The ball landed halfway up the bank, eight feet from the front of the green, and started to roll back, just as every ball before it had done. Just as first-round leader Lanny Wadkins's ball had done on Saturday. That one rolled back into the water the way all of them had. making Wadkins drop and hit another one into the drink, making Wadkins drop and hit another one, which finally reached the green, making Wadkins finish with an 8, making Wadkins throw the damn ball in the pond to join its treasonous brethren. Wadkins does not have to take that sort of thing from golf balls.
Anyway, as Couples's ball rolled toward its certain bath, perhaps it saw something. Another Maxfli sat in the water not six inches from the bank. Perhaps Couples's ball thought of its future and did not want to end up in a barrel of lake balls in some pro shop, on sale three for a dollar. If the ball had rolled in, Couples would most likely have made a double bogey 5, and his three-shot lead would have been cut to one. Instead, the ball inexplicably stopped about a foot from doom.
When a relieved Couples stepped up to it — gingerly — he hit a simple pitch to within gimme range. This day was Couples's. He made his par.
From there it was a walk in the park — Central Park maybe. He sprayed his tee shots, birdied neither of the par 5s (numbers 13 and 15) and made only one more birdie (on 14) down the homestretch. Parry, though, was nothing to worry about. He unraveled like a cheap sweater. After three-putting three times in a row to finish with a 78, Parry blamed part of his troubles on devilish types in the crowd. "On the third hole," he said, "I heard somebody coughing on my backswing." Hey, Deborah, next time take a Luden's.
Only one man stood in Couples's way now, the very man who had tutored him over the past two years, the man who had taught him that "when you have a lead, get more of a lead," the man who had steeled Couples's eye and hardened his heart during a triumphant Ryder Cup pairing — Floyd. Floyd got to within a shot of the lead with a birdie at number 15, but Couples replied with that birdie on number 14. Only when Couples's three-wood on 18 caught a fairway bunker was there the slightest hint of a playoff, but the unrushable Couples swept a seven-iron cleanly out and onto the green.
Happiness is needing only to three-putt to win the Masters. Couples lagged a 25-footer 24 feet, 10 inches. Tap. He earned $270,000, putting himself over $1 million in prize money for the year. And it wasn't even tax day yet.
Couples is now the most dominant phenom since Johnny Miller in the early 1970s, and the proof was evident at Augusta. Watson once said great players "learn that they don't need to play their best golf to win. They only need to shoot the lowest score." That was Couples's week: His floor was the field's ceiling.
In the Butler Cabin, which is near the 10th hole, Nantz waited to conduct the interview of his life. Back in the dorm, he and Couples had lain awake plotting their glories. "Someday," Nantz said, "you'll win the green jacket, and I'll be there to announce it."
So when the moment came — after Couples had shot his badge number on Sunday to finish with a 13-under-par 275 — Nantz said, "I'd like to be the first to congratulate you as the 1992 Masters champion." They both cried a little.
Outside, Deborah was crying too. "Dang," she said. "I picked Davis Love."
