finau is one of seven children, and there wasn’t much money to spare growing up. His mother, who is of Tongan and Samoan heritage, taught her son the tradition of fireknife dancing when he was 4. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Finau would attach knives to both ends of a stick, light them on fire and twirl the flaming, razor-sharp contraption like a baton.
The money he earned performing at weddings and birthday parties helped Finau pay for golf. The burns and cuts he got inured him to pain.
“If you catch it on the wrong side of the stick, you burn your hands. It’s kind of a hook and a knife at the top of it, so you could also cut yourself, and I did a lot of that as a kid,” he said.
Finau has dreamed of playing the Masters pretty much since he started playing golf. And like most other first-timers, he has taken advantage of every opportunity the week offers. His wife and their four children were his caddies for the Par-3 Contest, and when Finau aced the seventh hole, he dropped his club and took off running in celebration.
He isn’t even sure why. He’s had holes in one before — this was his 12th — but something about the moment and the setting overcame him. Somewhere between the tee and green, he turned around and started jogging backward.
Then he stumbled. Finau’s left ankle buckled, rolling over on the outside. He dropped to one knee, then moved the ankle back into place.
“It was a pretty embarrassing moment,” he said. “I feel like I’m a good athlete, and to see myself kind of roll an ankle on an easy little backpedal wasn’t really athletic.”
An X-ray on Wednesday showed he hadn’t broken any bones, and no additional damage was found during MRI scan Thursday morning. If he could tolerate the pain, he was told, he could play.
Although it looked as if he was walking more gingerly later in the rounds, Finau said he felt better as the day went on. Maybe the pain in his foot was enough to mask the nerves he would have normally felt. Maybe it forced him to focus a little more.
Whatever it was, by the end of the day, he was near the top of the leaderboard.
“I feel like my back’s been up against the wall my whole life, so something like this is just another part of the story, I guess,” he said.
Pressure is relative. So is pain. But Finau’s first round at the Masters is something no one will never forget.