Fred Couples shot a 9 at the Masters. Then he did something surprising

AUGUSTA, Ga. – If you can bear it, take a few seconds to imagine how it felt to be Fred Pairs at the Masters on Thursday afternoon.

Your day starts with a warm-up. But it really starts before that, when the first customer sees you on site at Augusta National, and you can smelt the first thought in their head. You’re 66 years old, playing Augusta National for the forty-first time, and the rumors of your competitive retirement from golf’s first team have become so loud you can’t even pretend to ignore them.

But you believe you can compete – not in vain, but really believe – so you have appeared again. And you showed up even though you knew some members of the public were making fun of you. Or worse, not seeing you. And you show up in a bright yellow ball because if they’re going to laugh anyway, you might as well laugh back.

You arrive on Thursday with something to prove, and although you are realistic about your goals, things go well. The weather is good. The golf course is hard and fast, which plays to your strengths as one of the enthusiasts who actually learned how to play Augusta National before the days of 350-yard drives and par-5 9-irons. You make birdies on a few holes early. You survive the turn unscathed. Suddenly you look up at the big leaderboard after the 12th hole and you’re one under for the day, three shots off the lead and royally hitting your younger, taller partners, despite their insistence on putting you 40 yards behind.

By the time your birdie putt hits 13, you’re feeling it. You are smiling at the crowd and the crowd is smiling back at you. They’re starting to believe, and hell, so are you.

“That’s Freddy, all right,” they’re saying to each other, recalling a vision from the past so old it doesn’t even seem like a memory. “He’s making a move!”

Your last real danger comes at 15, but thankfully, the Green Jackets have taken disaster out of the game. The par-5 is so long it’s a three-putt hole on your best day, so you lay at the bottom of the hill and plot a chip shot that will leave you with a 30-footer for birdie. At worst, you’re looking at an easy par and a path to the club with real breathing room inside the cut line.

And then, just when the confidence is really starting to flow, something mystical happens. You make two straight wedge shots within the space of three minutes, sending two balls into the water from 90 yards away. Before you count your shots, your dream is dead. A few moments later, the number on the scoreboard confirms: You just registered a nine.

“I’ve played I don’t know how many rounds, I’ve never done that,” you say. “Never hit a 90-yard shot in the water and then follow up with another one. I’ve played 41 years here. I’ve never done that.”

And then, even though you’re playing for pride, you know the air is out of the balloon, and so a bad situation gets worse. You look up after punching out on the 18th fairway and laugh.

“What did I do?” you ask later, but you already know the answer. “I went quad-double-double. Not much regrouping from that.”

You walk up to 18 and roll to a bottom 20 for par. The gallery explodes, but you’re too angry to care. You take the ball out of the cup and take a deep, long breath. You’ve just shot six for the day, 78, and unless there’s one last true miracle of the Master inside you, you’re looking after a lost cut.

By the time you score, you’re so ready to start walking toward the parking lot that your feet are already moving in that direction. But ho boy – here comes a green jacket. A journalist has asked you. A single journalist. And although everyone is sure that this request is a bad idea, you and the green jackets included, you hear yourself saying yes.

You stand in front of the reporter for a truly painful handful of seconds, listening to yourself recount the events of the past few minutes. It takes you a while to figure it out, but you’re using the cervical flexibility of a barn owl—eyes and thoughts are directed at 12 o’clock, but legs are firmly pointed at 4:30. It’s like your body is already starting the long walk into the night, but your brain hasn’t figured it out yet.

And then, just when you’re starting to think your legs might just lift you off the podium, giving you the dignity to escape a Masters Thursday closing meltdown in the comfort of your own thoughts, you wonder why you bothered to say yes to the request in the first place, and you laugh.

“I do it in Augusta. I love this place,” you say. “No matter what I shoot, I try. I’m very frustrated. Because at any age you still want to hit shots. But I’m not going to run.

“If I was 35 and doing this, I’d give everyone bananas,” you say. “And I would have run right over and you told me to get out of my life.”

But today?

“It was a really fun day.”

And the craziest thing is that even though you don’t feel it, you know that you condemn it. You still play golf for moments like Thursday — not for the fleeting moments of magic, but for the fleeting, utterly insane belief that magic can stick around.

You don’t like to think about your game as no time; you think of it as a lot of this time. But there’s a reason why Masters patrons cheer for you louder than anywhere else on earth: This is the golf course where time stands still, and you’re the golfer who embodies it.

“I’ll be done with this,” you say. “My first Masters I played in, I shot 73-68, which was fantastic. I paired up with Tom Watson and shot 80.”

“I couldn’t keep up with it. I was making holes and I didn’t want to let them down and my score became irrelevant.”

“I think that happens in all acts of life. You just feel uncomfortable and you can’t take it back.”

The reporter seems very happy that you didn’t throw him a 7-iron so he won’t hold you, but he sure seems to think he’s seen some magic, and he sure seems to think the magic is lasting… even with a first-round 78.

But you’re Freddie Couples, and you know better than that, so laugh it off.

“Tomorrow I have to go do the same thing. But maybe not finish 10-over in two holes, or whatever the hell I did.”