AUGUSTA, Ga. – Jonas Blixt played all kinds of courses in golf’s minor leagues before graduating to the PGA Tour and quickly grabbing two wins.

Even he wasn’t quite prepared for what Augusta National offered in his Masters debut.

“Every single shot can be the best shot of your life and every single shot can be the worst shot of your life,” Blixt said. “You really have to stay focused.”

Blixt did that well enough Thursday to shoot a 2-under 70, matching the best score among rookies as the Class of `14 debuted to generally favorable reviews on golf’s grandest stage. Joining him there was 35-year-old Jimmy Walker, a three-time winner this season who ran off four straight birdies on the back nine, and Kevin Stadler, son of former winner Craig Stadler.

Blixt did everything but stop to smell the azaleas as he took it all in with former champion Ben Crenshaw helping show the way.

“I just got a good feeling being on the grounds,” the Swede said. “It’s a soothing feeling.”

Jordan Spieth felt much the same way in his first crack at a tournament many in golf believe he will be playing in for a long time. The 20-year-old, who played his way onto the PGA Tour and the President’s Cup team last year, smiled as he approached his opening tee shot.

“I just soaked it in, it was really cool,” Spieth said. “I was watching the ball, and from there the adrenaline came in.”

Playing with Rory McIlroy and fellow first-timer Patrick Reed in the featured pairing of the morning, Spieth jumpstarted his round with a 30-foot putt for birdie on No. 5. He played Amen Corner in 1 under for an opening 71 that put him three shots off the pace set by Bill Haas.

Reed might have joined him there, but a bogey-bogey-bogey finish put him at 73.

“I felt they handled it really well,” said McIlroy, who had a 71 of his own. “They both had it under par, Jordan finished under par. Patrick didn’t have a good finish, but I felt like they played well.”

A Masters lacking Tiger Woods had plenty of newcomers, with 24 of the 97 players in the field making their Masters debut. Some handled it well, while others struggled on a course that can make golfers nervous.

Among them was Jordan Niebruge, a sophomore at Oklahoma State who got a spot in the field with his win last year in the U.S. Amateur Public Links. Niebruge shot a 9-over 81 that he said wasn’t as bad as it looked.

That can happen on a course that demands precise placement of the ball on approach shots to the green.

“I hit it well today and I found myself on the wrong side of the hole and got a couple bad breaks,” the 20-year-old said. “But other than that I was pretty close to having a good round.”

Another amateur, Oliver Goss of Australia, was at the Masters as a spectator last year with his college teammates from Tennessee. He took advantage of a practice round with defending champion Adam Scott to familiarize himself with the course before his first round.

“He basically just kept me calm out there,” Goss said. “We just chitchatted, and just kept me calm.”

When it came time to play for real, Goss used some inner psychology to get around in a respectable 4-over 76.

“I had a little thought this morning, every other tournament you play you try and play like you’re in the Masters,” he said. “But for the Masters you try and treat it like just another tournament.”

But it’s hard to ignore history at Augusta National.

Blixt found that out when he was paired with the 62-year-old Crenshaw, playing in his 43rd Masters. His caddie, Carl Jackson, has been around even longer.

“I told (Blixt) he’s been here, this is his 53rd time,” Crenshaw said. “And he just went, `Oh my gosh.'”

Canada’s Graham DeLaet would love to his first competitive round at Augusta National back. The Weyburn, Sask. native opened with an 8-over 80 and is tied for 90th.

Thursday didn’t start off on the right foot for DeLaet with a bogey on the first hole. That negative momentum carried the entire front nine as DeLaet bogied six of his first seven holes including four in a row on holes four through seven.

DeLaet calmed down a bit on the back nine where he pared every hole except 10 and 14 where he added two more bogies.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – What a wild ride for Phil Mickelson to start the Masters.

Seeking to become only the fourth player to win as many as four green jackets, Lefty put himself in quite a hole with plenty of erratic shots Thursday at Augusta National.

Mickelson made a triple-bogey at the seventh hole, where he knocked it back-and-forth past the cup a staggering four times before finally sinking a putt. He took double-bogey when he dumped one in the water at No. 15, and trudged to the finish with a 4-over 76 – one off the worst scores of his Masters career.

