Twenty-five years in the past, at age 41, Mark O’Meara did what many males want they might, particularly in center age: He received the Masters Match with a putt at No. 18. Three months later, he added a British Open victory, the second and last main event win in a Corridor of Fame profession that started throughout Jimmy Carter’s presidency and continues right now on the PGA Tour Champions circuit.
O’Meara’s achievement at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership punctuated his fifteenth Masters. A whole lot of time taking part in with a prodigy named Tiger Woods didn’t damage. Neither did expertise.
“It’s a kind of golf programs that the extra you play it, the extra you perceive it,” O’Meara mentioned in an interview in March. “The extra you’ve performed there, the higher your chances are high.”
O’Meara final appeared within the Masters in 2018, when he performed for the thirty fourth time. However he, like so many different Masters winners, can nonetheless rattle off from reminiscence many years of the course’s pleasures and perils.
“You’re going to hit unhealthy photographs,” he mentioned. “However the very best recommendation I may give to anybody is admire the great ones — as a result of generally they don’t come that always — and simply overlook in regards to the unhealthy ones.”
No. 2: Pink Dogwood
Par 5, 575 yards
2022 common: 4.583 (18). Cumulative common: 4.777 (17).
“18” signifies that No. 2 was the simplest gap in 2022.
Augusta Nationwide is hardly full of forgiving holes. “All of them stored me up at night time,” O’Meara mentioned, perhaps solely partly in jest. However No. 2, a right-to-left downhill gap, can set an encouraging tone for a spherical.
“So long as you don’t attempt to chunk off an excessive amount of and overdraw your tee shot to the place it may possibly find yourself down within the timber and within the creek down there on the left, it’s a gap that’s gettable,” O’Meara mentioned. Even taking part in to simply wanting the opening’s first bunker, O’Meara mentioned, is ok within the period of gamers with immense energy: A lot of them can knock the ball to the inexperienced from the realm.
“Should you make bogey there, you’re undoubtedly giving freely photographs,” he mentioned of the opening. “You need to be capable of make par and, most definitely, birdie or eagle.”
The distress cranks up quickly sufficient on No. 3, the shortest par-4 gap. Loaded with 5 bunkers, O’Meara all however shuddered on the reminiscence: “No. 3 could be a very treacherous gap.”
Past placing properly, O’Meara argued it was important for the potential Masters champion to grasp the course properly sufficient to steer round awkward positions like those that may befall a participant at No. 3.
“You’re going to seek out some awkward positions on the market, however the extra you’ll be able to keep away from that, the higher off you’re going to be,” he mentioned.
No. 6: Juniper
Par 3, 180 yards
2022 common: 3.152 (10). Cumulative common: 3.137 (13).
A downhill gap that O’Meara often discovered to play between 170 and 202 yards, it ends with “a inexperienced that’s simply wickedly extreme.”
Look out, he mentioned, if the pin is on the prime proper of the inexperienced.
“It’d be like attempting to hit to your espresso desk at your own home,” O’Meara mentioned. “You’ve acquired to be lifeless correct. In any other case, you’re going to have a really dramatic, uphill, troublesome putt for birdie as a result of it rolls down that entrance left, and then you definately’ve acquired an extended, demanding putt. Actually, only a two-putt is a bonus.”
The seventh gap, a 450-yard par 4, doesn’t supply a lot aid.
“Slim tee shot, with the entire quantity of timber that over time have been planted, a fairway that slopes fairly good from left to proper after which an elevated inexperienced — that’s perched up between these huge sand bunkers — that has a few totally different ranges to it, O’Meara rued. “And it’s slender, so that you’ve acquired to be exact coming into that inexperienced, too.”
No. 12: Golden Bell
Par 3, 155 yards
2022 common: 3.233 (T6). Cumulative common: 3.273 (4).
The perils that make up Amen Nook start at No. 11, a 520-yard, par-4 check whose chaos quotient will be dictated by the wind within the second. However O’Meara, like many Masters winners, has specific affection for No. 12, a horticultural splendor and the shortest par-3 gap at Augusta Nationwide.
