Meltdown! Nightmare! Humiliation! The instant global reaction to the 50 seconds of golf hell endured by Ernie Els on the first hole of the Masters reminded us once again that golf is a game best played when nobody else is watching.
Because beneath all of its etiquette and decorum and violently colourful clothing and its love of rules and scorecards and politeness and everything just-so, there is a sadistic streak at the heart of golf which few sports can emulate.
Once again, the genteel game showed its teeth and in a matter of seconds it viciously chewed up a lifetime of impeccable professionalism and frequent brilliance on the part of Els.
Anyone could have filled in a thought-bubble above the big South African’s head as everything he understood and took for granted about the game deserted him for those few seconds.
Els is in the midst of a crisis with his putting. But still. The first putt was just one of those very, very bad glitches that visit every so often: Els’s misfortune was that it happened to occur on his first green on the first day of the most hyped golf tournament of the year.
He steadied himself – without bothering to square his feet and watched in disbelief as the ball again rolled past the hole by a good three feet. Els’s body language – holding his hands out in a what-can-you-do gesture – made it clear that he had suddenly been pitched into a dimension that he couldn’t comprehend.
Something out of his control was at work; that the line on the green wasn’t true or the ball was faulty. When he missed the fourth putt by a few inches and then missed his casual, one-handed tap-in, he repeated the gesture. As if to say: there is nothing I can do about this.
He was in the midst of a kind of brain freeze. Everything he trusted about his hand-eye coordination and his feel for the golf club and his instinctive touch: it all just turned to mush.
After Greg Norman went through his immortal final day collapse in 1996, he said that eventually, "it was like my mind left my body and my body left my mind".
Norman’s trouble was such a transfixing event because it grew and grew over hours. A television audience around the world watched on in appalled fascination as small mistakes led to monumental errors and what had started out as a coronation round turned into a pitiless examination of mental strength and pressure and what can happen when a superstar of sport is suddenly stripped of the certainty and conviction that helped him to attain that level of excellence.
Norman would have chosen anyone other than Faldo as his nearest challenger: anyone other than a steely, merciless grafter who simply became steadier as the Australian began to crack. Faldo didn’t have to do anything magical: he just shot a final-round 71, enough to see him home as Norman, freefalling into golf’s black hole, finished with a scarifying 78.
Permanent symbol
The last thing any elite sports person wants is what the world bestowed on Norman: pity. That and the knowledge that what happened to him in Augusta would become a permanent symbol of what it is to truly lose your coordinates on golf’s most famous course.
Norman was a great, great golfer; maybe an erratic streak in his temperament prevented him from winning more than two Majors but he was the game's incandescent star in the era directly preceding the emergence of Tiger Woods.
He was a big-personality Aussie with a lifestyle straight out of James Bond, a never-ending supply of sun-block and a fondness for surfing. He made it seem as if elite golf was just something he packed into a generally action-packed summer season. He was number one in the world for over 300 weeks but can never erase that one shocking round of golf from the game's history.
Did the Great White Shark flash across the mind of Ernie Els when he bent down to retrieve that hateful golf ball? Was his mind too scrambled to absorb the fact that he had instantly become part of the small band of golfers who have been unforgettably humbled by their sport.
When Rory McIlroy set out for his final round of the 2011 Masters in Augusta, he held a four-shot lead but finished outside the top 10, after shooting an 80. The disintegration of his game over the back nine was painful to watch. But McIlroy was lucky in two ways: Norman had been there before him. And McIlroy was only 21: he was starting out.
Four years and as many Majors later, McIlroy is just a Masters title away from joining the rare band of five golfers to have claimed all four Major titles. A week after Norman’s collapse, the Australian said that he was certain that he would win the Masters. “I just know I will,” he said.
Four prizes
He never did. But his three second-place finishes to go with two second places in the PGA and the US Open stand as proof that, along with the two British Open championships, he burned brilliantly enough to have also claimed all four prizes at least once.
Instead, he has to be content with two Majors and his contribution to the cruelty at the heart of golf. When they embraced at the 18th hole that day – Norman a terrible grey under his outdoorsy lustre and kind of shrunken – Faldo said to him: “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
He meant the press waiting in the media tent with the list of questions. Faldo admitted that if he had endured what Norman had, he would have stayed for the obligatory five minutes and fled. But Norman stuck around for a good 40 minutes, riffing on what was the worst day of his golf life. Because he had nothing to lose by then: the worst had happened.
What was remarkable about Els’s loss of composure and bearings on Thursday was it didn’t occur on the last day or with his name shining high on the leaderboard. He was just setting out; fresh, optimistic, ready to go. After that six-putt on the green, he still had 17 holes of golf to play in front of huge crowds and all eyes on him.
He would have known that the extent of his error would have travelled around the world in real time before he’d even teed up at the second hole. Nine shots to complete the first hole: no golfer had ever suffered that in the history of the Masters.
There was a chance that he could have fallen apart in the following holes; that his mind would have been stuck back on that first green trying to figure out what had just happened to him. And yet.
After the worst minute of his golf life, Els somehow found the poise and courage to play the remaining 17 holes in just three over par to finish the day with 80. It might have been the bravest round of golf he has ever played. But nobody’s going to remember that.
