Inside Masters’ ‘cruel’ car crash: Brutal blunder that sealed it… and legend’s forgotten act of kindness

After the most excruciating afternoon of his career, Jordan Spieth was unsteady on his feet, a punch drunk golfer.

This was scarcely surprising, for in the preceding hours the American was being hailed for his unparalleled greatness, only for it all to dissipate as he was beaten and bruised by golf’s most famous stretch of holes.

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When it comes to rubbing salt into the rawest of wounds, what followed next at the 2016 Masters is surely the most difficult scenario a shattered golfer has had to endure.

As the defending champion, Spieth was tasked handing golf’s most prized garment to Danny Willett, who had just pulled off the fifth greatest comeback at the Masters.

The significant problem is he had just endured a horror he hoped “to never experience again” as a legacy defining triumph went begging courtesy of his own hand. As Fox Golf’s expert pundit Paul Gow said, it was akin to watching a car crash.

“That was cruel. That was terrible. That was one of the worst of all time, because he had just thrown up on himself on the back nine. It was a tough one to swallow, ” Gow told foxsports.com.au

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As Spieth sat in Butler Cabin at Augusta National, the champion golfer looked green to the gills as he listened to the two peers to his left discuss their glorious afternoon in 2016.

This was the moment the broader golf world was introduced to American Bryson DeChambeau, the champion amateur in the 2016 Masters who finished in a tie for 21st.

It was an honour, the fresh-faced Bryson said, he could “never have imagined in a million years” before confirming he would be turning professional. And what a career big Bryson has compiled.

DeChambeau then congratulated Danny Willett, who had just become the second Englishman to win at Augusta in a triumph truly remarkable given the circumstances.

The Yorkshireman believed he would miss the Masters that year given his first son was due on the Sunday the major was decided, but baby Zach was in a rush and arrived early.

Midway through the final round, and with Spieth sitting at 7-under with a significant buffer, the 28-year-old thought he was playing for second. But … we’ll get to the unthinkable.

This was Willett’s day, one that coincided with his wife Nicole’s birthday, and he was thrilled.

“You talk about fate. You talk about everything else that goes with it. It is a crazy, crazy week,” he said.

Then the moment, as dictated by tradition, came with the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, Billy Payne, calling on Spieth to present the ‘Green Jacket’ to Willett.

In a scene broadcast across America and beamed around the world, Spieth rose from his chair, only to sway and lose his balance before righting himself with some help from the seat.

“I almost fell over there,” he said to Willett, a broken smile on his face. The wretched truth was he already had.

Later, he said, the ceremony was almost as difficult as what had unfolded on the back nine.

“As you can imagine, I can’t think of anybody else who may have had a tougher ceremony to experience,” he said.

“I can’t imagine that it was fun for everyone to experience other than Danny’s team and those who are fans of him.”

HELL ON AMEN CORNER

Willett talked about fate, but it was scarcely conceivable a couple of hours earlier that Spieth would not be in the position of attending Butler Cabin as a glorious Masters champion.

The young American was on track not just to join the immortals but to also set a new mark when it came to unparalleled brilliance at a tournament revered around the world.

Spieth started the final Sunday a decade ago having led around Augusta for seven straight rounds, a streak no-one else has matched, with that run including his 2015 triumph by four shots over Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose.

There were some ebbs early but in a stunning stanza to finish the front nine, he birdied the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth holes to establish himself as a dominant leader.

The 22-year-old had also finished in a tie for second behind Bubba Watson on debut two years earlier, with Gow saying his excellence around the greens helped set him apart through this period.

“The course just suits him because he is quite creative around a green. If he misses a green, he figures out how to get up and down well,” he said.

“Then his putting in those years was off the charts. His driving had been good, without being great, but he was still able to get it into the right slots.”

Scottie Scheffler is the current top gun. Rory McIlroy is the defending champion. DeChambeau, clearly, is a big game player. But Spieth’s stunning ascension at such a young age had him marching towards greatness.

Seeking to become the first back-to-back, wire-to-wire winner, he was turning the Masters into a procession. Successfully navigating the back nine would establish him as a great.

Tiger Woods required seven Masters appearances to clinch a second green jacket. The Golden Bear Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer needed six to get their second.

Ben Hogan and Seve Ballesteros were dual-major winners. And only Woods, Nicklaus and Nick Faldo had successfully defended a Masters. But Spieth was within reach of two in three years after debuting with a second. It was record pace.

Then came the wobble on Amen Corner. It might sound peaceful but every golfer knows the stretch between the 10th and 12th holes can be as perilous as any walk around the globe.

It is accepted that no champion is ever crowned until they have navigated Amen Corner. The adage rang true once again.

After a bogey on ten, a putt for what might have proven a steadying par slid narrowly past on the 11th, almost lipping the cup as it set alarm bells ringing.

Broadcaster Frank Nobilo, the New Zealander who had finished fourth in the 1996 Masters famous for Greg Norman’s remarkable collapse, noted; “It is a complete turnaround here”.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

When assessing the knockout blow that unfolded on Golden Bell, a name that belies the bastardry that can unfold on the 12th hole at Augusta, Andy Bell from The Guardian noted locals joked it had “broken more men than marriage or moonshine”.

A couple of years earlier Spieth’s pursuit of a remarkable triumph on debut fell short when a shot that landed on the edge of the 12th green tricked backwards into Rae’s Creek.

Spieth still led in 2016 but as Nobilo noted, he now found himself “in a tussle”, and as Gow said, exacerbating this was his troubles on the previous two holes.

