Augusta's Long Shots: Green Jackets Nobody Saw Coming

Augusta National is built to be predictable. Same course every April, same azaleas, same field of players who have memorized every slope on every green. The favorites know the place better than anyone. And still, every so often, Sunday afternoon hands the green jacket to someone who was not in the conversation on Thursday.

These are four of the best examples. None of them were the name most people had circled.

Forty-Six and Supposedly Finished

By 1986, Jack Nicklaus was a monument. Five green jackets, 17 majors, and nothing big since 1980. He was 46. That week, an Atlanta newspaper column wrote him off as done, and a friend made sure the clipping ended up on the refrigerator in the house Nicklaus was staying in.

He started Sunday four shots back, behind a leaderboard full of younger players in better form, including Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros. For eight holes, he went nowhere. Then he birdied 9, 10 and 11, gave one back at 12, and birdied 13.

The run that made the legend came next. Eagle at 15. A tee shot at 16 that nearly went in, then a short putt for birdie. Another birdie at 17. He came home in 30 on the back nine, shot 65, and finished at 9 under, with his son Jackie on the bag.

Then he waited. Ballesteros had already put his second shot into the water at 15. Tom Kite missed a birdie putt at 18 to tie. Norman birdied four straight holes to draw level, then pushed his approach at 18 and made bogey. Nicklaus won by one, his sixth green jacket and his 18th major, and became the oldest man to win the Masters.

The Man Who Laid Up

Zach Johnson won the 2007 Masters by refusing to play the course the way it was designed. It was a cold, windy week, the greens were fast and firm, and scores went the wrong way all four days.

Johnson, a grinder from Iowa with no reputation for this sort of thing, did not go for a single par 5 in two. All 16 times, he laid up and wedged on. He played those holes 11 under for the week. That was the tournament, right there.

He finished at 1 over par, 289, which tied the highest winning score in tournament history. Tiger Woods, Retief Goosen and Rory Sabbatini finished two back. Johnson never hit the shot that makes the highlight package. He just kept making the score.

Four for the Road

In 2011, the jacket belonged to Rory McIlroy for three days. He was 21, he led by four going into the final round, and he looked like he had been born for the place.

Sunday ate him alive. A triple bogey at 10 started the slide, and he shot 80. As he fell, the leaderboard turned into a pileup, with a pack of names trading the lead all afternoon.

Charl Schwartzel had already been doing strange things. He chipped in for birdie at the 1st and holed his second shot from the fairway at the 3rd for eagle. Then, with the tournament wide open, he birdied 15, 16, 17 and 18. No Masters champion had ever finished with four straight birdies. He shot 66 and won by two over Adam Scott and Jason Day, fifty years after fellow South African Gary Player won his first green jacket.

McIlroy took it well, and took the next major too, winning the US Open two months later by eight shots.

The Twelfth Hole

Jordan Spieth was the defending champion in 2016, and by the turn on Sunday it looked like a second straight jacket was a formality. He birdied 6, 7, 8 and 9 and walked to the 10th tee with a five-shot lead.

He bogeyed 10. He bogeyed 11. Then he got to 12, the short par 3 over Rae's Creek, and the tournament changed hands in a few minutes. His tee shot came up short and rolled into the water. From the drop zone, he hit his next one fat, and it went in the water too. He made a quadruple-bogey 7.

Danny Willett, playing ahead of him on the course, was putting together a 67. Spieth fought back with a couple of birdies but could not get all the way home. Willett finished at 5 under and won by three. A few weeks earlier, he had not been sure he would play at all: his first child was due on the Sunday of the tournament. The baby came early, so Willett went to Augusta.

He was the first Englishman to win since Nick Faldo in 1996, who also won on a Sunday when the leader came apart, the year Greg Norman lost a six-shot lead. And because the defending champion does the honors, it was Spieth who had to help Willett into the green jacket in Butler Cabin.

Augusta gets sold as the most controlled four days in golf. Then the back nine opens on Sunday and the place gets weird. Every April somebody tees off on Thursday as an afterthought. Every few years, one of them leaves in green, and the books get burned.