The Greatest Masters of All Time

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Greatest Masters of All Time, when 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus turned back the clock for a weekend to cement his place as the Greatest Golfer of All Time.

Nicklaus had to turn in a final round 65 to do it, and managed to push past a host of big name—and younger— players like Tom Kite, Seve Ballesteros, Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Nick Price and Sandy Lyle. It was his eagle-birdie-eagle stretch at 15, 16, and 17 that broke their back, but he had put himself into contention on Saturday with a round of 69.

There is sure to be a lot of media coverage of this anniversary, so I thought I’d get the jump by offering a couple of select links.

First, be sure to read Dan Jenkin’s 1996 Golf Digest article on the event. It’s great to be able to read what people were saying about the event at the time. My sense is that, the accomplishment has been undiminished by time.

Then, you should read Guy Yocom’s April 2006 article Golf Digest article in which he collects the memories of various people about the tournament.

In a side article, Yocum makes an interesting observation: that of the players Jack beat, Seve Ballesteros took it the hardest:

Although he was only 29 at the time, I don’t think he was quite the same after that. He won the British Open the following year and had a lot of good golf still in him at that point. But his collapse at the 15th laid bare some very glaring shortcomings in his technique, his course management, his emotional control and especially, his courage. Seve had a large but fragile ego, one that carried him to great feats but one that was not easily pieced back together after it was damaged. And that Masters shattered him. It showed he wasn’t the most-loved golfer, the most charismatic, the most courageous and certainly not the best. On that Sunday, he was outclassed by a 46-year-old man playing a couple of holes ahead of him. He left a pound of flesh that day.

There’s also a good article at Augusta dot Com on the various players in the Great Event.

You can see the final results, and the per-round scores at the official Masters’ Site.

And finally, a new highlights DVD of the 1986 Masters will be released March 28. You can pre order the DVD at Amazon and get it delivered in time for the anniversary.

Masters-1986 Tournament Highlights