“As golfers, we start to half doubt ourselves and the last thing you want to do at Augusta National when you are trying to win is walk on to the 12th tee doubting yourself,” Gow said.

“It is not a golf course you can defend against. It really isn’t. You need to be in that mindset of attacking. One thing people get wrong about it is that you don’t necessarily need to attack the pin, but you need to attack the green at a certain spot from a certain line to keep the ball on the green.

“You still have to keep the mentality of playing the golf course to be attacking, to be confident with every shot you hit, but the golf course will bite you if you don’t.”

On the tee, the broadcast picks up his caddie Michael Greller calmly telling the star to “commit to the right of the CBS camera and you will split those two bunkers”. But it is clear Spieth’s mind is clouded. He asks Greller, “Won’t this go over?”.

Assured the 9-iron he had in his hands was the right club, the tournament leader left it short and fans sitting on a grandstand below groaned as the ball landed short and trickled back into the water.

The pundits point out Spieth had changed his mind standing over the ball, having initially agreed to draw the ball back into the green, only to opt for a fade that fell short of the target.

“That’s what I did in 2014 and it cost me the tournament then, too,” he would later lament.

As this was occurring, Willett found his way out of a tricky spot on the 15th hole and was praised, with the caller noting; “The first mistake you make in pressure situations is poor decision making. He is not making any bad decisions.”

Ultimately, it was not the tee shot that cost Spieth. He might have recovered with a double-bogey. What followed hurt him.

Deciding to take a drop rather than hit another tee shot, the champion struck a chip so fat it plopped into the water once again to the astonishment of flabbergasted fans and experts behind the microphone.

“Oh my goodness. This is unbelievable. The iron man is now having an absolute meltdown,” Nick Faldo says in commentary.

“Goodness, Frank. He turns and walks to the 10th tee and we can hardly get the superlatives to mark this man’s incredible achievements and he is going to go bogey, bogey and (now) we don’t know what.”

Faldo later said Spieth had “never hit one that fat in his life”, while Nobilo described the 12th hole as “a lonely place right now” despite the golf world watching on in disbelief as the horror unfold.

Gow said a sign of how muddled Spieth had become in his thinking was the position where he dropped the ball.

“What got me was where he dropped it. He dropped it on a downward slope, across water, to a raised green,” he said.

“The grass is beautiful down there but it is not cut close enough that you can get a lot of spin on it, and he was too close to get a lot of spin on it, so it was a strange way that he went about his business when he was walking down the 12th.

“It all just unfolded from there. And he is not alone in doing that there. (Tony) Finau and (Francesco) Molinari did it on the same hole (in 2019). They just capitulated. It just all fell apart.”

Spieth said later he was in more than two minds as to how to approach what became a calamity, noting; “I’m not really sure what happened on the next shot. I just hit it fat.”

It was reported that as he walked to the 13th tee, he turned to Greller and said, “Buddy, it seems like we are collapsing.”

A CHAMPION REBOUNDS

As he celebrated a career-defining triumph, Willett had the good grace to praise the manner with which Spieth handled what was a traumatic afternoon.

“He was brilliant, just like everyone would imagine him to be. That was probably 15 minutes after he came off, so he could not have been in the best frame of mind, but he is a classy guy,” he said.

“He shook my hand and said, ‘Well done. Great playing today.’ He did everything you could really expect someone in that position to do and it just goes to show the kind of guy he is.

“You don’t want it to go any way like that, but, unfortunately, round the golf course with the pressure that is on, crazy things happen and that was one of those typical Masters moments where someone from behind comes up and plays nice all day.

“Unfortunately it was one person’s to lose that day, I guess, and I feel fortunate that we were in the position we were to take the best chances.”

The recipient of the rarest of gifts 20 years earlier when Norman capitulated, Faldo approached Spieth as he was getting into a courtesy car to offer a consoling word about a finale he later described as “a mixture between disaster and torture”.

“Greg was, right from the word go, on a downward trend, and Jordan was on an upward trend,” he told reporters.

“The good news is he’s 22. You regroup. He’s way too talented … and he’s got a lot of majors he’s going to have a shot to win.”

The Golden Bear, too, was shattered for the experience endured by a rising star of the links.

“My heart goes out to him for what happened, but I know Jordan is a young man who will certainly learn from this experience and there will be some good that comes out of this for him,” Nicklaus said.

Spieth vowed to learn from the experience and was able to bounce back with a triumph at Colonial soon after before rebounding from a dip midway through the final round of the British Open in 2017 to claim his fourth major.

“As a golfer, as a person, I can always look back on this experience and say we were strong,” he said.

“It really shouldn’t have been tough times but it is given the position we’re in, and that creates noise. It’s great when you’re on top, and it’s not fun on the other side of it, but nobody in here has to necessarily experience that side of it. But it makes me really enjoy a moment like this even more. It really does.”

Spieth has not won a major since but he has finished in the top 10 on seven occasions, which includes thirds at Augusta in 2018 and 2021 and a fourth last year.

Given his record, Gow would not be surprised if the 32-year-old marks the 10th anniversary of one of golf’s most infamous meltdowns with another strong push.

“Even after the capitulation, he could still play after that. He is one of those guys who had a lot of belief in what he does and how he does it,” he said.

“Even this year, I know he hasn’t played extremely well, but he has had a couple of top 11s, a couple of top 20s, and I reckon he is hovering around there. And when he gets to the Masters, wow, you can see what happens.”