Not exactly the opening Mickelson needed in his bid to join Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods with four Masters titles. Six-time champion Jack Nicklaus is the only player to capture more.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The tee shot is ceremonial, yet there was a sense that competition still exists between the “Big Three.”

Or at least two of them.

Arnold Palmer, 84, hit the opening shot Thursday morning down the middle of the first fairway, barely up the hill. He was followed by 78-year-old Gary Player, who hit his tee shot some 40 yards past Palmer. Last to hit was Jack Nicklaus, the six-time Masters champion who turned 74 this year. Nicklaus hit a tee shot on the same line as Player, and it took once last bounce and rolled about a yard or two by Player.

“But it’s not bad when you think he used to outdrive me by 50,” Player said. “But he did hit on a sprinkler. You didn’t see that?”

Palmer’s drive was the most meaningful. He said at Bay Hill he would be having back surgery after the Masters that will help him enjoy the game more. Nicklaus said for Palmer to be an honorary starter “adds a year to his life.”

“I’ve never seen a man who loves the game as much as Arnold Palmer,” Nicklaus said.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Eighty years after it was founded, dozens of questions remain about the murky inner workings of the Augusta National Golf Club.

There are none about who calls the shots.

Chairman Billy Payne proved that again Wednesday, tackling a wide range of issues in his annual “State of the Masters” news conference. Since taking over from Hootie Johnson in 2006, Payne, the former Atlanta Olympic Committee CEO, has found himself facing such hot-button issues such as adding women to the Augusta’s membership and Tiger Woods’ suitability as a role model.

This time around, the mood was decidedly lighter. Yet judging by the frequent smiles and nods of assent from the dozen green jackets lining the back of the room, Payne’s pronouncements on the less-weighty issues of his own golf handicap and whether to replace the famed Eisenhower Tree on the 17th fairway – lost after being damaged in an ice storm – aren’t likely to face much headwind.

A reporter asked Payne whether he took the job with a “to-do” list and if so, how many items on it had been resolved.

“I had no list because I didn’t know anything about the job,” he said. “When I became a member of Augusta National, I had dreams of becoming a scratch golfer.”

Once the laughter stopped, Payne turned to Fred Ridley, chairman of the club’s competition committee, and asked, “Have I made it there yet, Fred?”

“Working on it,” Ridley replied.

“However,” Payne added quickly, “I compete quite well here because I’m also chairman of the Handicap Committee.”

Handicaps are hardly the only issue where Payne makes use of his bully pulpit. After several years of vigorously – and very publicly – defending the club’s longstanding policy of barring women, he presided over the quiet addition of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina business executive Darla Moore to the membership rolls in August 2012.

With the Royal & Ancient, golf’s oldest governing body, set to vote on admitting women later this year, Payne left no doubt how he planned to vote.

“Well, as I’ve said before, we readily and joyously welcomed our lady members when that happened a couple years ago, and it remains a very good decision on our part. We are so delighted, and I know I speak for everyone, that they are members. …

“Other than that, I would respect their process, their requirement to conduct a vote … and as I’ve said,” he paused, smiling, “I know where one vote is going to be cast.”

Payne also revealed the club no longer maintained a waiting list for Masters passes – among the toughest tickets in sports to obtain – for “some kind of ego purposes,” deciding instead to put any tickets returned to the club into an annual lottery.

But he may have bruised a few egos when asked why total donations to the club’s Masters Tournament Foundation were down significantly from its first year.

“I have a very simple answer. The donations went down because the first year we started it, all the members got a little encouragement from the chairman to donate,” Payne said.

“So when the second year rolled around, there wasn’t anybody left but the new members. So that’s the phenomena you saw.”

The accomplishment Payne touted most was the role Augusta National and the Masters Foundation played in creating and hosting last Sunday’s inaugural Drive, Chip & Putt Championship for youngsters ages 7-15.

“I was trying to make comparisons,” Payne began, “think about how I had been impacted like that before, and I can only go back to, I used to ask my mother, `How will I know when I meet my wife?’

“And she would always say, `Well, you’ll know. You’ll know.’

