Hey, Tiger—You Need to Move Your Mark Back by Steve Scott

Author:Steve Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510765306
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

25

THE SPACE BETWEEN

WITH A NOD TO THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

PRIOR TO WHAT IS JUST ABOUT TO happen on this life-defining hole, our 34th. The moving of the mark back reminder, I mean. Okay if I say a few words before we get there?

To the moment that changed the game of golf forever.

I’ve blasted out of the bunker to about 10 feet from the cup. Kristi has looked at the putt before me, like she always does. Asks me what I see—“What is the speed are you sensing, Steve? What is that slope going to do to it?” Kristi points. To that slope running off the edge of the ridge of the green.

“The grain is running like a greyhound toward it, honey. Do you see that?”

That’s how good Kristi is.

She gets my mind from emotions to calculating when the situation calls for it, as it does now, like a long-distance call from the moon.

I know I must make this putt—a huge putt at the time: match-changing at the least, life-changing at the best. If I don’t make this putt, I’m giving Tiger the hole. A gift. Merry Christmas. I know I must focus with all of my being. And I am so, so nervous—my heart jumping through my blue-and-white-striped Tommy Hilfiger shirt like it’s playing leapfrog with itself with my shoes. I can feel it beating, and I can hear it beating like a tom-tom. I wonder if Kristi can hear it, too. If I were to guess, I would bet she can.

Kristi knows me that well. Better than I know myself.

I am just that nervous.

It is an amazing feeling. It’s not a great feeling, because you’ve never had your heart beat that fast before. But still—

It is an amazing feeling. Even my eyeballs are throbbing. I try to blink them down to calm.

There has been so much adrenaline running through my body all day that it should have blown the skull off the top of my 19-year-old head. And I’m so nervous at the same time, trying to muster up the focus and to strike a putt the perfect speed and hit the exact line you have to hit, and hope you and your caddy, your girl, your best friend, guesses the break just right.

What a conglomerate. All while you are shaking in your FootJoy boots.

It’s really pretty mind-blowing how you can make a putt, any putt, from under that amount of pressure. Look at how you can miss in so many ways.

Look at Scott Hoch, at the ’89 Masters in his playoff against Nick Faldo on the 10th. A three-footer to win, and he blows it four feet by. Scott was cross-grain, and it was slicker than a wintertime rooftop, but still. Scott made the comebacker—which was pretty darn impressive, though he was never the same again after he lost on the 11th instead of donning a Green Jacket on the 10th.

Scott Hoch pretty much disappeared after that.

Then there’s Ed Sneed, also in the Masters, when he lost to Fuzzy Zoeller and Tom Watson in a three-way playoff.

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