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EDITOR’S NOTE: This year’s Masters marked the 25th anniversary of Jack Nicklaus’ mesmerizing triumph at Augusta. The Golden Bear captured the imagination of the sports world as he won his 18th and fi nal major as a 46-year-old. “One for the Ages: Jack Nicklaus and the 1986 Masters” by Tom Clavin recounts the legendary story with vivid details. The hardcover is now available at bookstores. The following is an excerpt from chapters 30 and 31.


30


The back nine of Augusta National “is where the tournament


unfolds on Sunday,” wrote Ben


Crenshaw in “A Feel for the Game.” “The acoustics are such that the sounds rumble right across those pine trees until they almost seem to vibrate. If not for that beautiful expanse of land and those big trees, the sounds wouldn’t carry like they do. But nothing else is anywhere close to it in golf. Players know where the sound is coming from, who is playing, and what the player made on the hole. I mean it. You know what an eagle roar sounds like and you know what a par and a birdie sound like. And the decibel level when Jack Nicklaus makes an eagle just shakes the trees.” Such noise is sometimes too much for a player


during the last day of the Masters. The adrena- line spills over. He swings too hard, or he swings well enough but is so pumped up he overshoots the greens. The putts look longer and longer as a player’s brain tries to contend with the commo- tion. Year after year in a major championship, very fi ne golfers hear the cheers down the stretch and their knees weaken or their hands tremble, and at exactly the wrong moment the ball slices off into


the woods or bounds into a water hazard. Such was the fate of several players who had


made runs up the leaderboard earlier in the fi nal round, or expected that they would and received a rude awakening to Augusta National’s inher- ent diffi culties instead. T. C. Chen had hoped to at least equal his second-place fi nish in the U.S. Open the year before and had begun the day within striking distance, but he wound up tied for twenty-third. That outcome, at least, earned him an automatic return invitation. Donnie Ham- mond fell from the lofty perch he had enjoyed for the fi rst fi fty-four holes, but not too far—he tied for eleventh. He and Chen were the only two of the seventeen players competing in their fi rst Masters who would be asked to return in 1987. Tommy Nakajima would card a 72, which


would leave him fi ve strokes out of fi rst. Gary Koch, Fuzzy Zoeller, and Curtis Strange had 72s and never made a strong bid. Ben Crenshaw stopped his midround free fall but could still do


54 / NCGA.ORG / SPRING 2011


PHOTO: AUGUSTA CHRONICLE


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