Miracle at Augusta Read Online Free Page A

thirty-two years, I may have his full attention.
    There is another reason Johnny A and I are taking our sweet time / stalling, and it has nothing to do with the enormous consequences or the fact that there is enough mental baggage between Peters and me to fill an airport carousel. The putt is dead straight. As long and hard as Johnny and I stare at it, we can’t see any break, and the last thing a pro golfer wants to see when he squats behind a putt is nothing.
Nothing
is spooky.
Nothing
messes with your head.
    Canvass a hundred guys out here, ninety-nine will agree. On a crucial putt of this length, they’d rather see two inches either way than nothing at all. A dead-straight putt is like looking at a mirror with too much light. It reveals way more about you and your stroke than any pro wants to share with himself, let alone his rivals. Then again, a lot of the people in that survey would say I’m barely a pro at all, which may help explain why I pour it dead center.

11
    IT WOULD BE AN exaggeration to say that when Peters climbs out of the cart at 11 for the start of our play-off, he’s a broken man. That’s asking too much. But he’s clearly dispirited by the recent turn of events, just as I’m buoyed by them. For the first time in our unhistoric rivalry, which may be a rivalry only to me, I’m the one feeling jaunty.
    You can see it in my step as I hop from my own cart, and my uncharacteristic bonhomie as I chat with Marcus Azawa, chairman and CEO of Azawa Enterprises, the sponsor of the tournament. Judging from my social ease with him and his vice president of marketing, you might conclude I’m employable. And when I pump Peters’s hand for the second time that afternoon and wish him, with utter lack of sincerity, good luck, there’s a few extra pounds of pressure in my grip. I’m feeling so ebullient, I’m half tempted to ask Peters if he can spare a pinch of Skoal.
    Eleven is a shortish par 4 with water left, and based on the numbers we draw from the chairman’s palm, Peters has the tee. That’s another break for me, because it gives him that much less time to recover from his disappointing finish. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply through his nose, trying to delete the memory of those missed short putts, but unless your last name is Woods or Irwin, that rarely works. As soon as Peters hits it, he knows it’s wet, and when it dives into the hazard, the Azawa Open is mine to win or lose.
    Now I’m the one taking New Age breaths. Before Peters’s ball has reached the bottom of that man-made lake, Johnny A has pulled the 3-wood from my hand and replaced it with a 4-iron. Somehow I keep it dry, and Johnny and I head up the right side of the fairway while Peters trudges up the left. He takes his drop and hits it about thirty feet left of the hole, and I hit my 6-iron about the same distance to the right.
    On the green, the lengths are so close, it takes a rules official and a tape measure to determine that I’m far. Since we’re on the same line, that’s a break for Peters, but I still like my chances. If I can lag it close and tap in for par, Peters will have to sink his thirty-footer to tie.
    Unlike 18, this putt has all kinds of break, at least four feet of break from left to right, but Johnny A and I are far more concerned with the pace, since the last thing we want to do is run it eight feet past or leave it five feet short. On lag putts, my grandfather taught me to feel the distance, not just see it, and as I walk back and forth between my ball and the hole, I process the contours of the green and the route my ball will travel, through my feet.
    “Weight. Weight. Weight,” whispers Johnny A when he finally hands me the ball, and as I place it in front of my marker, I repeat the message to myself like a mantra. My first practice stroke feels a hair tentative, the second a tad strong, and when I put the putter behind the ball for real, all I’m trying to do is split the difference.
    The