A hubbub arose from inside the house in Augusta on that Sunday night in April 30 years ago. You could see a party was going on by looking in through the windows. As music played, people bustled to and fro, glasses in hands, smiles on their faces.
Outside, though, a man sat in his car, a picture of gloom as he stared out of the window. He sighed a lot and frowned. From time to time he lowered his head on to the steering wheel as if he could bear the weight of it no longer. Something was going on in his mind that he didn’t understand. He looked as discontented as those inside the house were contented.
That man was Spain’s José María Olazábal, who had just won the Masters for the first time. A few hours earlier, as the shadows lengthened, Germany’s Bernhard Langer had slipped the winner’s green jacket over Olazábal’s shoulders, a subtle reminder that European golfers had won eight of the previous 14 Masters. Later, Olazábal would attend a dinner in the clubhouse and be toasted by the members.
It should have been one of his proudest moments. He was 28 years of age and had become the second Spaniard to win the tournament, after Severiano Ballesteros, his hero and countryman. He had read and heard of the success of Ballesteros when growing up and, in time, when he was compared with Ballesteros, he would politely shake his head and say: “No, I am not a second Severiano. I am the first José María.”
"After I had got home, I sat in the car for five or 10 minutes, thinking ‘What’s wrong? It shouldn’t be like this.’ ... I feel no excitement. I don’t feel any joy. I feel flat."
José María Olazábal
Asked recently to cast his mind back to those momentous days in 1994, Olazábal, who will be making his 35th Masters start this week, said: “That week, I played some of the best golf of my life. Conditions were really hard, the weather was warm and the greens were very, very firm – so firm, in fact, the ball would not make a mark on the green. But you know my strength has always been my iron play and my short game.”
Colin Montgomerie knew just how good Olazábal’s short game was. In 1984, he had lost the final of the Amateur Championship to the Spaniard who was then 18 and had chipped and putted like a wizard. In 1985, Olazábal won the British Youths title with another magical display of short game skills. He had 18 birdies in his last 46 holes, 10 times getting up and down in two strokes from off a green.
The difficult conditions in the 1994 Masters wrought havoc for three previous winners from Europe. England’s Nick Faldo – the champion in 1989 and 1990 who would win a third green jacket in 1996 – described the conditions as “by far the toughest I’ve ever known.” Scotland’s Sandy Lyle, the 1988 champion, said: “I’m bruised and battered.” Wales’ Ian Woosnam, who had won in 1991, said: “Now I’ve got to go and learn how to score again.”
After his disappointing 2-over-par 74 in the first round, Olazábal hit his stride in the second. His 67 was the best of the 26 rounds he had played at Augusta to that date, and he was the first player that year not to have a bogey or worse. It moved him level with Ernie Els, Tom Watson, Hale Irwin and Tom Kite on 141, two strokes behind leader Larry Mize and one behind Dan Forsman, Greg Norman and Tom Lehman, who was making only his second appearance in the Masters. The cut fell at 5-over 149 as 51 men survived to play at the weekend.
Lehman and Olazábal shot 69 on the Saturday, the low rounds of the day, to leave them first and second. They would be the last pairing on Sunday. Mize, the 18- and 36-hole leader, fell back to third with a level-par 72 in the third round.
Olazábal arrived at his locker for the fourth round to find two notes waiting for him. One was from Sam Torrance, the Scottish pro who was a friend, wishing him luck. The other was from Ballesteros which read: “Be patient. You know what you have to do. You are the best player in the world.”
“Be patient. You know what you have to do. You are the best player in the world.”
NOTE FROM SEVE BALLESTEROS
He read Ballesteros’ words, put on his golf shoes and slowly left the locker room to join Sergio Gomez, his manager and friend. The two sat on a bench outside the clubhouse away from prying eyes and for nearly an hour they hardly spoke. Each was deep in his own thoughts. “He had woken at 9:15 and tried to go back to sleep, but it was hard,” Gomez said later. “He was OK. He was not shaking [nervous]. He knows he has to play well. He knows he has to be lucky.”
Olazábal was not lucky; he was skilful and resolute. He tied Lehman with a birdie at the long eighth, chipped and putted to save his par and gain the solo lead on the devilish 12th, and holed a 40-foot putt for an eagle on the 15th, his second of the tournament. Though he three-putted the 17th, only his second bogey to that point, he held a one-stroke lead over Lehman on the 18th tee.
Three years earlier, he had stood on this tee needing a par-4 to tie, but he took 5. Not so this time. A safe drive was followed by a second that bounded to the left of the flag from where he chipped to 6 feet and holed for victory.
In his 72 holes, Olazábal had taken 30 single putts, chipped in twice and got down in two strokes from bunkers six times out of six. He had played the golf of his life for three rounds, even if his first round had been so bad that he refused to go to the practice ground and instead went home to his house and sulked.
At dinner in the clubhouse on Sunday night, he told the Augusta National members why he had won. “I did not have much breakfast nor lunch. I think the reason I won was to make sure I had a good dinner,” he said, fingering his green jacket, his face polished by the Georgia sun.
The members laughed at that joke, but Olazábal was not smiling. The despair that later would compel him to stay in his car while his housemates and friends partied inside their house already had begun to set in.
“I kept thinking to myself how flat I was,” he said later. “After I had got home, I sat in the car for five or 10 minutes, thinking ‘What’s wrong? It shouldn’t be like this.’
“Then Sergio [Gomez] noticed me in my car and came out to talk to me. Opening the door of the car, he said: ‘What is the matter? What the hell is going on?’
“I said, ‘Sergio, I feel no excitement. I don’t feel any joy. I feel flat.’
“He said, ‘Are you mad? Are you an [expletive deleted] idiot? You have just won the Masters. This is what you have dreamed of for years.’
“We talked for five or 10 minutes perhaps before, reluctantly, I walked inside the house with him. Even then, I found it hard to join in the celebrations. It didn’t seem right to me. It was as if I had lost the Masters, not won it. I should have been elated, but I wasn’t. Where I had expected joy, there was emptiness.
“It wasn’t until one night the following week at Hilton Head that it began to hit me. Then when I got home to Spain, I watched it all on television. There, in the peace and quiet of my own home, I realised what I had done. Then I gained some internal peace. I had done what everybody had been telling me I had done. I had won the Masters.”
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: Spain’s José María Olazábal accepts the green jacket from 1993 champion Bernhard Langer of Germany.
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