HAVING played in half-a- century of Masters, Gary Player was honest enough to acknowledge that most golfers start to choke at Augusta National as soon as they drive down Magnolia Lane.
For Kenny Perry, it wasn't until the 71st hole of a tournament where he was poised to become the oldest major winner in championship history, that his game began to unravel.
When the 48-year-old from Kentucky, who was also thwarted by Mark Brooks
in a play-off to win the PGA Championship at Valhalla in 1996, hit what he described as "the shot of my life" on the short 16th, the odds against him winning the Masters shortened dramatically. After all, Perry hadn't dropped a shot to par since the 12th hole of the third round.
That tee-shot at the testing par 3, which finished under a foot from the cup, secured another valuable birdie and gave him a two-shot lead with two holes remaining. He'd played golf in the style of Nick Faldo over the front nine, grinding out pars to keep himself in front of the chasing pack when all the attention was focused on Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
If ever there was a Masters where the victor was able to sneak under the radar then surely this was it: only when the world's best two players had come up a little short did the spotlight return to focus on Perry. The veteran was comfortable in the shadows, but less secure in the limelight.
On the 17th, his approach ran through the back of the green. Needing to get up and down, he struck a poor chip and needed two putts for bogey. "I skulled it," he recalled of that costly error. "I can't stop my right hand when I get a little nervous, it wants to shoot a little bit and I can't calm it down."
On the last, he found sand off the tee and was unable to replicate the majesty of Sandy Lyle's famous tournament- winning blow from the trap. Perry's 7-iron came up short of the green and the subsequent chip finished 15 feet shy. He remembered Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Mark O'Meara holing similar putts. But the art of positive thinking eluded him.
The putt was tentative and slipped off line. Another 5, another missed opportunity. "Great players make it happen," Perry acknowledged with disarming honesty, "and average players don't. That was the most disappointing putt of the day. How many chances do you get to win the Masters?"
In a three-man play-off with Angel Cabrera and Chad Campbell, he couldn't separate himself from the Argentine on the first extra hole, the 18th, even though Cabrera was in the trees. Then, with Campbell eliminated, the fates intervened on the second extra hole, the tenth. Both men found the fairway their drives but Perry's ball picked up dirt.
"I had mud on the right side of my ball. And it just kept easing way over left and kind of missed on the bank there which spun it on down. I guess I should have aimed it more right, but it's a tough deal."
Given the limitations of his chipping, Perry was unable to recover and a par was good enough to help Cabrera clinch his second major victory.
"If this is the worst thing that happens to me, I can live with it," Perry added. "I really can. Great players get it done, and Angel got it done. This is the second major he's won. I've blown two, the only two I've had chances of winning. But I'm looking forward to Bethpage Black. I'm looking forward to the British Open, to the PGA. You know what, I know I can do it now."
Perhaps so, but just as Colin Montgomerie discovered after he let victory slip through his grasp at Winged Foot in the US Open, the pain of a self-inflicted wound leaves a permanent scar.
And as Perry's fellow-American Doug Sanders said of the putt he missed to win the Open in 1970 against Jack Nicklaus on the Old Course: "It's not so bad now. Some days I can go five minutes without thinking about it ..."
