Basque in Glory

By Jack McCallum
Sports Illustrated

As a man who treasures the silence of the small fishing village where he lives with his parents in the north of Spain, 33-year-old José María Olazábal felt perfectly at home during Sunday's closing round of the 1999 Masters. With each improbable shot he created during that tension-filled finale, the response from the large crowd following his twosome grew increasingly muted, as if the marshals were holding up their hands to quiet the fans after Olazábal hit. After all, lungs, like mummies and memories, must be preserved, and this gallery's were needed to cheer on Greg Norman, Olazábal's playing partner and the heaviest fan favorite since Louis took on Schmeling in Yankee Stadium. In fact, when Olazábal stepped to the tee at the 405-yard par-4 18th hole, needing only a bogey to win his second green jacket, there was probably only one thought in the collective mind of the adoring Normanites: Hey, if Greg can make a 1, he could force a playoff.

Norman did many wonderful things during four redemptive days in Augusta, but he couldn't do that. And now that no one's looking, it's safe to open your mouth and let out a few cheers for Fuenterrabia's favorite citizen. With his eight-under-par 280, Olazábal beat both a field thick with worthy challengers and a revamped, tricked-up course that Tom Lehman called "a chamber of horrors." If that's not enough to impress you, consider that three years ago, Olazábal was in such pain from aching feet -- a condition misdiagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis but later discovered to have been the result of a lower back hernia -- that he was reduced to crawling around his house on all fours. He was out of action for 18 months, before starting to play competitively again in March 1997.

Victory was especially sweet for Olazabal, who not long ago wondered if he would ever walk again. John Biever

A David Duval-Tiger Woods showdown was the story everyone wanted when the Masters began. Norman was the story everyone wanted when it went into its last day with 23 players bunched within six shots of the lead. But, ultimately, Olazábal was the story that this memorable Masters deserved. For the tournament is, after all, about shotmaking, and few golfers design shots like Olazábal, a man with the hands of a seamstress and the heart of a warrior.

It's too strong to say that Olazábal (the requisite pronunciation is oh-luh-THAH-bull) toyed with Norman and the other challengers, for even he had trouble with a course that on Sunday yielded only seven subpar rounds (out of 56) and yanked embarrassing numbers out of such luminaries as Ernie Els (80) and cigarette-puffing John Daly (81). But Olazábal did indulge in a definitive game of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better. One had the feeling that the champ and the nine who finished within five strokes of him could've battled for another 72 holes and Ollie, as he's known to most of the Tour players, still would've found a way to come out on top.

Indeed, challengers kept popping their heads up, and, as in an amusement park game, a rubber mallet kept coming down on their heads. There was the young Brit, Lee Westwood, taking only 10 putts in the first 10 holes on Sunday and climbing to within two shots of Olazábal. Wham! Double bogey on the brutal par-4 11th. There was the newly steady Steve Pate, a onetime human volcano -- who while wearing a shirt endorsing a hot sauce had a record seven straight birdies on Saturday -- parring his way through the first 10 holes to share the lead with Olazábal and a couple of others. Wham! Bogey on that troublesome 11th, which featured an unprecedented pin placement, on the far left behind a water hazard. There was Bob Estes (and what would a Masters leader board be without Bob Estes?) birdieing number 9 to tie Olazábal and Pate for the lead at five under. Wham! He also bogeyed 11.

Uh-oh, here comes Duval, wearing what he called his "workmanlike blue," a monochromatic shirt and slacks ensemble that should discourage GQ from knocking at his door, throwing an eagle at number 2 and birdies at 7, 8, 10, 13 and 15 to creep within one of the lead. Wham! Mangled drive on the par-3 16th and a threat-ending bogey.

The two most noteworthy challenges came from Davis Love III, who finished two strokes behind Olazábal, and from Norman, who finished three back. It's hard to say whether the 35-year-old Love -- who describes himself as the "quietest Number 3 [behind Duval and Woods] -- there's ever been in the world," affirmed his reputation as a prodigious talent who can win any tournament or affirmed his reputation as a prodigious talent who can lose any tournament.

