L. Hogan Mize Is What He’ll Be Called Now

This is the story of a chip off the old block. Of a scrawny kid from the neighborhood versus out-of-town bullies. Of an American against foreigners. Of a challenger against champions. This is the story of young Master Larry Hogan Mize of Augusta, Ga., the town where children dream of growing up to be golfers.

It is a story of Mize and men. Of a man from Australia, Greg Norman, who went away wondering why people keep firing miracle shots at him like bullets. Of a man from Spain, Severiano Ballesteros, who went into Sunday’s final round of the Masters golf tournament with a reputation for being hot-blooded and hard-boiled, only to walk away from it, all the way from the 73rd hole to the clubhouse, weeping.

There was also a man from nowhere, Jodie Mudd, who looked as though he could win. There was a former Masters champion, Ben Crenshaw, who looked as though he would win. There was the funny man, Roger Maltbie, who many hoped would win. They were a day late and a shot short.

And there was the great man himself, the six-time champion, Jack Nicklaus, who wound up only one shot further back. He was the one who eased Larry Mize into the winner’s traditional green jacket, the garment once worn by Ben Hogan and Sam Snead and Arnold Palmer, an Augusta boy’s gods.

Nicklaus was the one who told the still-startled and starry-eyed Mize how winning the Masters would open a lot of doors for him, be with him for the rest of his life.

“I think he knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t he?” Mize asked later.

He does. He does to the point that Mize paid strict attention when Nicklaus tweaked the winner’s purple shirt with his fingers and said, “But next year, wear something that doesn’t clash with green, will ya?”

Somebody had told Mize that very thing the minute he strode toward Augusta National’s first tee Sunday. Mize just laughed.

“Down here, anything goes with green,” he said.

He should know. Mize was born in Augusta, the son of Charles and Elizabeth Mize, who own all the Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlors within the city limits. Their house was no more than three miles from America’s most famous golf course, and before their son went off to college at Georgia Tech, he worked as a scoreboard operator near the Masters tournament’s third hole, turning numbers, sort of an Augusta version of Vanna White. One of his biggest thrills came at age 14, the first year he was old enough to work the scoreboard, when Tommy Aaron, a Georgia boy, won the 1973 championship.

Before then, he never sneaked onto the grounds to watch or play. “There’s no sneakin’ on here ,” said Mize, who knows how rigid this club’s officials can be, and how hard it is to get a ticket. Mize even considered himself unworthy to play the course, at least until he could grow to become a pro. It was like growing up near the Polo Grounds and dreaming of being Willie Mays. It was sacred ground, not meant to be trodden upon by hacks.

“The place gives me goose bumps,” he said.

Little did Mize suspect that someday he would become Willie Mays. The best he might have hoped for was Johnny Mize, his distant cousin, who was one heck of a baseball player in his day, but a stroke or two short of Babe Ruth. Good as he was, there was no real reason to believe Larry Mize was a good enough golfer to win the Masters. Before Sunday, he had only won one PGA tournament in his life--and that was the 1983 Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, which is not exactly a classic, except maybe to Danny Thomas.

Larry Mize was the unlucky devil who blew a four-shot lead on the last day of last year’s Tournament Players Championship, who also blew a sudden-death playoff--to Norman, of all people--at the 1986 Kemper Open, by going into the water on the sixth extra hole. He was the sort of good player who underwhelmed people, who was even described by Nicklaus, on television, before Sunday’s playoff, as a nice young man who “doesn’t really impress you very much the way he hits the ball.”

It was an observation, not an insult. Nicklaus knows Mize can play. At last year’s Masters, where finishing among the top 24 earned him an exemption for this year’s tournament, Mize’s four-round total of 286 was only one shot worse than his winning total this year--which, in turn, was the poorest winning score since Nicklaus’ 286 in 1972.

Mize almost blew this one, too. He plunked a 4-iron shot into the pond behind the 15th green, bogeyed and fell behind the leaders. It was his fifth bogey of the day. And when he still somehow managed--six birdies being the somehow--to stay alive in the tournament, Mize nearly self-destructed again by missing a putt by inches on the first hole of the playoff.

When he thought that putt would drop, Mize got ready to jump for joy. He felt like yelling “yahoo,” and the word was just about out of his mouth. But the ball dodged the cup, and Mize bit his lip.

And then came . . .

The chip.

Mize’s surprise. Maybe the greatest shot in the Masters since Gene Sarazen’s double-eagle of 1935. Maybe a greater clutch shot at a major than Tom Watson’s wonderful chip at the 1982 U.S. Open, or Bob Tway’s sand blast at the last PGA. This was not just a shot. This was a shot and a half. This was the gunslinger shooting the weather vane, the rifleman hitting dead center. Nobody from the South has made a shot like this since Sergeant York.

Ballesteros already had dropped out, leaving it up to the man from Augusta and the man from Australia. Norman was much nearer the hole and the championship. He thought Mize might not even reach the cup with two shots. One shot, no way. “I didn’t think it was possible,” Norman said.

It was possible. Mize turned a sand wedge into a magic wand and made a 1.68-inch golf ball travel 140 feet into a 4-inch hole. Everyone’s mouth dropped just a bit.

“You have big dreams as a child. Mine came true,” Mize said. “Anyone who lives here in Augusta can imagine what this is like for me. I finally won my second tournament, and I finally won a major, and I picked a doozy to win. It’s one that I’ll treasure for always.”

Never again would he have to worry about being worthy of setting foot on the golf course. Masters champions become members of the club, forever and ever, and receive automatic invitations to the tournament. That now includes Larry Hogan Mize, who was given his great-grandmother’s maiden name as a middle name at the Augusta hospital where he was born.

“Believe it or not, it doesn’t have anything to do with Ben Hogan,” Mize said.

That’s what he thinks.