It is reassuring to occasionally catch a glimpse of the human side of sporting superstars. When Tiger Woods carded a septuple-bogey 10 on the par 3 12th hole at Augusta in the final round of the rescheduled 2020 US Masters, thousands of golfers throughout the world could immediately relate to the 15-time major winner.
"This sport is awfully lonely sometimes," Woods revealed after his abberation. "You have to fight through it. That’s what makes this game so unique and so difficult mentally. We’ve all been there, unfortunately. Unfortunately I’ve been there and you just have to turn around and figure out the next shot and I was able to do that coming home."
"I committed to the wrong wind," Woods explained. "The wind was off the right for the first two guys, and then when I stepped up there, it switched to howling off the left. From there I hit a lot more shots and had a lot more experiences there in Rae's Creek."
It says a lot about the character of the man that he was able to push this nightmare to one side and finish with five birdies in the last six holes. "He hit every shot stone dead for the rest of the round," playing partner Shane Lowry said. "He’s Tiger Woods, isn’t he? The best of all time." That's where the comparison with me and you ends.
Woods is not the first professional to suffer an embarrassment at the hole named Golden Bell. In fact, Tiger's 10 is not even the worst score registered on the 12th at Augusta. We need to talk about Tom's 13 in the first round of the 1980 Masters.
Like Woods, Tom Weiskopf had no reason to fear the 155-yard 12th. The 1973 Open champion had finished second in the Masters on four occasions, and only Jack Nicklaus of the 1980 field had a lower stroke average at Augusta. In 48 rounds of the Masters, Weiskopf had only found the water of Rae's Creek once at Golden Bell.
Thursday April 10 would be different, though. Very different. Standing on the tee at level par for the first round, Weiskopf took his seven-iron and struck his shot towards the shallow green guarded by three bunkers. "I thought I hit the first one good, but I had too much backspin on it," Weiskopf stated after his round. It was only the beginning of the tale.
His seven-iron was not far from finding the target. But landing on the front fringe of the green, the backspin took the ball down the sloping bank and into Rae's Creek. Dropping the ball in the drop zone 20 yards short of the green, Weiskopf later commented that his ball settled into a hole: "The drop area was still wet from yesterday’s rain and the grass was thin. I should have gone back a few yards, but all I could think about was hitting it and getting out of there."
Weiskopf hit a sand wedge, but his 3rd shot went straight into the water. The 5th shot was basically a rerun of his first attempt, the ball landing on the fringe and finding its way back into the watery grave. Another ball came out of the bag, but Weiskopf chipped his 7th shot into Rae's Creek without threatening the putting surface.
"When you screw up like I was doing, you just stand there until you do it right," Weiskopf informed journalists, his struggles providing a big talking point after day one. Famously the 37-year-old had a reputation for being volatile - given the tags The Towering Inferno and Terrible Tom - and on a few occasions he had walked off courses mid-round when the going got tough.
But he was not going to give up at the 12th, even if he remained unable to find his range. For a bit of variety, Weiskopf hit his 9th shot short of the water and watched his ball barely trickle in. Finally, shot 11 found grass on the right side of Rae's Creek. Ironic cheers followed. "There must have been a lot of English blood out there," Weiskopf said. "That's what they call 'sympathy applause.'"
Writing in the Washington Post, Dave Kindred explained the reaction of the spectators. "The gallery was giggling. Galleries at the Masters are the aristrocrats of sports customers. They don't run, they don't boo, they don't litter. But these people were giggling in the face of Weiskopf's tradegy, to say nothing of the poor fish."
Two further shots followed, as Weiskopf's ten minutes of hell came to an end. 13 shots at the par 3, a deca-bogey, and sporting infamy that is inevitably revisited every time someone goes through a similar experience in front of the watching millions of the golfing world.
But the pain went on. On the very next hole his close relationship with Rae's Creek continued, as he put a three-wood second shot to the par 5 13th into another section of his wet Kryptonite. A bogey followed, and although Weiskopf birdied the 14th, he would card an 85 (13 over par).
A full 19 shots behind leader Seve Ballesteros, Weiskopf admitted that on walking to the 14th tee he was thinking of pulling out of the tournament, after dropping eleven shots in two holes. "But then I thought, 'That won't do any good.' I thought, 'I'm just trying not to shoot too high up in the '80s.'"
Day two improved slightly, but everything is relative. Shooting 79, Weiskopf missed the cut by 18 shots, and put two more balls into Rae's Creek on the 12th. This time he managed to limit the damage, yet his seven shots on the 12th in the second round meant that Weiskopf had taken 20 shots at Golden Bell over the two days.
"It's extremely embarassing and disappointing," Weiskopf said as he spoke about his public humiliation. Yet many sympathised with his experience, and the moment possibly succeeded in making him seem more relatable.
Millions of ordinary guys can relate with you, was a comment made during Weiskopf's press interviews. "I can't even identify with myself after what happened there," Weiskopf responded. But like it or not, Weiskopf had shown a side to golf that many of us recognised. It's just a shame for him that his unlucky 13 is now part of Augusta folklore.
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