Chapter 80

The 83rd Masters

Augusta National Golf Club

Augusta, Georgia

April 11–14, 2019

A hopeful Sam and Charlie fly in from Orlando, Florida, to Augusta, Georgia, in time to catch the final round of the 2019 Masters. They’ll be watching from the gallery with Tiger’s mom, Tida, and his girlfriend of the past two years, Erica Herman, all rooting for Tiger to achieve what could be his greatest “W.”

They’re far from the only ones.

In North Augusta, South Carolina—just across the Savannah River from Augusta National Golf Club—Tiger’s friend Darius Rucker and fellow members of Hootie he’s also never won when coming from behind on a Sunday.

For Finau, a twenty-nine-year-old of Tongan-Samoan descent who grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, today’s reality borders on the surreal. “I dreamed since I was a kid of competing against Tiger, playing against him in the final group, being paired with him in the final group of a Masters or a U.S. Open,” says Finau.

Just as watching Jack Nicklaus win the 1986 Masters made an indelible impression on ten-year-old Tiger, watching Tiger win the 1997 Masters inspired seven-year-old Finau. “The way he fist-pumped, the red shirt, his power compared to the other players, the way he made the fans go crazy, and the rawness of it all seemed larger than life. I thought, I want to be like that. It’s impossible to overestimate Tiger’s influence on kids like me, or the impact he’s had on golf in general. He’s an icon, absolutely one of a kind,” Finau tells Golf Digest.

He and Tiger, both Nike pitchmen, wear custom golf shoes: special-edition Nike Air Max 1s for Finau; chrome-soled black Nike Air Zoom TW71s with a green snakeskin pattern for Tiger, who’s also wearing a Nike TW Vapor mock-neck polo in Sunday red, a throwback to the one Tiger wore fourteen Aprils ago—in 2005, the last time he won the Masters.

“This is a man possessed,” Nicklaus says of Tiger. “He’s possessed to win a golf tournament. He’s absolutely under total control and he’s going to get it done.”

“Molinari fended off Tiger at Carnoustie in Scotland. But this is America. The support for Tiger is monumental, the noise will be monumental,” says Nick Faldo on the CBS telecast. One noise that will be absent, however, is the sound of cell phones—there’s a ban on them at Augusta National, to Tiger’s delight. “The art of clapping is gone, right? You can’t clap when you’ve got a cell phone in your hand,” he points out. The Masters, though, “is so different, and is so unique. It’s pure golf. You know, it’s just player and caddie out there playing.”

When the threesome reaches 12—part of what’s known as Amen Corner at Augusta after the number of prayers sent up there—the winds are swirling. Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated says, “The best hole in the country is the 12th at Augusta National,” calling it “a hellacious, wonderful, terrifying, simple, treacherous, impossible, perfect molar-knocker of a par-3” and quipping, “More green jackets have been lost at the 12th than at the Augusta City Dry Cleaners.”

Amen Corner lives up to its fierce reputation. Both Molinari and Finau hit draws that send their balls into the water of Rae’s Creek for double bogeys. Tiger, however, plays “the prettiest little cut shot, right over where he should put it, over the center of the bunker, the left side of the bunker, into the middle of the green,” says Nicklaus, declaring, “Tournament’s over. It doesn’t make any difference what anyone else is going to do. Somebody is going to make enough mistakes, and Tiger won’t make any.”

He’s now tied for the lead.

“Game on!” yells a fan. “Game. On.”

But as Tiger tees off on 13, a heavy rain is falling. The round spikes on his Air Zooms lose traction on the wet ground, where the grass is worn after four previous rounds. “Ahhh, I f—ing slipped,” Tiger says, watching his ball’s flight as he tosses his blue chewing gum into an azalea bush.

He’s pulled the ball left into some trees, but it bounces back out and winds up splitting the fairway.

Tiger birdies 15 and claims the outright lead for the first time.

“The Tiger has hunted them down and now he’s going for the kill,” says Faldo.

On 16, the 173-yard hole named Redbud, he hits 8-iron off the tee. Two other players—Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas—both scored aces on that same hole earlier today. Tiger looks good to be the third.

The cameras cut to the crowd’s reaction. The Golf Talk Canada TV and radio announcers make a celebrity sighting in the gallery. “Right behind him [Tiger]. Who’s that? Look, Michael Phelps, wearing that white visor. Another great.”

The twenty-three-time Olympic gold medalist is attending his first Masters to cheer Tiger on. His prime spot in the gallery? That, he tells NBC’s OlympicTalk, is courtesy of “a couple of nice people who had gotten to the gate early, at 3:30 a.m.,” and who invited him to join them at the 16th.

“I did not notice Michael was back there,” Tiger admits. “I was locked into what I was doing.” The crowd behind him is on their feet, cheering in anticipation.

“Come on! Come on!” Tiger urges the ball, waiting to see where it will come to rest on the green.

