AUGUSTA, Ga. — On a day as gray as Hogan’s sweater, Jordan Spieth reclaimed Augusta National for Texas, introduced America’s next great hope and showed all the kids out there what guts look like.
He also won the 79th Masters on Sunday as thoroughly as it has ever been won, his final-round 70 tying Tiger Woods’ tournament scoring record at 18-under-par 270 while his 28 birdies set a tournament mark. England’s Justin Rose and Phil Mickelson tarried in pursuit all day but neither could draw closer than three shots. They tied for second at 274, four shots back with a score strong enough to have won 70 of the 78 previous Masters.
Even though he missed the penultimate 5-footer that would have broken Woods’ mark, Spieth hunched over his putter briefly before rising with the smile of a 21-year-old who understood he just did something very well.
“A couple of times, I got a little frustrated today but I was pinched by (caddie) Michael (Greller) and said we got this thing,” said Spieth, 21 years and eight months old, five months older than Tiger Woods when he became the youngest Masters champ in 1997. “He likes to say we have pocket aces, we are already ahead and we just have to play it out the way we know how to play it out.”
The first player to win the Masters wire-to-wire in 39 years, Spieth also became the first Texan in 20 years to win a championship that Texas once dominated. Ben Crenshaw’s 1995 Masters marked the last Lone Star victory on the same course where Texans Byron Nelson, Ralph Guldahl, Jimmy Demaret, Ben Hogan and Jack Burke won nine of the first 20 Masters.
“Playing with Jordan,” Rose said, “he’s going to sort of fly the flag, I think, for golf for quite a while.”
Globally, Spieth joined Bubba Watson and Mickelson to win the Masters at a time when foreign players Adam Scott, Charl Schwartzel, Angel Cabrera and Trevor Immelman had claimed four of the past eight green jackets. But how he won, flitting away from trouble whenever it arose, more than impressed his peers.
“He has no weaknesses,” Mickelson said. “ … And he has that ability to focus and see things clear when the pressure is on and perform his best when the pressure is on. That’s something that you really can’t teach.”
And how fast he learned. Just over two years ago, he was a sophomore at the University of Texas.
“It all runs together,” Spieth said. “It all happened quickly. Sometimes it feels like a long time ago and sometimes, it feels like yesterday.”
Spieth appeared most vulnerable at the par-3 16th, where he flew his tee shot to the left of the green while Rose dropped his to within 15 feet, allowing him a flat birdie attempt that presaged a two-shot swing.
Rose’s birdie try just grazed the bottom lip of the cup while Spieth chipped to within eight feet and rolled in a downhill touch putt — “the biggest putt of my life” — to save par and essentially end the four-day discussion.
“There’s something innate, obviously, with him and those type of individuals, something intangible that probably a lot of athletes occasionally touch, but rarely maintain,” 2007 Masters champion Zach Johnson said. “Obviously Tiger would be the epitome of that. My guess is Jack (Nicklaus) was like that back in the day. There may be a handful here or there that have touched it.”
Rose’s fury to catch Spieth — he had trailed by nine shots after 12 holes on Saturday before birdieing seven of the next eight holes through No. 2 on Sunday — ebbed by mid-round where he stalled at three down. He continued to parry, saving par with two shots from the gallery on No. 5, but could not draw closer.
And when he did close, Spieth took the stokes right back, birdies on No. 3 and No. 8 both times restoring the edge to four shots, the same margin as when he hit the grounds that morning.
His pursuers were not encouraged after he made the turn. Spieth rolled in a 20-foot birdie on No. 10, opening the lead to a half-dozen over Rose and Mickelson. That putt, for his 26th birdie of the tournament, broke Mickelson’s old record of 25 that he recorded in 2001, which was only good enough for third place that spring.
“If he made a mistake, it was a bogey,” Mickelson said. “And he usually followed that up with a birdie and that’s what you need to do to win major championships, that style of play.”
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