‘I just said I loved him’: Pro’s emotional Masters farewell worth the unexpected wait

AUGUSTA, Ga. — As Augusta native Larry Mize put the finishing touches on his esteemed 40-year Masters career on a stormy Friday afternoon at Augusta National, he heard a mighty, startling crack.

Oh, my gosh, what was that? Mize thought, knowing full well it wasn’t a Rory McIlroy tee shot.

Mize was standing just off the back of the green on the par-3 16th when he heard the clatter, a noise so loud that it caught the attention of players on the 15th hole. As Mize wheeled around in the direction of the 17th tee behind him, he saw a pair of towering loblolly pines beginning to topple, dozens of unsuspecting patrons in the vicinity beneath them.  

“I saw people scattering,” Mize recalled Saturday morning. “I’m thinking, Oh, my gosh, people, get out of there.”

When asked to describe his emotions in the moment, Mize said: “Shocked, scared. I’ve never seen anything like that on the golf course. I’ve seen branches fall, big branches. I remember being at Spyglass one time out in California when a big branch fell, which was scary, but nothing like this. This is just — thank god that nobody got hurt. It’s just a miracle that nobody got hurt.”

What was supposed to be a teary farewell for Mize had suddenly turned terrifying. Officials rushed to the scene. Players and media scrambled for information. Videos flashed across social media of the trees slamming into the ground and narrowly missing patrons gathered below. Moments later, a horn blew. Play had been suspended and would not resume until Saturday morning.

Mize’s Augusta adieu would have to wait.    

When Mize returned to the course early Saturday morning, the conditions weren’t much better: dreary, drizzly, dank; it felt less like Augusta and more like an Open Championship. As he played the par-4 17th, a smattering of hardy patrons looked on but nothing about the vibe felt sentimental or celebratory. Mize came up short of the green with his second shot and made bogey.

But on the tee at 18, a much larger welcome party greeted Mize, who was preparing to play his 2,162nd — and final — hole as a Masters competitor. He lined up on the left side of the tee box and banged his drive up the chute of pines that flank the 18th hole. In the heavy air, his ball didn’t carry far, coming up just short and right of the fairway. From there, he played a “chunky 5-iron” to just right of the fairway bunker. Among the well-wishers in the gallery was four-time PGA Tour winner Russell Henley who had just finished his own second round, a tidy 67 that had elevated him into a tie for 10th, at four under. Henley and Mize both live in Columbus, a three-and-a-half drive southwest of Augusta.      

“He’s been just like a mentor and father figure for me,” Henley said Saturday morning. “Just anything that goes on in my life outside of golf or golf, he’s been there to chat with me about it. He’s just an amazing guy and somebody I look up to a lot. So it was just really cool to sneak back there and watch his last hole.”

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Henley wasn’t the only appreciative onlooker. As Mize played his third shot into the green, hundreds of patrons were waiting to thank him for his service.

Mize is to Augusta what Springsteen is to Jersey. As a kid, he worked the manual scoreboard on the 3rd hole, dreaming of one day not volunteering in this tournament but playing in it. In 1984, that dream came true, when Mize, then 25, played in his first Masters and finished in an impressive 11th place. Three years later at this same event, he finished regulation knotted in a tie at the top of the board with Greg Norman. You know what happened next: On the second playoff hole, the par-4 11th, Mize broke Norman’s heart by holing out a chip from right of the green to secure his first green jacket — and a spot in Masters lore. In all, Mize made 20 cuts in 40 tries at Augusta with seven top-20 finishes.  

“I don’t think it changed me as a person, but other than that, it changed a lot,” Mize said Saturday morning of how winning the Masters altered his life. “It gave me opportunities. It gave me and my family opportunities to do things we wouldn’t have otherwise done. The recognition I’ve gotten. It’s amazing to win the Masters and then to do it in that fashion kind of just enhanced it. So it was — it’s hard to put into words.”

It wasn’t the first time this week that Mize had struggled to articulate what the Masters means to him. At the Champions Dinner on Tuesday evening, Mize rose to address a room full of his fellow past winners — Jack, Tiger, Faldo, Player, Fuzzy, the lot of them. But how do you encapsulate four decades of memories in just a couple of minutes? “I knew it was going to be tough, and I felt pretty good until the time came,” Mize said. “Standing in front of all those guys and being in that room, I just couldn’t get it out.”

Back on the 18th green Saturday morning, Mize had a 40-footer up the slope for a career-capping par. He left it a couple feet of short and then missed the ensuing putt, too, lipping out on the low side. Any regrets of the messy finish, though, were soon washed away — not by the rain but by the reception he received. Applause. Cheers. Hugs.

Sandy Lyle, who also was playing in his final Masters this week and had finished his own swan-song round just minutes earlier, paced on to the green to congratulate and console his old friend. “I obviously know what’s going through his mind,” Lyle said. “I just think it was the right thing to do. The wives suggested it and I thought about it and said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to go back out there and welcome him to a new era.’”

“I liked it,” Mize said of Lyle’s gesture.

Henley also had a few words of gratitude for his mentor, who he grew up watching and then befriending.  

“I just said I loved him,” Henley said. “Forty years, it’s so cool.”