You don’t know pressure until you know the pressure of the masters

Augusta National on Masters of Sunday is a study in claustrophobia. Not in the psychiatric sense without e-exit, although if you are in the sea of ​​humanity after TeE 12 when leaders come, you can get more than a taste of this. More like this: Sunday in Augusta National is tighton both sides of the gallery ropes. Even down in Holler – 11 green, 12 tee, 13 fairway – the air is thin.

Fans and the moment set the players to the advantage, and the players and the moment of returning the favorite. Bob Jones’s ghost puts everyone on the advantage, along with tee shot at 18 and the prospect of a basement interview in Hut. That ghost is hovering; That noise at 18 is weak; That basement becomes crowded.

Here is Francesco Molinari, Sunday masters, masters 2019, putting his work clothes with a two -stroke lead. Dark pants, white-on shirt is not a lit man. He looks at himself in a mirror and an involuntary question goes to mind: How would these colors go with the most famous Green Sport coat? “Of course, you don’t want to think about it,” the molinari said in an interview a few months after that masters. “But you do.”

You haven’t hit a shot and the tournament is playing with your head.

For a player in the quarrel, the claustrophobia can be placed in the first TeE. No, before that. It can be placed in green practice after first tee. No, before that. Can start at the club. Yes, there. You can’t breathe, your skin is clumsy and an obsessive prayer is passing through your head as a Norfolk Southern Train colliding across the city center Augusta: Please don’t look at me.

This is not all, but there are a dozen players, early on Sunday afternoon: you have been in the range and now in the club, just to use Loo. The time is going toward your tee time 60 minutesWhen this particular and exquisite torture will end and the reception for next year will begin.

And now there is this beautiful club man in his green coat looking for your way. His wife in her yellow flower shirt, looking at your way. Their semi-adult children who label together as prepared mini-sides. And your worst fear is getting true: the boy is speaking to you. He is saying something appropriate, as “good luck there today. We are rooting for ya.” You really don’t know or care what he is saying. You are sitting on yourself.

You know who you are. You are Jordan Spieth, Rory Mcilroy, Max Homa, others different in category 1. You are irritating and exciting, and this Sunday-at-Augusta, I can’t blow The thing is in your DNA. Or maybe you are in category 2, with Tiger Woods and Scottie Scheffler and Bryson dechambeauteasing and exciting like your brothers in C1, but more determined to hide it. You are not in category 3, with Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka and Cameron Young and others who can make the parade leaders walk from nine green to 10 tee and barely feel one thing.

But Tiger, man – what do you give? You have done the Sunday-in-Masters thing 24 times. In most Sundays, you have killed Your pre-randy heat. You have looked good at setting green. But then you take that walk through it all people from green practice to the first thesis and something happens.

We get it. It’s intimidating. Are you surroundedin that tee. Both sides of the straight path are lined with fans, some with binoculars, and they are lighting holes through you. There are members and guests on the second floor porch at the foot club and seeing. You are loving, and we really get it. The real world, this count is colliding and has nowhere to hide. Your record, your experience, your exemplary warming suddenly means nothing. In that environment, Tiger Woods would hit, at least in some memorable cases, some of the wildest shots offline you could ever imagine. Sunday in Augusta. You can say this without having a doctorate in clinical psychology: it was supposed to be stress.

If you have one, as Bhrett McCabe does, you can say much more. McCabe is a psychologist who tells the players with whom he works – Jon Rahm, Sam Burns, Billy Horschel – that they should start thinking about Sunday long before the tour starts. “On Sunday, it’s too late,” McCabe said lately. “Sunday in Masters is Alabama and Michigan in Rose Bowl. It’S’S’S’S EXPECTED.”

In the 6th hole, deduction party 3, all-players, cadets, pinkertons, fans, tour officials, cameras operators-joined in the name of ball fear in the air. The green is 100 meters below the top and the pin is on a rack beaten at the back right. The ball-top-topic acoustics is perfect, but it doesn’t matter, because now that ball is in its own mind. In about four seconds, there is THOUSANDS Eyes on a single golf ball and no one is saying boo. “There’s a complete, full silence,” Jim said recently “Bones” Mackay, former Caddy and now NBC Sports reporter on the course. “So intense.” And it is. Everyone is in the moment. There are no cell phones. There are no distractions. There is nothing but that ball in the air.

The other party 3, the 12th short, is even more intense because, so far, it is being delayed. Fellas come from the 11th green and look left (all together now) to see what the flag is doing in 12. What players not Want to do is look straight forward in the 12th. That’s because the box is small and the crowd is thick. Thick and almost very respectful: applause of the Opera House for past contenders and champions, the deadly silence when a player is on his ball. You don’t like tee height truly I don’t want to start all over again. Tension can grab with you. “Twelve,” said Tom Watson, “is the most stressful goal in the Golf Course.” Does Tom Watson hit you as a kind of person who uses that word by chance?

Then there are two moments of exquisite intimacy, for their players and cadets, the 12th and 13th Green. On the 12th, you can actually hear that a (rare) poultry blow will enter. That’s because the closest spectators cheers are almost 200 meters away and a second breakdown for their hysteria to reach you.

Then your last break of the day, in the backward intimacy of the 13th box. You can practically shout someone who plays next door in the country and search for a hot dog. There is a back bath there, the best of the day of the day. There is a bench. There is often a reception. You can eat something, drink something, do a deep breath. You are literally in the shade. For a short time there, no one can see you. Then you repeat in the afternoon sun. For the rest of the day, you are on the show, like a movie star at a price show. Trade time of show, Augusta style.

You rinse one, playing in the 15th green, and the Gallery in the Grandstand offers a sad play-by-play chorus, hoping to light in despair: Oh! Ooh-oh-oh-oh? Urrrrrr.

And sometimes – EVER – Players become fans. The players, every last of them, grew up looking at the tournament. They know how it is, to be a fan. On the Sunday of the masters, they hear what the spectators hear. Brooks Koepka, Ian Poulter and Webb Simpson were in the 17th when Woods played his goal in Par-3 16, when Woods was claiming for his fifth coat. Verne was calling it in CBS for Grammy at home, and Michael PhelpsRetired Lanky swimmer was about six meters behind Woods, in the front row of spectators, separated by the action with a thin rope. Tiger’s ball took the green slope and began to deceive the hill and for a while it looked and looked like it could enter. Koepka and Poulter and Simpson heard them all. Walking down 17, Koepka said, “That was great.” Koepka. You wouldn’t think.

Woods won that year, six years ago. That’s how it goes every year. A boy wins. The other players, pretty, come out quickly, returning to their lives and their regrets, coming to the crowds, leaving behind hysteria.

Until next April.