“It performs wherever from 128 to, perhaps, 162 yards in size,” O’Meara mentioned. “However the truth that the inexperienced is so slender and there may be hazard at each” — right here, he chuckled nervously — “nook of that gap, we’ve seen lots of drama.” No much less a participant than Woods carded a ten there in 2020.
“Once you take a look at a brief iron in a prime skilled’s hand, you assume, ‘Oh, that shouldn’t be an issue,’” O’Meara mentioned. “However but you get a bit of little bit of wind blowing down there in Amen Nook and the place you’ve acquired to be so exact in the place you land your golf ball on the inexperienced there, it causes havoc.”
The primary component of a profitable components for No. 12, in fact, is to maintain the ball out of Rae’s Creek. “However,” O’Meara added, “I believe you’ve acquired to be dedicated once you stand on that tee shot and, more often than not, taking part in for the middle of the inexperienced.”
He has recommended buddies and amateurs at No. 12 to “choose a membership with a pleasant, stable swing: not such as you’re attempting to kill it, not attempting to child it, only a regular golf swing, whether or not that is perhaps an 8-iron or 9-iron or 7-iron.”
“You simply must play for the center of the inexperienced on that gap,” he mentioned. “If the wind’s blowing, for certain that’s the place you’ve acquired to play. If not, then you definately will be extra aggressive to the entrance left pin or again proper pin.”
No. 13: Azalea
Par 5, 545 yards
2022 common: 4.852 (16). Cumulative common: 4.775 (18).
The one gap to be lengthened for this 12 months’s event, No. 13 will play 35 yards longer than it did final spring. In O’Meara’s prime, extra tall, thick timber defended No. 13. A lot of them, although, are gone now, and gamers are hitting the ball farther, so, maybe, O’Meara mused, the size will discourage gamers from attempting to bend their photographs across the nook.
“Perhaps the gamers received’t attempt to tackle the nook as a lot; they’ll simply form of hit it extra right away,” O’Meara mentioned. “They may have an extended shot into the inexperienced, however as a substitute of getting 190 to 205, they may have 215 to 225 yards.”
However O’Meara, who was removed from the PGA Tour’s longest hitter, estimated that he went for the inexperienced in two photographs maybe 20 p.c of the time.
“Play the sensible shot,” he mentioned. “Don’t be overly aggressive on that gap. Don’t get grasping.”
No. 18: Holly
Par 4, 465 yards
2022 common: 4.389 (2). Cumulative common: 4.229 (7).
Even because it declares No. 18 to be “one of the crucial well-known ending holes in golf,” Augusta Nationwide’s official description may undersell the strain for a participant pursuing a victory: “This uphill dogleg proper is protected off the tee by two bunkers on the left elbow of the golf green. A drive hit down the middle will typically require a center iron for a second shot to a deep, slender inexperienced guarded by one bunker brief left and one other arduous proper.”
O’Meara confessed that earlier than 1998, he had lengthy puzzled how anybody may stand on the 18th inexperienced and make a putt to win.
“Everyone’s nervous. Everyone’s attempting to do their finest,” O’Meara mentioned. “However I believe that for me, the plus was that I by no means as soon as thought after I was on the inexperienced, ‘Hey Mark, you make this putt, you win the inexperienced jacket, you win the Masters, blah, blah, blah.’ I simply don’t assume you will get forward of your self.”
As a substitute, dealing with the opportunity of a playoff, he reasoned that he must make a putt someday, someplace. Why not, he figured, attempt to make a good putt now?
“Once I hit my putt and it was about two toes off the putter, I believed, ‘Oh, thank God I hit a good putt,’ however I didn’t know what was on the brink of occur, after which I used to be simply monitoring,” he mentioned.
Folks got here to their toes. The telecast ran. Everybody peered towards the cup.
“About two toes from the opening, I’m pondering: ‘Wait a minute. That appears fairly good,’” O’Meara mentioned. “After which when it acquired a few foot from the opening, my final thought was, ‘Please don’t lip out.’”