Trick or Treat. How scary! The Masters of the European Universe have given us until Hallowe’en to decide whether we want to be members of their Club or not. Whether to be In or Out, or half in or partly out. For a nation that loves cricket how can we be so indecisive! I have quite a lot of German blood flowing through my veins and a small amount of French blood, but today I am feeling distinctly Anglo Saxon. I woke up this morning trying to remember how many times in my life I had made a complete fool of myself. I lost count after one hundred, but I’m disappointed that at my age I continue to make rookie errors. Still, life goes on and it’s time to embrace the future. I’m talking at both a personal and national level. As a country, the future is bleak if we’re still talking about Brexit in six months or a year’s time. I hate to say it, but I do now think that the only solution is a second referendum and may it happen quickly.
M is an important letter this morning. Merkel, Macron and May. Masters, McIlroy and Magnolia Lane. The politicians can take a back seat for now. For the next four days it’s all about Augusta National and who will don the revered and much treasured Green Jacket on Sunday Evening. There are two ways you can gain one of these particular sartorial items and neither is easy. The first is by being someone so important or unbelievably wealthy, or both, that the select few who are already members of one of the world’s most exclusive clubs invite you to join them behind the high walls and locked gates of Bobby Jones’s creation just off the dismally ugly Washington Road in Augusta. That’s the easier way. Much harder is to play in The Masters (pronounced like a bleating sheep, not like a teacher in a British Public School) and emerge triumphant after four days of mind-bending torture and unimaginable pressure. Only four Britons in history have achieved this remarkable feat, albeit Sir Nick Faldo did it three times. It’s a fair bet that Rory McIlroy will be on his knee in front of HM before Hallowe’en if he sinks the winning putt this week to complete a career Grand Slam of the Majors and that will very definitely be a treat without any trickery. Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods; the five men who have won all four of golf’s major championships at least once. In Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods’ case they have done it three times. But there is a long list of extremely talented champions who don’t own a green jacket. Names such as Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Nick Price, Ernie Els and Greg Norman all spring immediately to mind, to name but a few. Great champions all, who nonetheless aren’t permitted into that Locker Room on the first floor of the beautifully understated Augusta National Clubhouse that is reserved exclusively for Masters’ Champions. I have been lucky enough to stick my head around the door, but I never dared put a foot over the threshold. Even had I been invited in, it just wouldn’t have been right. It’s a privilege you have to earn. The question on every golf fan’s lips this morning is who will be entitled to hang his shiny new jacket in there. Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson played together in the fun par 3 competition yesterday. Interviewed on Sky TV all three thought that McIlroy would banish his Augusta demons and reign supreme. Of course it might not be a new boy. It could be a repeat winner like Jordan Spieth or Bubba Watson or the defending champion Patrick Reed. So often the Masters has thrown up a surprise winner. When Jose Maria Olazabal won for the second time he went there in hopeless form apparently without a chance. Ben Crenshaw won having just attended the funeral of his long time coach and mentor Harvey Penick. He hadn’t even been on his mother’s lips. There’s just something about that unique place that encourages extraordinary deeds, both positive and negative. The list of men who have been scarred for life after stumbling and falling with victory in sight is legion. Greg Norman’s capitulation to Nick Faldo in 1996 is perhaps the most famous of all. With a six shot lead, Norman shot a final round 76 to Faldo’s 67. I interviewed him in the immediate aftermath for BBC Radio and he was the most gracious and gentlemanly loser it’s possible to imagine, but inside he was churning like the fires of hell. For a man who has achieved so much in the game and in life it must be an arrow that pierces his heart almost daily and certainly in early April every year.
Rory McIlroy is in great form and has the game, but he’s blown a four shot lead in the final round before and he has an enormous mental hurdle to overcome. Jack Nicklaus said in a post Masters press conference just after Tiger Woods had won his first Green Jacket way back in 1997 that he expected the American prodigy to win more times than Arnold Palmer and himself combined. They won ten and Woods only has four, (only!) so that’s one prediction that won’t come true, but what a story it would be if Tiger did it again. He’s made a fool of himself plenty of times in his fabled career, but there’d be no jester’s hat to go with the jacket if he makes it five and his first since 2005.
Whoever it is won’t be the Master of the Universe, but they’ll probably feel like it!
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