AUGUSTA, Ga. — There is almost no circumstance in which a player could birdie the final four holes at Augusta National — on Sunday at the Masters, no less — and end up somewhere down the list of compelling story lines.
Give Charl Schwartzel, a 26-year-old Johannesburg native — a winner abroad, all but unknown domestically — an inordinate amount of credit, because that is just what he did Sunday. The record will forever show that he won the Masters by two shots over a pair of Australians, Adam Scott and Jason Day, because he strung those birdies together to finish at 14-under-par with a wonderful 66.
Yet no one, not player nor patron, could survive this particular Sunday at Augusta without heading to dinner and discussing the tumult and turbulence of the entire afternoon. Throw some of the game’s most compelling characters — Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Angel Cabrera among them — in a blender, hit puree, then try to sort out the soup.
There had been 74 Masters before this one. None was like this.
“There’s always a roar,” Schwartzel said. “Every single hole you walk down, someone has done something. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look at the leaderboard. But sometimes I would look at it and not register what I was looking at.”
How could you? Among the absurdities: McIlroy, the 21-year-old Irishman, entered the day with a four-shot lead. Twenty-eight minutes after he teed off, it was gone. Woods, the four-time champion who seemed an afterthought after a 74 on Saturday, blazed to a 31 on the front side, sending Augusta National into a tizzy. For a healthy chunk of the back, Woods sat tied for the lead.
But wasn’t everybody? Players jammed together as if on a Tokyo subway, and the fluidity stopped only when the golf did. No fewer than eight players — Schwartzel, Scott, Day, Cabrera, Woods, McIlroy, K.J. Choi and Geoff Ogilvy — were tied for the lead at some point.
“Unreal,” Day said. “It just seemed like nearly every hole there was a scream from another hole.”
The only player who could have prevented such a logjam was McIlroy. Given both the brand of golf he played and the demeanor he displayed the first three days, his breakdown seems inexplicable. After making three bogeys in three days, he opened with one Sunday.
Schwartzel began by chipping in for birdie and flew in his wedge at the third for eagle. Poof! The tournament began anew.
“When you have a one-shot lead going into the back nine of the Masters,” McIlroy said, “you can’t be doing too much wrong.”
There, though, he came apart, utterly and completely, making a triple-bogey 7 at No. 10. That only started the spin out of control.
“I just unraveled,” McIlroy said.
With McIlroy unable to remain stable, Woods stepped up. When he stung a 3-wood to within 6 feet at the par-5 eighth, then rolled in the eagle putt, he was 10-under, within one of the top. Though he three-putted for bogey at 12, he stalked his second shot at the par-5 15th, knowing he had a 5-footer for eagle and the lead.
“On the back nine,” Woods said, “could have capitalized some more.”
In countless ways. No player had more than Woods’ six three-putts all week. And at 15, the eagle putt lipped out. Seven back to start the round, he made himself a factor, then faded away, his 67 not good enough.
Schwartzel then seized what others couldn’t. He holed his final 15-footer for one last birdie, and then he put on a green jacket.
Other characters, other story lines, they don’t much matter when you’re wearing that color as the sun sets. If this Masters was unlike any other, then it’s fitting Schwartzel closed it in unprecedented fashion, the first with four finishing birdies.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he said.
