A Masterpiece

On Easter Sunday 2004, a half decade ago, my life was in its middle stages of adolescence. 

At the time I had yet to graduate high school or earn my driver's license. At the time I still adhered to a staunch 11 PM curfew and passed the time by mounting plastic reindeer in provocative positions and playing the eternally addictive game Vice City. To top it all off, I still rooted fervently for a team mired in an 86-year championship drought and couldn't finish off a six pack of Bud Light if you paid me. 

What does this have to do with anything? Well, on that chilly, wind-swept Easter Sunday -- on which David Ortiz smacked his first walk-off blast in a Red Sox uniform, foreshadowing a magical season full of impossible feats (for him and the team) -- I witnessed the greatest Masters final round of my lifetime. 

That is, until yesterday. 

What made 2004 so special was that Phil Mickelson, mired in a burdensome drought of his own, snapped an 0-46 record in major championship play to capture his first Green Jacket, the left-hander shooting a 4-under par 32 on Augusta's fabled back 9 and draining a 20-foot birdie putt on 18, amidst a throng of sweaty patrons stacked more than a dozen deep, to earn a one shot victory.

What made yesterday so special -- the great play, the Sunday roars the sudden death playoff holes -- cannot be adequately put into words. Paired together in the final round of a major for the first time in seven years, the Nos. 1 and 2 ranked golfers in the world, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, began their Masters Sunday afternoon with a flurry. 

Woods began his day with a birdie at the par-5 2nd hole but fought his swing for much of the opening nine. A wayward tee shot on the 5th resulted in Woods' scrambling to save par, and an errant approach to the par-4 7th left him navigating a slick, 50-foot downhill putt on the sloping Augusta greens. 

But on the par-5 8th, at 570 yards the longest hole at Augusta, Woods' fortunes (and swing) improved. With his 2nd shot, his ball sitting 275 yards away from a green located some 30-feet above him, Woods nutted a 3-wood to within 35-feet and drained the putt for an eagle 3. 

Hard to believe, but Woods' 3-under par 33 on the front nine looked almost pedestrian when compared to Mickelson's dazzling performance. With birdies at 2,3,5,6,7 and 8, Mickelson took the turn after shooting a 6-under par 30, the lowest front nine score in a final round in Masters history. 

The two heavyweights brought their fight to the back nine, trading birdies at 13 and 15 and finding themselves just two shots back of leader Kenny Perry. But Mickelson, after hitting his tee shot into Rae's Creek on 12 and missing a short putt for eagle on 15 and another for birdie on 17, simply gave away too many shots and ended his day, perhaps fittingly, by giving a shot back at 18. 

Tiger brought the crowd to its feet and the roars to their apex by knocking his approach shot on the famed par-3 16th to within 5 feet, converting the next putt for a birdie 2 and putting himself within striking distance of the leader. But like his counterpart Mickelson, Woods appeared to run out of gas, bogeying 17 and 18 en route to a final round 68 and a 6th place finish. 

While neither Woods nor Mickelson took home the Green Jacket, they provided the patrons -- at Augusta they're not fans, they're patrons -- with a memorable duel and the tournament with an unmistakeable gusto that it had sorely lacked in recent years. As Bob Harig of ESPN said, "They replaced victory...with memory."

The heavyweights now departed, it looked for all the world that 48-year old Kenny Perry, one shot clear of the field, would capture his first ever major. At the 16th, the hole that has played witness to so many of Augusta's most cherished moments and indelible images -- from Jack's emotional near-ace in 1986 (he had tears in his eyes walking up to the green) to Tiger's improbable chip-in four years past -- Perry appeared to engender a memory of his own, sticking his approach shot to within inches of the cup. After tapping in for birdie, Perry pulled two shots ahead of Chad Campbell and the charging Angel Cabrera, who made a birdie on 16 himself. 

To this point in the tournament Perry had worked the ball from right to left, his natural trajectory, hitting fairways and greens and making enough putts to put him in the driver's seat. Indeed, despite possessing average length off the tee, Perry had so brilliantly navigated Augusta's elongated confines and strategically placed pin locations that a two-shot lead with two holes to play seemed nearly insurmountable. 

But the pressure of holding a lead in a major, on the final leg of the Masters, proved once again to be an equalizer. Like Curtis Strange, Seve Ballesteros and (more famously) Greg Norman before him, Perry succumbed to the nerves and tension so inherent at Augusta National. With bogies at 17 and 18, Perry fell back into a three-man playoff with Chad Campbell and Angel Cabrera. 

After exchanging pars on the 73rd hole, played on the 18th, Cabrera and Perry walked a few feet to the 10th tee. Campbell, who played a magnificent tournament and lead going into the weekend, failed to convert a 7-footer for par and was eliminated. 

In the middle of the fairway, with nary a breeze bristling atop the stately pines, Perry hooked his short iron into the pine straw, effectively dismantling his tournament hopes. Cabrera, who knocked his approach to within 18 feet, two putted for par and the championship. 

With that par came the Argentine's first Green Jacket, and his resulting fist pump an emotional coda to the most exciting Masters Sunday of my lifetime. 

A Masterpiece, indeed.