With shaky short play -- Love refreshingly admitted after the round that his emotions had gotten the best of him at times -- he repeatedly failed to capitalize on his driving length at the par-5 holes, particularly the 500-yard 15th, where a par on Sunday (and a double bogey on Saturday) ultimately cost the 1997 PGA champion a chance at his second major. At the same time, memories of the brilliant stroke he fashioned on the 16th might serve him well in future pressure situations. Trailing Olazábal by two, Love hit a tee shot over the water on the frightening 170-yarder that was hole high but 20 yards off the green, down in a hollow. He pitched the ball hot and high, 15 feet above the hole, and a friend of Love's in the gallery moaned, "Oh, Davis." The golfer's mother, Penta, knew better. She had seen Davis and his caddying brother, Mark, point to a spot on that devilish green, and she knew that Davis had hit the shot he wanted. The ball nearly came to a stop and then reversed direction, sluggishly rolling backward and curving toward the hole in the final yard before finally disappearing. Love's arms went up; he knew he had a chance if only Olazábal would stumble once in the last three holes.

By that time, however, Norman knew his chance was gone. How often had he put out what seemed to be a winning hand only to see Olazábal trump it? Down by one to Olazábal at the 13th, the seductive 485-yard par-5 that ends Amen Corner, Norman made the green in two and then slid in a curving, right-to-left 30-footer for an eagle and a probable two-stroke swing. Olazábal first smiled -- "I enjoyed the roar," he would say later of the gallery's thunderous reaction -- and then curled in his own 21-foot snake for a birdie that kept him in a tie for the lead and drew an appreciative nod from Norman and this comment from a Norman fan in the crowd: "Now let's hope something bad happens to Olazábal."

Was it at that moment that the Shark realized he wasn't going to beat this guy? Or did it come at 16 when, after leaving his seven-foot birdie putt short, Norman watched Olazábal snuggle in his lightning-quick birdie putt ("You can't imagine what a three-footer that was," Olazábal said later), which increased Ollie's lead over Norman to three and his psychological advantage to about 10.

When Olazábal somehow punched a soft five-iron from under the trees and onto the green 190 yards away to seal a par at 17, Norman's (and, though he didn't know it, Love's) hopes were gone. Many American players spent the week criticizing the rock-hard green at 17, but Olazábal, who doesn't criticize much of anything except American food -- he finds Yankee salad dressings particularly off-putting -- kept it on the dance floor with a low hook under the most pressure-packed of conditions. Lord, you could chill a bottle of beer with this man's blood. Asked to describe his boyhood friend with a Spanish word, Jose Itarte, a businessman who was in the small posse following Olazábal, offered duro. It means "tough."

So once again at Augusta, vultures circled Norman's conquered carcass. (Attention, Masters officials: Gary McCord told us to say that.) Sunday's defeat wasn't nearly as painful as the public flogging Norman endured in 1996, when he blew a six-stroke lead and lost by five to Nick Faldo. Given the left shoulder surgery Norman had a year ago, in fact, he acquitted himself most honorably. But his performance under pressure must again be questioned. His eagle on 13, for example, was reversed by a bad drive on 14 that led to a bogey; a possible birdie on 15 became another bogey with a horrid 94-yard approach shot that inexplicably found a bunker. "Omigosh," said a woman in the gallery, "he's collapsin'. He's doin' it all over again." Of his weak play on number 15, Norman only said, "Just wasn't meant to make 5 there."

Still, it was wonderful to have Norman around on Sunday afternoon. The sport has precious few personalities capable of generating as much electricity as Norman. Duval, sunglasses aside, registers negative numbers on the wattage scale, and while Woods is a certified superstar, he doesn't so much connect with the gallery as soar above it. The Shark seems to swim among us, a monumental achievement, by the way, for someone who flies his own helicopter. We rejoice in the man's triumphs, and to paraphrase one of his good buds, we feel his pain. Could you imagine Woods telling the press corps, as Norman did after his first-round 71, "I like it better when you guys talk to me more"? Could you imagine Duval talking openly before the tournament, as Norman did, about the number of hours he had spent "on the porcelain bowl" because of a stomach virus?

