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Sporting News, The, April 22, 2005 by Dave Kindred

It's not the last place you want to be. The last place is in the turtle pond. But if you put a golf ball where Tiger Woods put his, your chances of executing an efficient shot are minimal. Thirty-five feet from the hole against a tall fringe of grass, the hole hidden in a valley, Woods needed to get it close to stay a shot in front, with the Masters championship there for the taking.

Go back 30 years. Jack Nicklaus on the 16th green. Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller baying at his heels. A 45-foot putt in front of him, up the hill, needing just to get it close. And from down there, the ball rolling forever, Nicklaus worked a piece of magic that is in every historian's Masters scrapbook. The ball rolling, rolling, rolling in, with Nicklaus running across the green in delight, Miller later declaring, "All I saw were Bear tracks."

Now, a Tiger.

Now came Tiger's delicate chip shot, sent 20 feet left of the pin because he knew what would happen when the ball came to the high spot at the valley's edge. The ball would turn right, would turn hard right, would roll into the valley as if entering a funnel, a funnel directing every shot toward the hole.

It would if struck perfectly.

And that could be done only if the man with the stick in his hand had come to the moment with a sense that the moment belonged to him and only him.

Rolling into the valley, a foot from the hole, about to stop, turning so slowly that the Nike swoosh could be seen, stopping at the very edge of the cup--stopping, his name imprinted on the ball, there to be read--and then one last suggestion of a roll, and it fell in for a birdie as memorable as the one that gave the young Nicklaus his fifth Masters.

Though Woods followed that birdie with two bogeys that gave Chris DiMarco a new life, Woods ended a sudden-death playoff suddenly with a 16-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole. For Woods, it was his fourth Masters championship, his ninth major at age 29, two ahead of Nicklaus' pace en route to his record 18 majors.

And then, after his 28th hole of a day that began at first light and ended at twilight, Woods did what Nicklaus did the day before.

He wept.

He took off his cap, exhausted, relieved, delighted, and wiped tears from his eyes.

Used to be, Nicklaus wept for victories. Coming up the last fairway, two or three shots ahead, "I've done it pretty much every time," he says. "It's kind of nice to know that you are human and you can do that."

This time, Nicklaus wept in farewell. Coming up the last fairway he would play in this Masters, 19 shots behind the second-day leader, "I just knew it was my last time of playing here." He had hit a beautiful little shot to within 4 feet of the hole. It was his 11,801st shot in 45 Masters. Walking up the steep hill to the green, "I sort of lost it," he says.

He stood at the green's edge. "Steely blues," his competitors once called Nicklaus' eyes. Now the steel was gone. Repeatedly, he pressed an index finger against the corners of his eyes. He wanted to make that 4-footer for one last birdie. Instead, he wept. "I could never get it back to hit my putt."

Jay Haas has played the golf tour nearly 30 years. There on the green with Nicklaus, he came to his friend with a smile and said, "Oh, cut it out, will ya?" He had his own putt to make, and it was getting mighty misty in these old men's eyes.

Nicklaus had planned to skip this Masters. Six times a winner at Augusta, his time on leaderboards is gone. He now is Jack Nicklaus, golf course architect. But then came tragedy. A grandson drowned. Jake was 17 months old. He had learned to rush, arms spread wide, into his grandfather's embrace. "And the mother and dad couldn't get him out of my arms," says the man whom Jake called "Peepaw."

Jake's father, Steve Nicklaus, sought relief in his father's presence. After the funeral, they played golf together about every other day. Because Steve suggested it, they flew to Augusta to play. There, club chairman Hootie Johnson asked Nicklaus to play one more time. And then Steve said to his father, "Go play."

So he did, and maybe the tears were in farewell to Augusta. And maybe they were in memory of a small boy who ran to his Peepaw. And when Tiger Woods, in victory, spoke of his father too sick, too frail to see his son do it again, he wept at the words, "This is for Dad."

DAVE KINDRED

dkindred@sportingnews.com