For the last three years the Masters has been the best of the year’s major golf championships. If the same is true this year, we’re up for a fairly mundane 2014.
Not to decry Bubba Watson’s achievement of his second green jacket in any way, indeed the decisive performance of the man from Bagdad (Florida panhandle version), responding to Spieth’s early salvo before cruising down the stretch, was quite exemplary.
Nor should we diminish the splendid performances at either end of the tournament age scale by 20-year-old Jordan Spieth and the crumblies, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Bernhard Langer and Fred Couples. There’s still much to ponder about the first major weekend of the year. But where was the Augusta magic, the drama?
ALL A BIT DULL
You almost feel shortchanged when anyone, no matter how well they’ve played, wins the Masters at a relative canter by three shots.
The Masters does not start until the back nine on Sunday, goes the immortal quote, claimed by the veteran US scribe Dan Jenkins (at his 64th Masters in a row this year).
Well, if it only started on the back nine on Sunday, it was all done by the tee shot on the 12th, when Spieth misjudged (or perhaps got a little unlucky) with the wind direction and spun back to Rae’s Creek. Although he made a great four from the drop zone, the tournament was effectively over, as no-one seemed to want to risk everything to unseat Bubba on the 13th and 15th.
The front nine, when Spieth was playing on the edge and threatening, was great entertainment. But it turned out like James Bond killing the baddie in the first reel, and we figuratively twiddled our thumbs down the stretch.
BUT HOORAY FOR BUBBA GOLF!
Bubba’s a bit of an enigma. He can be brattish, his well-documented (and extensively youtubed) rant at his caddie after a bad shot at the Travellers Championship last season was pretty sour stuff. He snubbed a number of my colleagues at the Open last year out of nothing but apparent spite.
He’s apparently not the most popular on tour amongst his colleagues (mind you they seem collectively to distrust anyone with even a touch of different) and admits to having some kind of self-diagnosed Attention Deficiency Problem.
Yet he’s about the closest we have to the style and panache of the late and much missed Severiano Ballesteros. He’s basically self-taught there’s not going to be any Bubba “How To” books. He may not be the smartest chap in the players’ lounge but he’s imaginative, seeing the impossible exit, the unlikely chip.
With the driver, he’s one of the very few players in this modern age of souped-up balls and tech-heavy gear that hits the ball with any flair and art. They all used to do it like this in the old days, folks, although admittedly not over 350 yards at a time.
Bubba’s art could possibly be best appreciated in this one particular museum. It’s hard to see him winning an Open, although we long said the same about another imaginative player, Phil Mickelson. Augusta, however, is made for him. Unless he gets more of the head issues that distracted him in the intervening two years between his Masters wins, at least another green jacket seems likely.
JORDAN THEY’RE NOT GETTING ANY OLDER
It took a while, but when Jordan Spieth slammed his club into a choice piece of pristine Augusta turf on the 11th were finally saw there was a 20-year-old there.
Spieth was on the stellar US Walker Cup team at Royal Aberdeen in 2011, was unbeaten in a losing team, adapting to links golf almost immediately. He was also sporting enough to be the only American to join in the GB&I team’s winning party, even though he was not yet 18.
He played pretty decently on his Open debut at Muirfield too, quite apart from taking the PGA Tour by storm in the last year.
On Sunday Jordan didn’t have his A game but still toughed out a 72, suggesting it was far more a technical issue than a mental one. It was his first experience of the homeward stretch in contention at a major, and he’ll be better next time. And given his ability, there’s going to be a fair few times at the majors, the next one reasonably soon.
EREXCEPT SOME OF THEM ARE
For years one of the best things about the Masters was that old stagers could have one last hurrah, using their experience and know-how to put together a score. Jack Nicklaus’ 18th major really couldn’t have been won anywhere else.
The stretching of Augusta seemed to have put paid to that, but it seems that the oldies have stretched as well literally so, if you know Jimenez, Langer and Couples’ training regiments. Hey, Tiger could maybe get closer to Jack playing Augusta until he’s 70.
DID WE MISS TIGER? SORT 0F
Would he have won, would he have even contended? Despite his apparently superhuman abilities, the answer, even if he’d delayed surgery, must surely be no.
I missed him raging against not winning more than him actually being about and in contention. The great story about Tiger, arguably a better one now than when he was smiting all about him, is his battle with himself and the inevitable dying of the light.
15 YEARS AND COUNTING
since a European winner at Augusta. Jonas Blixt, while tidy and eventually tied for second, didn’t really seem at any point to want to actually go and win the thing. Miguel Angel didn’t quite have enough in the tank to get there.
In the end it was somewhat surprising to see Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy appear in the top ten Rory’s best Augusta performance, would you believe. Good Ryder Cup points for both to assure Paul McGinley, certainly, but neither ever had a chance, did they?
Maybe not with Bubba so serene. But one thought yesterday if Rory could roll home in 31, he’d at least got them thinking. If Lee could have got off to a start, maybe he could have muscled in on the leaders.
Neither happened. Rory eventually played the par fives in leveleight-under for his 16 tries at them, would have got him a play-off. Lee sort of backed into sixth on his own.
The difference with these two is that not only has Rory got a couple of these major things, he has plenty time to add more, including a green jacket. Westwood, again becalmed early on during a major Sunday, is running out of chances for his first.