Quick Now, Who Won the Masters? It’ll Be Strange If Anybody Remembers

Some guys go into halls of fame with spikes flashing, fists flying, banners waving, crowds roaring. Others back in, tiptoe through, get dragged in. Quite a few get there, so to speak, by mistake.

Roy Riegels ran the wrong way. Fred Merkle forgot to touch second base. Fred Snodgrass dropped a fly ball. Gene Tunney stayed down for a Long Count. Dempsey didn’t go to a neutral corner. Sharkey fouled Schmeling. Two Americans, Rey Robinson and Eddie Hart missed their starting time in the Olympics. Bill Shoemaker stood up in the stirrups in a Kentucky Derby. Roberto de Vicenzo signed a wrong scorecard in the Masters.

Some of these people might otherwise never have been heard of. They erred their way into headlines, blundered their way into notoriety. They’re the tragedians of games, the Hamlets of sports. They took arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, lost to them.

To this list, we can now add--a little flare of trumpets, please, professor--a Strange name, Curtis, to be exact. Curtis now belongs to this fraternity of the wrong wayfarers, the melancholy company of anti-heroes who came, kicking and screaming, into the annals of sport. These are people who, had they won, would soon be forgotten, but, having crashed and failed, became immortal.

Do you remember who won the 1984 Masters? I’ll bet not. But do you remember who lost the 1985 Masters? Bet yes.

Do you remember who won the 1929 Rose Bowl? Time’s up. But you do remember who lost it? Right! Roy Riegels.

How about the pennant the year Merkle forgot to touch second? Remember who won it, do you? Of course, you don’t. Did Tunney really win the second Dempsey fight?

Quick now! Who won the Masters the year Roberto de Vicenzo signed his way out of it? Give up?

Curtis Strange makes this lineup of history’s celebrated non-winners. It would be a mistake to call them losers because, in the large sense, they didn’t lose at all. And he makes it in the most orthodox way imaginable--under the impression he was winning and doing the right thing.

He did it with his trusty little 4-wood, going for the green confident the fates were with him. He had this two-shot lead in the 1985 Masters, the field was going nowhere behind him, the ball was sitting in this nesty little sidehill lie. The green was dazzling in the sunlight some 208 yards in the distance, there was no wind, God was in His Heaven and the only guys he had to beat were this funny-looking little German and a wild-swinging Spaniard. And this little voice kept telling him, “Go for it!”

It’s situations like this that make champions. And vice versa. Great quarterbacks go for the bomb here. Great pugs throw the right. Cleanup hitters swing from the heels, they don’t protect the plate. Sailors haul the spinnaker out and jockeys go to the whip.

“It was my tournament to win or lose,” Curtis Strange kept insisting as he sat in a locker room at the MONY Tournament of Champions at La Costa.

So he lost it.

He slapped the ball in the water in front of the green. God was probably trying to tell him something. The game ones never listen. Curtis was still full of fight. So was Custer. Like the general, Curtis went out with his boots on and his guns out. He went down into the creek with his wet suit on, stick in his hand.

He thought he was doing the right thing. They always do. Roy Riegels thought he was running for a touchdown. Merkle thought the game was over. Snodgrass thought he had it all the way.

Bernhard Langer won the green coat. But did he win the Masters? Time will have to tell. The fact that he’s German will be in his favor. No German had ever won a U.S. tournament before.

But had he won it--like Schmeling--on a foul? Will golf purists of the future say of 1985 “The year Langer won the Masters”? Or will they say “The year Strange lost it”? It’s a neat point. If the Masters were won by, say, Bob Goalby, to pull a name out of the hat, or Raymond Floyd--or any non-German--would anybody remember?

People know who lost it already. No one really knows who lost the 1984 Masters--or any one of 20 others. But they’ll know who lost the 1985 Masters. Forever.

“People come up to me as if there were a death in the family,” Strange says. “It’s kind of as if it were something they hate to bring up.”

But, the point is, they know . Prior to the ’85 Masters, even though he has won an impressive seven tournaments, no one really knew whether Strange was a surname or a description. They wouldn’t have been able to pick Curtis out of any other group photo of tour golfers.

Not any more. He now joins the ghostly company of guys who broke up a winning hand in life to end up with two treys or traded New York for beads or bribed a guy to get seats on the Hindenburg.

“Eight times out of 10, I make that shot,” protests Curtis defending what will always be known in golf as the Strange Interlude. “If I make that shot I win the tournament.”

That’s what Roy Riegels kept telling himself as he saw he was in the clear. That’s what Dempsey thought as he waited over Tunney “If I stand here, I win.” That’s what Custer thought. Snodgrass probably yelled “I got it!”

But are they all losers? Well, look at it this way: The world knows all of them. Think of the billions who have gone before you never heard of. About 48 guys won the Masters. Two guys blew one. Whom would you guess will be remembered longest? Which guys are the winners?

Curtis may be Strange. But he’s no longer a stranger.