Norman's attractiveness to the gallery obscures the fact that his game lacks the imagination of Olazábal's or, these days at least, the bang-bang brilliance of Duval's or Woods's. But whatever he does in a major tournament, positive or negative, is invariably high theater. Take the bogey he made in the third round at the par-3 12th. After he deposited his eight-iron tee shot into the foliage behind the green and the ball couldn't be found, Norman, now lying two, had to make the ignominious march back to the tee box to reload. He aimed at the same line he had taken several minutes earlier and, with the same club, struck a tee shot that landed about 25 feet from the stick. During the stroll back to the green, Norman's caddie, Tony Navarro, said, "Let's just make a hard 4 and get out of here." Norman said he never doubted he would make the putt, and that's exactly what he did.

After both of them had come up short on Sunday, Love and Norman met outside the locker room, shook hands and shared condolences. "We'll get one, one of these days," Love said, "the both of us."

Well, Olazábal, who outdueled Lehman in 1994 at Augusta, now has two more than either of them. Much was made -- and rightly so -- about how badly Norman wanted a green jacket to redeem himself for '96, but the Masters means just as much to Olazábal, the greenkeeper's son. As he sat in the grill room of the clubhouse several hours after the tournament, he proclaimed Augusta his favorite spot on earth besides Fuenterrabia. "When I come to play here, I'm so happy," he said. "All I think is that it's such a good place. I have great memories, and I owe a lot of my career to this tournament. Somehow I just feel in peace when I am here." Asked if he has a special place where he will keep his green jacket (the winners get to hold on to it for a year), he smiled, placed his right hand over his heart and said, "This special place."

During a practice round the previous Sunday, Olazábal made a point of showing his new caddie, 33-year-old Brendan McCartain, around the course. "It was his first Masters, and I wanted Brendan to enjoy where he was," said Olazábal. "When we were on the 16th green on Saturday, I went over to him and told him to look around and see how beautiful it is. I told him, 'You won't see this anywhere else.'" In the six-bedroom, five-bathroom, one-fitness-room palace that the unmarried Olazábal built for himself and his parents, Gaspar and Julia, hard by the 7th hole at the Real Club de San Sebastian in Fuenterrabia, Olazábal has hung several enlarged photos from past Masters, some scenics, some action, one of the 1994 green jacket ceremony, another of him taking a drop at the 13th hole in '94 after he hit his second shot into the drink.

It takes a special man to hang a photo of his own penalty shot, but then it takes a special man to live with his parents even though he's a millionaire. Olazábal is of Basque descent, and there's a Basque tradition of simplicity and mystery. "My mom cooks, and she can do anything," he says. "Me? I burn eggs and toast. In a way I'm spoiled by my family." It takes a special man to walk up the 18th fairway, knowing that he again has won the tournament he cherishes more than any other, yet wait for Norman so they could drink in the applause together, as if the Shark hadn't gotten enough already. "I knew I had won, but I had beside me Greg Norman," said Olazábal in his careful and courtly English. "We all know what he's gone through in this tournament. I feel sorry for him, and I would love to see him win the Masters." It takes a special man to treat with equanimity the passive-aggressive reception that he got from the Masters fans on Sunday. "If I was a spectator," said Olazábal, "I'd have done the exact same thing." That's doubtful.

Back in Fuenterrabia on Sunday night, Gaspar watched his son sink his final two-foot putt on 18 and went out into the front yard. Performing a ritual that has followed most of José María's 24 wins, Gaspar fired his hunting rifle into the air and then set off a few fireworks. It's nice to know that someone, somewhere, was making a little noise for such a marvelous champion.

Issue date: April 19, 1999