EVEN WITH MY 50 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AS A PLAYER AND 22 MORE AS AN ANALYST, I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED.
adrenalin flowing, noticed it, stepped away and waited for the air to settle. That second shot re- quires tremendous precision, and most players amid the excitement would be oblivious to some- thing so small. His poise there showed one of many reasons he’s a generational player. It wasn’t all about Rory, Bryson and Justin Rose, of course. Don’t forget, Ludvig Aberg was on the periphery until the last two holes. I’m huge on that young man and predict he’ll win multiple majors before he’s done. After he finished with a triple- bogey 7 on the final hole, it occurred to me that the disaster cost him something like $500k. I also thought about something Lee Trevino said years ago. “Forget about it and keep going,” he said. “It was never your money to begin with.” HOW DO WE ANNOUNCERS KNOW WHAT CLUBS the players are hitting? I have an assistant, Wayne Richardson, who has been my spotter for 10 years, and he helps catch the signals from the caddies – in this case, Harry Diamond for Rory, Greg Bodine for Bryson. It’s all with one hand. If a 5-iron or lon- ger, they flash that number of fingers, pointing up. If it’s shorter than a 5-iron, they will flash the fin- gers, pointing down, off a base of five, so a 6-iron is one finger pointed down. A pitching wedge is a fist. A gap wedge is touching the bill of the cap with two fingers. For an ordinary sand wedge, they trace the letter S in the sky with their finger. For a
lob wedge, they make an L, like the “loser” sign. The loudest Sunday roar came at an unlikely place. Usually, the biggest roar occurs on No 16 because of the way sound reverberates though the corridor there, but the roar that followed Rory’s amazing second-shot approach to the 15th is the loudest I’ve ever heard in my life. It travelled from the green up the hill and hit me like a truck. Only at Augusta do roars like this happen. The loudness of the roar was due partly to the loss of trees in that area from Hurricane Helene. Trees dampen noise, and now there are fewer of them. There was nothing divine about that hur- ricane, but I think it had some unexpected results.
THE CONTENDERS Ludvig Aberg (left) and Justin Rose challenged late. Rose reacts after his 72nd-hole birdie that would force a playoff.
50 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2025
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator