This column originally appeared in Issue 5 of Golfweek magazine.
It may be entirely coincidental that both major championships contested sans spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic have been won not just by first-time major winners, but by men whose experience of the smelting crucible of major Sunday afternoons was scant or nonexistent.
That’s no rap against Collin Morikawa and Bryson DeChambeau, whose performances at TPC Harding Park and Winged Foot, respectively, were clearly deserving of victory. But prior to the U.S. Open, DeChambeau’s only other proximity to the lead in a major final round came a month earlier at the PGA Championship, won by Morikawa in only his second career major start.
If twice is indeed a coincidence, would a third occurrence at the Masters make it a trend? And does it matter?
Crowds are an essential part of the gauntlet a competitor must run to capture a sport’s most illustrious titles. They’re not always a positive presence – Bethpage Black’s beer can fans, for example – but even well-behaved spectators make a significant contribution to the pressurized atmosphere in which competitors learn if they’re the type to storm across the finish line like a thoroughbred racehorse or prone to stumbling like an Icelandic pony.
The gallery ropes at a tournament delineate golf’s jury box from which fans deliver real-time and often raucous verdicts on play and players, amplifying both heroics and hard knocks and leaving contenders in no doubt where they stand in relation to the trophy. On four Sunday afternoons every season (pandemics permitting), spectators are the soundtrack of stress, and the greatest players have figured out how to adjust the volume.
That’s true every week, to an extent, but it’s different during the most demanding final rounds. Evidence, you say? Greg Norman has won more than 80 tournaments around the world, an enviable record that identifies him as one of the finest closers in the history of golf. And yet … Norman’s two majors wins – the 115th and 122nd Open Championships – have always seemed such a beggarly return on his enormous talent, made more so by the fact that he logged another 18 top-5 finishes in the majors, eight of which were runners-up.
Of course there are umpteen reasons that might explain a player coming up short in a major – an opponent’s chip-in here, a swing failure there – but the only consistent element present in every major is pressure. And that discomfiting atmosphere is fueled by two things: the competitor’s internal wiring and the fans. So the absence of spectators can be a huge advantage to players unaccustomed (or ill-suited) to delivering in the traditional major environment, and perhaps even a detriment to those who are used to it and even thrive on it.
Three of Norman’s second-place finishes in majors – and eight of his top-5s – came at Augusta National, where the great closer repeatedly stumbled at the threshold of the champion’s locker room. But then, the second Sunday in April is traditionally the biggest day in golf, played out on its greatest stage. If a man is going to short-circuit, that’s where he’s going to do it. Many have done so, and in a manner we simply haven’t seen them fall victim to elsewhere.
Jordan Spieth in 2016. Rory McIlroy in ’11. Norman, often. Seve Ballesteros. Ray Floyd. The Toms Weiskopf and Kite. Three of those guys already owned green jackets at the time they suffered bitter losses at Augusta National. Major pressure spares no one.
In most respects, this third Sunday in November will be no less demanding than the second Sunday in April normally is. But whatever price is exacted by pressure will owe only to a player’s nervous system, not to the suffocating presence of thousands of fans whose cheers and groans telegraph happenings around the grounds.
The man who slips into the green jacket on Nov. 15 might be yet another first-time major winner, or someone previously untested by that glare. He’ll host the Champions Dinner 142 days hence knowing that he faced one less hurdle than his peers in the room, but that trivia will be quickly forgotten, and should be. Even in a muted coliseum, the last man standing will still have fended off every other lion.