Friday: After a lengthy delay, the weather clears and first-round leader Mike Weir flirts with the 18-hole Open scoring record before shooting 64. Jimmy Cliff: "I Can See Clearly Now" "O Canada"
Great shots are what make for great tournaments. In the 75-year history of the Masters, there have been numerous shots worthy of the first major of the year. Here is a list of the 10 best shots in Masters history, excluding putts.
1. Gene Sarazen Year: 1935 Hole: 15th Round: Fourth The "shot heard 'round the world," Sarazen's double eagle with a 4-wood from 220 yards erased Craig Woods' deficit. The next day, Sarazen defeated Wood in a 36-hole playoff, and the shot helped elevate the Masters' status in the golf world.
The Masters isn't always about great shots and the accompanying roars. Augusta National easily can expose the flaws of even the best players in the world, and sometimes the spectators' groans can reverberate through the pines.
Here is a list of the 10 worst shots in Masters history.
1. Scott Hoch Year: 1989 Hole: 10th Round: Playoff Hoch's par putt on the first playoff hole would have won him the 1989 Masters. Instead, his miss extended his playoff with Nick Faldo, who made birdie on the next hole to win the first of his three green jackets.
It's always to fun to stand by the 1st fairway, near where many spectators enter the grounds of Augusta National, and see the awe on their faces as they see the course for the first time. These first-timers are happy just to be among the sea of perfectly manicured turf, tall pines and hills that match the course's epic scale.
As they learn more about the course, they will soon learn that not every verdant fairway is created equal. Here is how the 18 holes rank in one observer's view:
1. Azalea, No. 13 Par 5, 510 yards The ultimate risk/reward hole. A perfectly sculpted tee shot can leave a mid-iron into the green, protected by a tributary of Rae's Creek. But the hole's excitement comes after an average drive, which leaves the player with a tantalizing second shot that is short enough to be reachable but long enough to put serious doubts in the player's mind.
Negotiating a single round at Augusta National demands everything from long, straight drives to precise distance control to an imaginative short game to unwavering concentration. Add to that the pressure and atmosphere of the Masters, and it's amazing that the competitors can pull the trigger on any single shot, much less put together mind-blowing rounds that have been immortalized in the game's long, rich history.
Of all the great rounds in Masters history, here are the 10 best.
1. Jack Nicklaus Year: 1986 Score:65, final round After a ho-hum front nine, the 46-year-old Nicklaus found another gear on the back nine. He made five birdies and an eagle, including the stretch from holes 15 to 17 where he went eagle-birdie-birdie to take the lead.
For the the first time since I began watching the Masters, I was actually bored watching the telecast the past two years, and found myself wishing that there were more than four minutes of commercials every hour.
The lack of excitement of the past two Masters can be summed up in the dubious marks that were achieved each year. In 2007 Zach Johnson shot 1-over 289, tying for the highest winning score in Masters history. Last year Trevor Immelman shot 75, tying for the highest final-round score by a winner. And he won by three, which means he could have shot 77 and still won. Yawn.
Here's hoping that this year's Masters has a bit more drama and interest, enough to challenge for a spot on the following list of the 10 best Masters Tournaments in history.
The U.S. Open has Sam Snead and Nick Faldo. The British Open has Byron Nelson, while the PGA Championship can claim Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.
While the other three majors can claim one of the all-time greats among those who have failed to win that event, the Masters' biggest victim isn't quite an undisputed legend, which speaks to the quality of the course and the event. (Of course, we're not counting players like Harry Vardon, Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones, whose primes preceded the Masters, which began in 1934.)
This week, in addition to Tiger and Phil, the focus will be on Greg Norman and Padraig Harrington, both of whom are on the following list of the 10 best players to have never won the Masters. This ranking kicks off an entire week of Masters lists, which will be posted on the following days:
The Academy Awards take place this Sunday, and as usual, golf is underrepresented among the Best Picture nominees. (Caddyshack II was robbed!) Here is my list of the 10 best golf scenes in movies.
In this completely ad-libbed scene, Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) lives out every golfer’s fantasy—a Cinderella story winning the Masters. Swiping at flowers with a garden tool, he hits an imaginary 8-iron from 195 yards—and “It’s in the hole!” The next scene—"I don't think the heavy stuff's going to come down for quite a while"—isn't bad either. In fact, nearly every scene from the movie could make this list.
As a teenager, I worked at my dad's sneaker store, so by osmosis, I became pretty familiar with shoes. (As well as, unfortunately, dirty socks of all kinds. This was in the days when salespeople actually found the shoes for you and helped you put them on instead of leaving you to forage through piles of boxes. I am just an outsider in the shoe business now, but isn't this current system actually more work for the staff, who now have to tidy up the strewn boxes at the end of the day? On the other hand, they no longer have to be exposed to dirty socks, so I guess it's a push. What I really didn't comprehend was how people couldn't muster the effort to put on clean socks, especially when they knew they were going shoe-shopping. You would imagine this would apply mostly to kids, but a surprising number of adults were also guilty.)
The best part of the job was that I was always the first kid in school with the cool new pair of sneakers like the first Air Jordans. (This status sort of made up for all the Al Bundy jokes I had to endure. My favorite was the Nike Terminators, a pair of which I still have somewhere and used to break out every once in a while. They were always conversation starters, but now that Nike and others picked up on the retro appeal and have reissued the Terminator and other classics, I feel the appeal has been cheapened.
I bring up this backstory because unless you've been Rod Blagojevich's lawyer or have had the misfortune to have entrusted Bernard Madoff with your or your charity's money, footwear has been a major topic of conversation in the past week. In fact, shoes have never been discussed this much unless you were a Sex and the Citycultist fan.
I am talking, of course, of Muntader al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his size 10s at President George W. Bush during a press conference.
Continuing this theme of notable footwear, you'll find nine other famous and infamous shoes throughout history in addition to al-Zeidi's after the jump. (Don't worry, there are some golf shoes on the list.) Why did I compile this list? You could say the subject runs through my sole.
I can't imagine a more nerve-wracking scene in golf than stepping up to the final tee during the final stage of PGA Tour's Qualifying School after playing 107 holes (251 if you started at the first stage), and needing to make par to earn a card for next year—whether you make par or bogey can mean the difference between the potential for millions on the big tour or playing just to get by on the Nationwide Tour.
At this year's Q School, those sitting on that precarious bubble can find themselves one of two final-hole options at the two host layouts: PGA West's Nicklaus Tournament and Stadium courses. Neither finishing hole will give up that final par so easily. The Nicklaus course's 18th is 453 yards, while the Stadium's is 439 yards. Both have water in play, so there will be little free-wheeling on either the drive or approach, and players will be holding their breaths until the ball comes to rest on land.
Making par on either hole will be a tough assignment, and just about the only bright side may be that there are tougher finishes out there. After the jump, 10 of the hardest finishing holes in golf.