“And Saturday night at the banquet preceding the Sunday competition, I knew,” he said.

Payne added he was already looking forward to next year’s event, saying he’d heard more than 15,000 kids had already signed up. But Payne also took advantage of the opportunity to poke a little fun at himself.

Playing off his reputation as a promoter – Payne admitted using fuzzy math to convince the International Olympic the average summer temperature in usually steamy Atlanta would be 75 degrees during the games – he said, “You’ve got to ask the U.S. Golf Association to get actual (numbers).

“I am known to exaggerate a little bit.”

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The legends usually fade away gracefully here, part of the reason why the absence of Tiger Woods at the Masters seems so jarring.

He wasn’t at the Champions Dinner Tuesday night, won’t be on the first tee Thursday morning. Someone else will be putting on the green jacket when it’s all over, and not nearly as many people will be sitting in front of their TVs at home watching it happen.

“It’s part of what you do in April,” Augusta National chairman Billy Payne said. “You watch Tiger compete in the Masters.”

It might just be an aberration, and there’s always the chance Woods will be back one day almost as good as new. But there’s also the sense that one of the most spectacular reigns in the history of the game could be coming to an end in the same place Woods first burst into the public consciousness 17 years ago.

It’s now been six years since Woods won a major championship, and nearly a decade since he last won a Masters. With a surgically repaired back at the age of 38, it would be hard to find a bookie in Vegas offering decent odds that he will win another anytime soon – if ever.

None of that means all that much to the other players here. They’re beholden to Woods because he has helped make many of them rich, but they’re also here this week with a job to do that is always easier in his absence.

They’re his contemporaries, if not his rivals. Woods never really had a rival in the way Arnold Palmer had Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan had Sam Snead. When he put on his red shirt on Sunday the tournament was usually his to lose, not someone else’s to win.

“Players to some extent will miss him but then they are like, hey he’s not here, so it’s one less guy you have to beat,” Steve Stricker said.

Golf will miss him more, especially in the one place people associate with the game more than any other. From the time Woods won in a runaway in 1997 to become the first black man to win a green jacket, the Masters has been all about Woods – and both the tournament and the player have prospered greatly.

The buzz in the weeks and days before the Masters has for the last two decades been about how Woods will do. The TV ratings on Sunday soar when he’s in contention, as he almost always is.

It’s not the same without him now. It may never be the same again.

“It’s awkward to not have him here,” Phil Mickelson said. “I hope he gets back soon.”

Mickelson talked some this week about what Woods has meant to the game, reminiscing about the $180,000 first place purse offered when he won his first tournament in Tucson in 1991 as an amateur. He suggested to his agent that week that someone might win $1 million in a tournament someday, though probably not during Mickelson’s career.

Now a minimum $1 million first prize is as crucial as free courtesy cars just to get players to show up at a PGA Tour event.

“Nobody has benefited more from having Tiger in the game than myself,” Mickelson said. “Tiger has been the instigator.”

He surely has been, much in the way Palmer was when he turned the country on to televised golf with four Masters wins in seven years beginning in 1958. Palmer is 84 now and last won here a half century ago, but he and Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player still come every year to play in the par-3 contest and hit the ceremonial first balls.

Don’t count on Woods doing that someday. He’s not wired to interact with people the same way the players of yesteryear were, and it’s hard to imagine one of the most ferocious competitors in the history of the game even putting a tee in the ground if he didn’t think he had a chance of winning.

Palmer said he believes Woods can come back and win like he did before, though he cautioned he may have more trouble with his head than his back. Palmer said he didn’t win any majors after the age of 34 because his success had dimmed his inner drive, and that Woods might be having the same problem.

Palmer might be right, though no one has really figured Woods out yet. He’s one of the most recognized people on the planet, yet he remains an enigma in a red shirt

Without him, though, golf doesn’t seem nearly as fun.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – With friends and family members in tow, Ryan Moore made memories at the Masters on Wednesday.

Moore shot a 6-under 21 to win the Par 3 tournament at Augusta National, calling it a “perfect practice day.”

No one should consider it the perfect prelude to golf’s first major, though.

