It took one last practice round to remind the old man why it was time to go. He banked a tee shot off a tree — was that tree always there? — and since nobody was keeping score, anyway, then pulled another ball out of the bag and tried it again.
This one sailed to the right right of the fairway toward backpedaling fans.
“I’ve got three different drivers this week. None of them feel real good,” Ben Crenshaw said.
He didn’t seem worried, though. This week is more like a final walk on a beach for Crenshaw than it is a final Masters. He wants to see it, hear it, feel it, every moment.
It was the last practice round before Crenshaw’s last and 44th Masters. He posed for pictures, signed autographs, interacted with grandpas and grandsons.
He created a three-generation nirvana for fans, playing and goofing on Augusta National’s back nine with fellow Texan Jordan Spieth and fellow multi-Masters champion Tiger Woods.
“We had the best time,” he said later. “I pulled in and Tiger just had gotten his stuff out and he said, ‘Who do you have today?’ I said, ‘I’ve got Jordan on the back nine at 10. Please come on with us. That’d be just wonderful.’ And it was.”
Even when Crenshaw missed a shot Wednesday, like his second attempt off the tee at 17, he turned it into a special memory for somebody. He ventured into the gallery to find his ball, picked up and smiled at a young boy who stood there quietly while he held his hat out.
Crenshaw dropped the ball in the hat.
Spencer Ford, the 8-year-old, was asked: Do you know who that was?
“No.”
I told him the golfer’s name was Ben Crenshaw and he had won the Masters twice, but Spencer didn’t say anything. He seemed to be just waiting for somebody else to give him something.
Is there anybody he would like to meet?
“Michael Jordan.”
His father, Chris, laughed. The two had traveled from Minneapolis after winning the lottery for practice-round tickets.
“He actually made his first par recently,” Chris said. “We’ve got the ball in a special box on a shelf. Maybe we can get another box for this.”
There is no shortage of story lines this week. Woods, the game’s most-watched 111th-ranked player in history, returns from a nine-week layoff, during which he hopes to have healed mind, body and game. Rory McIlroy, the world’s No. 1, has won four majors, but is seeking his first green jacket. Spieth, who led by two shots on Sunday last year and was on the verge of being the Masters’ youngest champion before finishing second, is expected to be leaderboard staple again. And there’s always Bubba.
But let’s spend a moment with Crenshaw. His Masters titles in 1984 and 1995 supplied punctuation to his career and created an emotional attachment to Augusta and automatic galleries, oblivious 8-year-olds notwithstanding.
But it’s time. It’s really past time.
“This course is so long for me — I probably should’ve stepped down a few years ago,” he said.
Since his last green jacket 20 years ago, Crenshaw has missed the cut 16 of 19 times, including the past seven. His past nine rounds: 83, 77, 78, 78, 77, 76, 83, 80, 84, 83, 85. The course has been lengthened twice since 2002, and the evil groundskeepers have narrowed fairways by adding obstacles — like trees.
Asked if making the cut would complete this dream week for him, Crenshaw laughed.
“I’d have to have a lot of good fortune for that to happen,” he said.
“This place has changed so much. It’s tighter off tees. More trees. I told Jordan there was cut grass everywhere, which made Augusta one of kind. Those were the days when you could really curve the ball. Can’t curve it anymore.”
Damn you, golf gods.
Crenshaw gave us one of golf’s special moments in 1995. He had been struggling with his game. He was struggling emotionally when Harvey Penick, the long-time coach at Texas and to pros, including Crenshaw, died a week before the Masters.
Crenshaw traveled to Austin, Texas, for the funeral on Tuesday. He was a pall bearer. Then he flew to Augusta the next morning, the day before the first round of the Masters. But he played inspired golf that weekend. He birdied Nos. 16 and 17 on Sunday’s back nine and defeated Davis Love III by one stroke. His 72-hole score of 14-under 274 was the fourth best in tournament history.
“It is, and it will always be, a dear memory to (his wife) Julie and I and all of us who went through it,” Crenshaw said. “Harvey was like a second father, and a wonderful teacher and a great person. To have played well that week is beyond my comprehension.”
There was symmetry to the Wednesday’s practice threesome. Golf’s future star (Spieth). The sport’s dominant personality trying to regain his form (Woods). And the exiting Longhorn, who at 63 years old joked, “I’m not sure I have too many rounds left in me.”
At least two.
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