“Of course it’s exciting back there on the tee to watch the people stand up. Now you know it has a chance to go in, which is fun,” says caddie Joe LaCava. But Tiger’s “got to keep his emotions in check. That’s probably as calm as I’ve ever seen him on a golf course. Not that I’ve ever seen him antsy. But there was certainly a calmness and a confidence that he was going to get this thing done.”

The ball rolls about a foot past the hole. Not an ace, but close enough for an easy tap-in.

Tiger steps to 17 with a two-shot lead.

I’ve been in this position before, he remembers, flashing back to the 2005 Masters, when he went bogey, bogey to lose his lead over DiMarco. Let’s go ahead and pipe this ball right down the middle. Hit a little flat squeezer out there, he tells himself.

He smokes it for par and keeps his two-shot lead.

“That was the best shot of the tournament,” says LaCava.

After the defending U.S. Open and PGA Championship winner, Brooks Koepka, misses his birdie opportunity on 18, the tournament’s left wide open for Tiger.

He’s still got the lead but can’t let himself relax until the very end, even when he’s walking up to the green and seeing his family and friends gathered on 18. “I started to get a little bit emotional and I had to rein it back in and say, ‘Hey, it’s not quite over yet. I’ve had this putt before. Let’s go ahead and make this putt.’”

He bogeys the hole, but it’s still enough for him to win by a single stroke.

The typically sedate Augusta crowd of ten thousand erupts in chants of “Ti-ger! Ti-ger!” as a euphoric Tiger raises his arms in triumph. “WOOOOOOO!!!

“We did it!” Tiger tells his caddie—“That meant everything to me,” says LaCava—then strides over to tightly embrace his family, Charlie running to meet him first.

It’s a full-circle moment. Earl is absent but deeply felt in the family celebration on the 18th green.

“I never thought we’d see anything that could rival the hug with his father in 1997, but we just did,” Jim Nantz says from the CBS broadcast booth. “That hug with his children. If that doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, and you’re a parent… you’re not human.”

“That will be the greatest scene in golf, forever,” says three-time Masters winner Nick Faldo, who helped Tiger into his first Green Jacket, in 1997. “We will never see anything as exhilarating as that.”

A line of past Masters champions, wearing their own Green Jackets, comes out to congratulate Tiger. After Tiger signs his scorecard, Patrick Reed, the 2018 defending champion, helps Tiger slip into his own Green Jacket. “To put the jacket on him was unbelievable,” says Reed. “The only thing I could think of when I did that was to not mess it up. I reminded myself to make sure I put the jacket on him correctly. And we got that job done. But it was a special moment.”

Forty-three-year-old Tiger becomes the oldest Masters winner since forty-six-year-old Jack Nicklaus won his record sixth Green Jacket, in 1986. Nicklaus, who accurately made his final-round prediction from the Bahamas, tweets his congratulations: A big ‘well done’ from me to Tiger. I am so happy for him and for the game of golf. This is just fantastic!!!

In his post-tournament interview with CBS, Tiger, the now five-time Masters champion, says, “I’m really at a loss for words. This would be up there. It was one of the hardest I’ve ever had to win just because of what has transpired the last couple of years, trying to come back and play.

“You couldn’t have had more drama than we all had out there. And now I know why I’m balding,” he says. “This stuff is hard.” On a more serious note, he’s most grateful for his children’s love and support. He’s especially proud of showing eleven-year-old Sam and ten-year-old Charlie that he’s more than “just Dad”—“Daddy has won golf tournaments, and he’s not the YouTube guy,” the 2019 Masters champion says. “I can still do it.”

“This game was taken away from me for a few years there,” Tiger says. “Now I’m able to play golf again, and do it at an elite level again, which is something I’m just very blessed to be able to have that opportunity again.”

“It means the world to me” to be able to share this victory with his children, Tiger says. “They were there at the British Open last year when I had the lead on that back nine and made a few mistakes and cost myself a chance to win the Open title,” he adds. “I wasn’t going to let that happen to them twice.”

“So to have them experience what it feels like to be part of a major championship and watch their dad fail and not get it done, and now to be a part of it when I did get it done, I think it’s two memories that they will never forget,” he says. “They know how I felt and what it felt like when I lost at Carnoustie. To have the complete flip with them in less than a year, it was very fresh in their minds.”

“For them to see it, feel it, and feel the electricity of the crowd—and for me to see Charlie, there as the first one… it gives me chills.”

“Just to have them there and then now to have them see their Pops win, just like my Pops saw me win here, it’s pretty special.”

En route home to Florida, Tiger’s delighted to see his kids arguing over which one of them gets to wear his jacket. “Just watching them fight over the green jacket on the airplane was pretty funny,” Tiger says. “‘I want to wear it; no, I want to wear it.’ That’s something I certainly will never forget.”