As I was sitting on the 12th hole of Augusta National Golf Club last weekend watching the world's greatest golfers get swallowed alive by one of the toughest holes on planet earth, I had time to reflect. Although Augusta was everything a sports and golf fan can dream of, and the prestige of the tournament is top-notch, something was missing.
That something was not Jordan Spieth winning his second green jacket, and it wasn't his epic meltdown that happened right before my eyes. That something was the epic Masters-winning moment we get almost every year.
As a golf fan, my very first golf memory (and still my favorite today) is Tiger Woods chipping in Sunday on the 16th hole in 2005. I still to this day remember exactly where I was and who I was with when Tiger Woods made that shot to win the Masters. It was the shot that put Tiger Woods at the peak of his career. It was a shot that made even the golf greats wonder if he would become the greatest golfer of all time. But most importantly, it was a shot unforgettable for the fans, Tiger Woods and Nike. It seemed as if the ball had paused right before going in the hole just to show you the Nike swoosh and give you the tagline "Just do it."
After his cheating scandal in 2009, we can no longer count on Tiger to make the magic happen. Since, he has pulled out of tournaments before getting cut, looked agitated at every tournament, fired his long-time caddy and long story short is not the golfer he was when I was a kid.
Where was a moment like Bubba Watson's 40-yard hook on the second playoff hole in 2012 to help him win the Masters? The story behind Bubba Watson was incredible, a self-taught golfer with a unconventional family life. His loss at the Masters previously in 2010 seemed to be the driving force in one of the other great moments in the tournament's history. See how he did it here:
There wasn't a moment like Adam Scott's putt across the entire green in the pouring rain on the last hole of the tournament. A putt that earned him his only major championship to date and put an Aussie back in a green jacket.
Nothing rivaled Phil Mickelson's shot from behind the tree on the 13th that all but closed out the Masters tournament for him. One of the more spectacular shots the tournament has ever seen and quote "the greatest shot of his life!"
So when I re-visit my missing feeling at Augusta National this last weekend I realize that it wasn't the absence of a golfer like Tiger Woods. It was the absence of a winning Masters moment.
The Masters and drama go hand-in-hand proven by the unpredictability it showed this year. The fans of golf want to see a player make the shots to win the tournament not lose it, and Jordan Spieth's quadruple bogey at 12 was painful to watch. However, the game of golf is in great hands with Spieth as the number-one player in the world, and his show of sportsmanship after the tournament concluded as admirable as any. Let's all hope that he can find a way to redeem himself and slip on another green jacket in the near future.
