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There, in the shadows, we spy the gloomy outlines of Greg Norman, communing with the sullen specter of Ed Sneed. Woe is Chris DiMarco, slinking through the pines as an eerie ectoplasm. In the fairway of the par-5 known as "Firethorn," Chip Beck's dreary doppelganger brandishes a 4-wood, dispatching phantom shots into the mist. The forlorn wraith of Len Mattiace holds his face in his hands, a ghostly reminder of a win that almost was.
Augusta likes to trumpet the achievements of its heroes. But for all the gushing tributes trotted out each April, the hallowed history of the Masters could be retold as a haunting, through the eyes of apparitions who clutched the green jacket, only to have it slip through their grasp — and then watched their games slip away.
OK, so maybe it's not a curse (or ... is it?). But tell that to those who taste immortality, only to become a phantasm in FootJoys. A tingle runs up our spine as we summon, through a medium (the telephone, that is) Len Mattiace.
Five years ago, Mattiace shot a Sunday 65 to surge into a playoff with Mike Weir, who had made a testy 4-foot putt on the 72nd hole. On the first extra hole, Mattiace split the fairway. Then hooded an iron. Then chipped. Then putted. And putted. And putted. Double-bogey.
Weir wept with joy. Mattiace simply wept. His family embraced him around the 10th green. "Second is best," his daughters reassured him.
"First is worst." But worst was to come. That winter, on a ski trip to Colorado, Mattiace hurt his knee. The next spring, on a return visit to Augusta, he missed the cut. In the summer of 2007, trying to right himself from a long downward spiral that included 10 missed cuts in 10 tries, he bowed out of Q-School in the second stage.
"Dark moments?" says Mattiace, 40, of the days and weeks following his 2003 near miss. "I wouldn't say dark. There are times when I think, 'What if Weir had missed that putt?' I think about it every April. But I'll be back on Tour. And I'll be back at the Masters."
You really want to believe him. Mattiace has two Tour wins and $6.7 million in career winnings to his credit, yet his best post-'03 finish is a tie for 12th. And dark fates have befallen men like him before.
Golf measures winning margins by the numbers. Only at Augusta does a single stroke mark such a great divide. On one side: lifetime membership, sporting immortality. And on the other: enshrinement in an afterworld of what might have been.
Take poor Ed Sneed. A four-time Tour winner and former Ryder Cupper, Sneed enjoyed a lengthy, respectable career. But he made his reputation with a meltdown at the 1979 Masters that liquefied a five-stroke Sunday lead.
Sneed's fall from near grace included a bogey-bogey-bogey finish in which bad luck and balky putting conspired against him. He lipped out twice on the final two holes. On 18, his six-footer for the win froze on the edge, staring into the cup while Sneed cupped his head and stared into oblivion.
He lost in a playoff to Fuzzy Zoeller. His consolation? A lone victory three years later at the Michelob- Houston Open. He never again seriously threatened at a major.
Sneed's final-round collapse was the largest recorded at Augusta until 1996, when Greg Norman committed harakiri before an audience of millions, bleeding away a six-shot Sunday lead to Nick Faldo. He had his chance three years later, but never really gave eventual champion Jose Maria Olazabal a scare. Augusta transformed Norman into a tragic figure (name another two-time major-winner and multimillionaire that you've pitied), just as it transformed others into afterthoughts.
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