Tom Weiskopf will see Nicklaus winning this Masters as "a fat five-iron" fails to carry the embankment at the 11th green and plunges into the blue pond. He rescues a bogey with a marvelous wedge shot, but the damage has been done. He will also see Jack whipping him again as he bogeys the 16th hole — as he had bogeyed it to lose a year ago — with a sad iron off the tee and a deplorable chip shot. And lastly, after Miller had missed, he will watch an eight-foot birdie putt on the final green hold above the cup when it seemed it had to go slightly left, drop and force a playoff.
"I can't believe I lost this tournament," Weiskopf said. "The luck balances out. It comes down to the last hole and you hit a good drive, a good approach shot and good putt and it stays out. All I know is, one of these days the putt is going in and I'll win a Masters."
If Nicklaus won the day with his own heroics, he did it with one long iron shot at the 15th hole and with a birdie putt at the 16th that traveled 40 wondrous feet into the hole and made Nicklaus and his caddie, Willie Peterson, resemble Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
When Nicklaus reached his drive in the 15th fairway he trailed Weiskopf by one stroke and he knew he had to have a birdie at the very least. The shot was a 240-yard one-iron over the water on this par-5 that has decided so many Masters. You knew Jack liked it the instant he took the cut at it and indeed he later called it the best pressure shot of his life. For the entire distance the ball was on the flag, a double eagle without knickers and the thumb off the shaft. Not really a deuce, of course, but one heck of a golf shot when he had to have it. It gave him an easy two-putt birdie from roughly 15 feet, and sent him glint-eyed toward the 16th. He liked the iron on the 16th but it fell short, and now he faced one of those long putts he hadn't made in a couple of days. It was right on line and the speed looked perfect. One last curl to the left, and down it went and Jack leaped and started running to his right. The ensuing roar alone might have destroyed any other competitors but Miller and Weiskopf.
The Masters always encompasses daily dramas, large and small, as well as numerous human-interest episodes. This year one of them featured Lee Elder, the first black man to win an invitation.
Elder's arrival in Augusta on Monday afternoon from Greensboro was anxiously awaited by a thirsty press. Lee came in a pleasant mood but uttered a few "no comments" about his feelings and said he would withhold all of his innermost thoughts until an official press conference on Tuesday. The conference was staged, but it was matched in dullness only by a conversation about the state of health of the wistaria vine on the big oak outside the main clubhouse door.
Elder began the tournament on Thursday with a par four and he birdied the 2nd hole, but he played rather routinely from there on and finished up with a two-over 74 that he claimed to be happy with. There were no incidents, other than a few rednecks on the bank of the 16th green whooping and applauding when he missed a short putt. People were polite and gave him a generous hand as he trudged up and down the hills.
