The leader board is not only a Who’s Who of Golf. It is also a Broken Hearts Club.
Such is the nature of this game. Even Jack Nicklaus, its finest player ever, gets tapped on the shoulder by the heavy hand of humility.
One shot off the lead Friday, he teed off with the birds Saturday morning. Because an odd number of golfers made the cut, the Golden Bear’s partner was a non-competing marker, a member’s son.
But it’s more than just golf. It’s Augusta National. Since 1934, grown men have come here, smitten by spring and seduced by these sumptuous acres, only to leave tattered by unrequited love. The Masters can be so coy, so cruel. You give it everything, it gives you an azalea and a Kleenex and says, try again.
They all do, if they’re invited, and perhaps Sunday’s green jacket will go to one of the many haunted and forlorn. Augusta National does have a soul and the Masters has a conscience, though not enough of either to heal all wounds in a single afternoon.
Greg Norman, Scott Hoch, Curtis Strange, Ray Floyd. They know the course. They know the pain. They know no better.
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“How many times can you get slapped in the face and still feel the same passion?” Norman mused. “That’s part of the equation here. This is the No. 1 tournament in the world. It’s the only major played in the same place every year. I don’t believe any tournament owes me one. But I also don’t believe in giving up.”
Ben Crenshaw and Brian Henninger lead at 10-under par. But the resilient Norman is only three shots behind. He cannot put into words how dearly he wants to win the Masters. Then again, he was speechless after Larry Mize’s 140-foot pitch shot beat him in the 1987 playoff.
Norman bogeyed the last hole in 1986, when Nicklaus won by a swing. Norman finished a shot back in 1989, the year Hoch missed an 18-incher to win on the 73rd hole. Nick Faldo won on the 74th, and ever since, Hoch has rhymed with choke. He’s trying again, too. He can’t help it.
“The spectators here know,” Norman went on. “They don’t change from year to year, either. They know what we’ve all been through. Today, I could feel them rooting for my tee ball on No. 13 to keep rolling. They know about the past, but they make you think of the future.”
In the first Masters, Craig Wood looked like a winner until Horton Smith gored him with a 20-foot birdie putt. In 1935, Wood lost a playoff to Gene Sarazen and his double eagle. But in 1941, Augusta National kissed and made up. Wood beat the great Byron Nelson.
“Sometimes,” Norman concluded, “you can take as much from defeat as you can from victory.”
Strange will wait until nightfall Sunday to second that notion. Ten years ago, he had a three-shot cushion with six holes remaining. He went into the water on No. 13, took another bath at No. 15, and bogeyed No. 18. Bernhard Langer got the clothing, Strange got gray hairs.
“I won two U.S. Opens since,” Strange said. “They aren’t exactly member-guest tournaments. But who knows? Who knows whether what happened here 10 years ago will help me now?”
Strange, with Saturday’s 65, is in the hunt again. He’s no Ben Hogan, but Hogan lost a playoff here and then three-putted the last hole to lose by a stroke before he finally won a Masters in 1951. Sam Snead, sideswiped by Ralph Guldahl in 1939, waited until 1949. Gay Brewer, playoff victim of Nicklaus in 1966, won in 1967.
Floyd? He botched a four-shot bulge with six holes remaining in 1990, then told of his real agony.
“I might never have this chance again,” he whispered.
Floyd, 52, has another chance Sunday. But so do a dozen other players, maybe more.
Only Henninger, a rookie here, enters Sunday’s ring unscarred. The Masters really knows how to hurt such a guy, but imagine the body count if the most obscure contender of all survives.
Augusta National wouldn’t dare, would it?