Olazabal Picked the Title Clean : Golf: New Masters champion made all the right moves in last round to beat Lehman.

Jose Maria Olazabal picked delicately at the dead pine needles surrounding his ball beneath the trees on the right side of the 13th fairway.

He grabbed a short iron and sized up the shot, a necessary lay-up on the 485-yard par 5. Olazabal took his stance, then backed off, asking the marshals to move the crowd back.

Then he hit a gorgeous high hook, around the trees in front of him, catching the right-side hill perfectly and ending in the middle of the fairway, leaving a short flip to the green.

A wise shot at the right time, involving some cool, some cunning and a bit of nerve.

Asked if he was afraid the ball might move when the picked at the pine needles, Olazabal said: “That was a chance, but I had no choice if I wanted a decent chance to impact the ball.”

Asked if he considered a different path for the shot, he said: “Not very long.”

That’s what winning a major championship is all about: Knowing when to gamble. Knowing when to play it safe. Knowing how to handle the pressure.

That’s why Olazabal is the winner of the Masters and that’s why Tom Lehman is the runer-up.

“When I get better under pressure, I’ll do better in these kinds of tournaments,” said Lehman, a 35-year-old non-winner on the PGA Tour who only returned in 1992 after leaving in 1985 to play in Asia and on the satellite tour.

That’s exactly right.

Lehman showed enormous control in the final round at Augusta National. He made only two bogeys all day -- one at No. 12 and one at 18. But after he barely missed a 15-foot eagle putt on No. 15 -- “I put my heart and soul in that putt” -- he missed a 5-foot birdie putt on 16, a 15-foot birdie putt on 17 and a 15-foot par putt on 18.

Experience will help that next time around.

Just ask Olazabal. He drew on all of his considerble experience masterfully Sunday.

Two birdies, an eagle and 11 pars on the first 15 holes. Only two bogeys over the last 58 holes. And always, the right shot at the right time.

Olazabal all but closed out the Masters on the 15th when he went for the green in two, hitting an iron that barely cleared the water then rolled back to within a foot of the pond.

He kept his cool as his 40-foot eagle putt dropped in the hole, merely raising his arm and walking calmly to pick his ball out of the hole.

“I knew it would clear the water,” Olazabal said of the approach shot. “But after I hit it I thought it might roll back into the water. It was one foot short of going into the water.”

Then he made his putt and Lehman missed.

Olazabal, 28, has been a professional since he was 19 and great things had been expected of him. He’s won a lot in Europe, but not much here and never a major.

He has been in contention at majors several times, finishing second in the the 1991 Masters and third in the 1992 British Open.

Somehow, that has not been good enough for his critics.

“I have won 18 tournaments,” he said. “I think that is pretty good for someone my age. But I think winning a major will help.”

Perhaps it will quiet those who say he hasn’t won the big ones. And perhaps it will send him on his way to racking up a few more majors, just like everyone thought Greg Norman would do when he won his first British Open in 1986.

“It took a while,” Olazabal said of his first victory in one of the four major tournaments. “It was worth waiting for. It is like a dream.”

Olazabal’s victory was the sixth by a European golfer at the Masters in seven years.

“I don’t know why we are doing so good in the last few years here,” Olazabal said. “I think it has something to do with the imagination you need for the second shots here.”

Perhaps.