Mize Finds Sense of Place--in Hometown

As the hours pass and the clear light of a spring morning returns to the Amen Corner, it’s not getting any easier to believe what happened here on Sunday evening as the weakening light of dusk cast a spell of shadows around Larry Mize.

Nearly 20 years ago, Mize first saw Rae’s Creek and the 11th and 12th greens tucked in the most remote crevice of the renowned Augusta National Golf Club. The only way a curious world gets to glimpse that ground, except during Masters week, is to walk the adjoining Augusta Country Club. That’s where Mize’s daddy played as his son grew up in this golf-dizzy St. Andrews of America. “I’d peek over the fence,” Mize said, “but, even when I got older and had chances, I’d never play the course. I wanted to earn my way on.”

That Mize the child should have fallen for golf’s mystique while gazing upon the very spot where Mize the pro would strike one of the most dramatic and ridiculously improbable winning shots in the history of golf is the sort of overdone plot twist that almost ruined the Disney movie empire.

No, it still doesn’t seem credible that Mize’s chip shot found the cup from 100 feet away to win the Masters on the second hole of sudden death, defeating two of the best players in the game and redeeming Mize’s name in his home town.

How many kids are led astray by dreams far less foolish than the one Mize followed so long? Or does Mize’s reward mock the timidity of our desires?

All his life, Mize wanted to stand on the 10th tee preparing for a Masters showdown with the most glamorous, gifted golfers on earth -- in this case, Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros. “In my mind, I’ve won it about every way you can.”

All his life, Mize was told such ambitions would play him for a fool. It’s one thing to work the Masters scoreboards as a teen-ager or to play for Georgia Tech. It’s another to be so golf-struck you drop out of college a year before graduation to turn pro.

“I was a stupid little kid who wanted to come out on tour,” Mize said. “I was no all-America, just so-so. I thought, ‘You can always go back to college.’ Now, I know it doesn’t work out that way. Some thought I had talent. Some thought I was crazy. I’m not proud that I left Tech. I guess I was very determined.”

Perhaps Mize saw too many legendary doings up too close. The first Masters he saw was won by Georgian Tommy Aaron. So, local boys can come home to glory. At 16, he saw his idol Jack Nicklaus beat Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller, in what was then called the greatest Masters. All the “National Velvet” and “Kid From Tompkinsville” reveries, which others kept in perspective, had Mize hooked.

On tour, Mize found a world of small steps, hard work and shocking frustration. An old Georgia club pro, Luke Barnes, grooved Mize’s swing so it looked a bit like Gene Littler’s -- rhythmic, compact. Each season Mize won more cash -- more than $300,000 by 1986.

Still, his hopes had a horrific down side. No player of his generation endured a more spirit-ruining collapse than Mize at the ’86 TPC. He had other bleak Sundays in the lead. The Tour’s kindly old heads worried about him. Such a promising, gentle, well-mannered, diligent fellow. All gosh and gee whiz and wasn’t that a tough break. Even Mize’s mother said, “Maybe Larry lacks the killer instinct.”

Last week, all the treads in the Mize Movie came together. Barnes showed up with a swing tip. You never looked better, kid; just move that ball a hair farther forward in your stance so you can hit it high and soft, the way Bobby Jones wanted.

Each day, Mize hung around the lead but never had to bear the brunt of it. On Saturday, chronic bursitis in his hips flared so badly he limped the last holes like a nag bound for a glue factory. He took anti-inflammatory pills, like a race horse on bute; some said what he really needed was Lasix -- after all, wasn’t Mize a bleeder?

Sunday married fact and fairy tale. Mize took the lead, then immediately bogeyed the 14th and 15th. Same old De-Mize? By the 72nd fairway, Mize knew what would be said. Had his chance. Backed off.

“I had to make birdie to get in a playoff,” said Mize. “I told my faithful caddie Scotty, ‘I know it’s 140 yards uphill, but it’s gotta be a nine-iron. Rip it hard.’ I couldn’t have hit it any better.”

One eight-foot putt later, Mize was part of Masters lore. In the playoff, he didn’t look so sweet and meek. His brave, pine-hugging, 310-yard drive on the 10th outdistanced both Norman’s and Ballesteros’. Okay, so he got a bounce. Still, in those black slacks and that rainbow of a purple-to-black shirt, he looked as cocky as a gunfighter. As Mize lined up a 10-foot birdie putt for the jacket, he plumb-bobbed the thing eight ways as though relishing making these world giants cool their heels while he prepared to run them through.

Mize missed, but he did so with a swagger. It was Ballesteros who flinched, missing a little knee-knocking side-hiller.

When Mize spun out on his 5-iron shot into the infamous 455-yard 11th hole, he’d didn’t slump his shoulders or limp on his bad hip. He got mad. “I was just disgusted,” he said.

As he faced the long chip that’d probably kill his chances, a shot that could easily scoot across the green into the water and humiliate him, Mize never considered a fluffy, safe wedge. Instead, he gambled and went for the great shot.

“I decided to be firm and aggressive,” he said. “You can never tell how much that rye grass in the fringe will grab the ball.”

But he played his bump-and-run right into the rye anyway and watched it take two true bounces through it.

“I wanted to put it real close or make it,” said Mize.

Make it?

“Hey, I made some miraculous shots this week,” said Mize. “I was trying to do both. Get close and make it.”

They say no golfer ever holed a shot he didn’t first visualize going in the cup. The ball never quite falls unless you will it so. Just as a child, peeking over a fence into his future, never quite gets to stand alone in his Amen Corner unless he takes the risks to get there, fails, then takes the risks again.