After three years at Georgia Tech, Mize quit college to turn pro and join the Tour, something he had wanted to do since the age of 10. He won his first tournament, the Danny Thomas-Memphis Classic, in 1983, his second year on the Tour, and has improved each year. Last year he came close to winning three times, including the Kemper Open, where Norman caught him and then beat him on the sixth playoff hole.
Of his second win as a professional, Mize said, "I picked a doozy." Of his childhood at Augusta National's back door, he said, "Peeking through the fence is about as close as I got." Of leaving college without a degree, he said, "I was a stupid little kid." And finally, when asked if he was trying to hole his now historic chip shot or merely trying to get it close, he said, "Both.... But when you're playing somebody like Greg Norman, you can't be trying to make pars."
Mize, it seems, is the boy next door who knows when to go for the jugular.
Nicklaus's spectacular victory last April was a tough act to follow, but the 1987 Masters turned out to be a worthy successor, producing the 16th different winner in as many major championships. As Robert Trent Jones Jr. the golf course architect, said after watching the finish, "You know, you just can't get cynical about the Masters."
As the tournament began, it appeared as if the greens might end up winning. Dry weather, warm, sunny days and the late-afternoon wind contributed to the treacherous condition of the putting surfaces. In an effort to bring the speed of the greens back to what it was 20 years ago, Augusta National had switched from Bermuda to bent grass in 1980. But it wasn't until this year that the greens had the right combination of firmness and hardness, thanks in no small part to the magic of new greens superintendent Paul Latshaw. His previous job was at Oakmont, near Pittsburgh, a course with notoriously fast greens.
On Thursday players were stumbling in off the course hollow-eyed, like survivors of a natural disaster. John Cook's three-under-par 69 was the low score of the day, due, no doubt, to the fact that he played early, before the wind came up and dried the greens even more. Only 13 of the 85 players in the field shot par or better, including Mize at 70.
The greens were hand-watered following Thursday's round — "just enough to keep (the grass) from dying," said an official — and scoring improved somewhat. Maltbie shot a 66 for the low round on Friday, and Norman matched that on Saturday. By Sunday, however, continued dry weather and gusting winds had firmed the greens almost to the ferocity of the first day. So it was more than coincidence that the leaders included the game's best putters — Crenshaw, Norman and Ballesteros.
Even when Ballesteros doesn't win, he is a memorable presence. On Friday, for instance, he played the par-5 8th hole as it had probably never been played. The 8th is a 535-yard monster that runs up a long, steep hill before dog-legging left to a green surrounded by enormous mounds. To the left, coming the opposite direction along the same steep hill, is the fairway of the par-5 2nd hole. That day Ballesteros pulled his drive through the trees that separate the two fairways, the ball ending up on the 2nd fairway. Instead of trying to beat his way back through the woods to the 8th fairway, Ballesteros whacked a four-iron 170 yards farther up the 2nd fairway to a position separated from the 8th green by 175 yards, a healthy stand of Georgia pines and a massive scoreboard. From there his towering five-iron shot over trees and scoreboard left him a few feet off the putting surface and 30 feet or so from the pin. "It was almost a good shot," he said, amused at his own presumption.
