The Last Stand of Payne Stewart The Year Golf Changed Forever by Kevin Robbins

Author:Kevin Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

“There’s a long way to go in this golf tournament,” Hicks had told Payne on the twelfth hole. He’d said those same words a year earlier on the back nine at Olympic, but it would mean something different in ’99. Payne holed a twenty-five-foot par putt that wandered through two opposing downhill breaks on the sixteenth green. Mickelson had eight feet to keep his lead.

“Biggest putt of his life,” Johnny Miller said.

He missed.

The dales and hollows hummed with the commotion of forty thousand people bracing for a finish they suspected they would never forget. Payne and Mickelson were tied at even par with two holes to play. No one spoke on the seventeenth tee. Payne rifled his six-iron, that familiar Mizuno, to four feet. An enormous roar vented from the gathering below. Mickelson dropped a high fade with his seven-iron to six feet. The cheers from the green volleyed back to the tee in waves. The two players marched to the green in silence, marked their golf balls, and tried their best to ignore the weight of what they were about to do.

Mickelson pulled his putt, and the ball drifted right of the hole. Par.

Payne aimed the SeeMore at the center of the hole, which is exactly where his ball rolled.

Birdie.

In twenty minutes, Payne had gone from a stroke behind one player to a stroke ahead of everyone. He never doubted his decision to hit driver on the eighteenth hole, and he liked the look of the rising shot until he and Hicks walked up the hill and saw where the ball lay. It was in the right rough, damp and deep, the worst lie they’d encountered in seventy-one holes. It was bad luck at a bad time, especially with Mickelson in the fairway with a good angle to the hole and a midiron in his hand. NBC trained its cameras on Payne’s face. Bells rang faintly at a church in the distant village. Ron Crow, the walking scorer with Payne, heard the throaty welcome of the gallery and thought, The ground is vibrating. Payne consulted his orange-covered yardage book. Pinehurst gave. Pinehurst took. Acceptance came.

He decided to give himself a chance.

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