AUGUSTA, Ga. – When someone witnesses a disaster, some interesting things happen in the brain in an instant.
The autonomic nervous system floods the body with adrenaline and cortisol, speeding up sensory processing in the amygdala and overloading memory encoding—essentially turning the brain into a vector for documentation. Occasionally, this physiological response causes a phenomenon called “tonic immobility”, where the witness of a traumatic event does not run away or fight, but freeze.
In this situation, the witness is helpless – trapped in a moment of unforgiving horror, unable to do anything to change the situation, and subjected to a moment of physiological stress in which their brain is uniquely weakened to recall every horrifying detail.
This is the unfortunate situation that befell several hundred patrons on the side of the 13th hole Sunday afternoon at the Masters when Haotong Li endured the worst 30 minutes of his golfing life, then recorded a score that upended his tournament and defied belief: A five 10.
The trauma began innocuously enough. On his second tee shot from the fairway, Lee over-hit his 3-wood section on the winding Rae’s Creek that frames the hole. Under normal circumstances, the situation he would face would be simple enough: Retrieve the ball from the creek, drop a spot on dry land no closer to the hole, and play the wedge into the green.
Except, as fate would have it, Li’s approach did NO reach under normal circumstances. Instead of settling inside the branch, his ball bounced off a large rock and took an ugly bounce to the left, landing deep in the bushes higher up the hill on the far side of the stream.
Li collapsed in the street without too much trouble – but realized his bad luck once he arrived at the crime scene. Lee’s caddy, Jady de Beer, drew the short straw, dropping the bag and stumbling across Rae’s creek as he went into the bushes in pursuit of the ball.
After a few unlucky seconds, patrons on the far side of the fairway took pity on the caddy and started shouting instructions. LOTdirecting de Beer to the golf ball, which he eventually picked up. (Left, left! Up! Up!) After a long conversation, Li grabbed a wedge and headed across the river to observe the lie in the tree.
This might have seemed like a good idea to both parties at the time of the decision, but it seemed pretty clear to everyone about VS. side of the freeway that it was an unforgivable error because it introduced a powerful, terrible force: temptation. The ball was almost certainly unplayable; Li seemed as if he would be better served returning to his former place than taking any additional risks. But after some more chatter, Li ignored the gallery’s better judgment and settled for his chip from between the hedges, bumping into a bush and running into a clump of branches only to put his club on the ground.
Finally, he jumped and the crowd’s worst fears were realized. The ball traveled less than 15 feet, at an angle roughly perpendicular to the direction he intended to hit his ball, and settled even further into the dirt.
It was at this time that I and my colleague, cv vDylan Dethierrealized that we might be on the verge of witnessing something not just bad, but truly horrifying. Li’s ball had been in hell. Now it was somewhere worse. He was no longer able to return to the place of his original shot. Instead, he could take a few club lengths and get a drop that way.
Li seemed to realize this himself as his mind finally settled and he returned the ball to the bushes. He spent some time trying to settle into a stance on this new, nastier lie—at one point hitting the group of onlookers—before giving his ball a dejected look and walking away.
Finally, and much to the relief of those potentially sitting within the laser’s foot-low range, he decided to take a tumble, which is when a new character entered our story for the first time: The Rules Officer, who would serve as an innocent bystander up to this point.
The problem was that Li appeared to pick the ball off the ground like a child might pluck a dandelion, but he wasn’t actually in a penalty area. The red lines demarcating the area in question were behind him; he had just picked up the ball from live action, or so it seemed from our perspective, and so the rules official reacted as if Li had just cut the wrong wire on a pipe bomb, frantically shaking the golfer back into place so he could take a proper drop from the spot into deeper hell. In other words: you are not allowed to do this.
Eventually, the rules officials and Li worked out a solution – although the official still seemed extremely concerned about the whole affair – and after a few long zig-zag walks to Rae’s creek, Li had landed properly, picked up a proper golf club and prepared to play a shot by advancing his ball in the general direction of the green. (An aside: At some point during the zig-zagging, de Beer realized he’d left the bag roughly 30 yards behind where it should be and began running to collect it at full speed. Two thoughts on that decision: 1. There’s no running at Augusta National. It’s time to start caring about the pace of the game.)
Haotong Li at the time of disaster.
Getty Images
Li played his shot to the fairway, though he used a surprisingly full swing and sent it high over the trees and long and left of the green, landing mercifully on the safe side of Rae’s creek. The crowd, which by this point was shocked and completely stunned, responded with an Augusta National: A Bronx cheer for the golfer, who quickly escaped from the wrong side of Rae’s Creek and up toward the green.
Only now, almost a full 25 minutes after Haotong Li had first entered the wilderness, did the crowd’s attention turn to others The golfer sharing the hole with him: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who was preparing to hit what could be described as the single most important shot of his entire Masters week, a tee shot to set up a birdie to cut the deficit from leader Rory McIlroy to 2.
Say what you will about Scheffler’s recent antics with the press and himself, the man handled the first act of Li’s disaster with the patience of a saint. He walked back and forth down the fairway, up the green, behind his ball, and now he rushed up to the ball and hit a good – if not great – pitch about 11 yards.
Scheffler could have reasonably expected his birdie putt to arrive soon after that putt. Common sense would dictate that Li play his next shot with some impatience, considering the delay his misfortune had already caused. After all, Justin Rose was waiting on the freeway. But Li hadn’t shown much urgency at any point during the process, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Li may have certainly hoped that this part would be over quickly. Instead, he took a short, aggressive putt with his putter toward the location of Sunday’s rolled pin, and it became clear that his disaster was just beginning. Li watched in mesmerized disbelief as his ball sailed past the hole, past the caddy tending the flagstick, past the edge of the green and into the water.
It was at this time that the crowd reacted as if they had literally witnessed a crash, letting out the kind of low, horrified, disbelieving snort that might be heard behind metal on metal, or detecting a cockroach infestation.
It’s unclear what Scheffler was thinking during this time, but his internal dialogue probably became less forgiving after Li’s eighth putt — which was another putt from the same spot as the first putt in the water, though it only traveled about half the distance to the hole — nor the ninth, which missed the hole on the low side. Somehow, Scheffler’s playing partner had managed to get eight shot between Scheffler’s second putt on the 13th and his birdie attempt, which also missed on the low side.
Thankfully, by the time the ball reached striking distance of the hole on his 9th shot, Li was no longer trying to save his skill to take his time. He practically ran to make his mark after his ball, clearing the track for Scheffler. And then he practically ran to hit his putter, which dropped into the hole for a truly breathtaking 10-five… and caused a the second Bronx cheers from the Amen Corner faithful.
Li, to his credit, was a good sport about the disappointment, holding his hands up to the sky in mock celebration after finally escaping with a 10. And CBS, to its credit, was a good sport about it, too, choosing not to show Li’s fall from 5 below and her measure up to the same level and deeply shaken.
But for those who saw the action up close, the trip was a harrowing exercise in the kind of trauma that only Augusta National can inflict.
The pain of the moment was real for Haotong Li, but the memory was even more real for those who saw it up close and who will now live their lives trying to forget.
“I always thought I wanted to play this hole,” one of the victims said Sunday afternoon. “Now I’m not so sure.”
;)