Since the Par 3 contest began in 1960, no winner has gone on to don the green jacket later in the week. Raymond Floyd (1990) and Chip Beck (1993) won the mid-week tournament and finished second on Sunday. But since no one has swept both events, making the Par 3 more of a curse than a forecast for the Masters.

“I’m not afraid of it,” Moore said. “You never know. Someone has got to break that curse at some point in time, so hopefully it’s me, if I end up winning. Who knows? I might go shoot 8 under or something, make a couple hole-in-ones. We’ll see.”

Moore made a relatively short putt on the ninth hole to get to 6 under. He finished one shot behind the Par 3 record held by Art Wall (1965) and Gay Brewer (1973).

Moore played the round with his 18-month-old son, Tucker, who got more attention as he pounded his plastic driver all around the course.

“It was fun having my boy out there and playing a round, you know, playing with a couple of friends,” Moore said. “That’s what it’s for, to kind of make you relax a little bit and just go and enjoy yourself the afternoon before.”

Kevin Stadler and Fuzzy Zoeller finished tied for second at 4-under 23. Bernhard Langer, Joost Luiten and Victor Dubuisson were another stroke back.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -Tennis star Caroline Wozniacki stood out at the Masters on Wednesday – and not because of her erratic golf game this time.

Wozniacki showed up at Augusta National with her blonde hair dyed bright pink. And she wore matching shoes!

A former top-ranked player on the WTA Tour, Wozniacki caddied for fiancé Rory McIlroy in the Par 3 contest. While other golfers’ kids were the main attraction during the fun event, Wozniacki’s flashy locks got all the attention.

Wozniacki also caddied for McIlroy last year, and drew laughs when she a swing at a ball and sent it dribbling into a pond. She didn’t any hacks this time, just making a putt on the ninth green.

The two sports celebrities were engaged over the holidays. They have set a wedding date but are keeping the details private for now.

TODDLERS RULE

Wyatt, Will and Abby Johnson (Rob Carr/ Getty Images)

The Par 3 contest might as well have been a cutest kid competition.

The annual event at the Masters delivered some of the most adorable moments of the week Wednesday.

Ryan Moore’s 18-month-old son, Tucker, pounded a plastic driver into the ground as he ran across the practice green. Scott Stallings’ 14-month-old son, Finn, putted balls with a small driver and was a star on several holes, stumbling around as he balanced the whole walking and swinging thing. Kevin Streelman carried his 4-month-old daughter, Sophia, to the first tee before handing her off.

All the kids were decked out in white coveralls, the traditional attire for caddies at Augusta National.

Jason Day’s 21-month-old son, Dash, watched his father on the practice range. At the end of the session, Day wrapped the boy’s hands around a cut-down driver and teed one up for him. He made solid contact every time, something only swing with one hand on the club. Day couldn’t keep the balls on the tee fast enough.

Whack! Whack! Whack!

Before long, the boy took his father’s hand and walked with him over to first hole.

The children were as much part of the Par 3 tournament as their dads, with the older ones carrying bags and even getting a chance to putt in front of hundreds of spectators.

“It’s really for the people,” said two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer.

Added 2008 Masters champ Trevor Immelman, who had his son and daughter in tow: “It’s great. My little guy’s been doing this since he was 1 or 2. They look forward to it all the time.”

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A quick stroll across the manicured landscape of Augusta National afforded a glimpse of why this Masters is so hard to figure out.

On the putting green in a quiet moment of practice was 20-year-old Jordan Spieth, one of a record 24 newcomers who has every reason to believe he can win. On the golf course for the final day of practice was Webb Simpson, a former U.S. Open champion and one of 21 players who have captured the last 24 majors.

And under the oak tree outside the clubhouse was Miguel Angel Jimenez, the 50-year-old Spaniard trying to make sense of it all.

He recalled his first Masters in 1995, when Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal shared secrets to Augusta National, such as keeping the ball in the right spots on the green and “to realize here that the target is not the hole.”

“The more you play, the more you like, no?” Jimenez said as he leaned against his golf bag, looking relaxed as ever behind his aviator sunglasses.

But as he considered the rookies – Spieth and Patrick Reed, Harris English and Jimmy Walker – he dismissed the notion that experience was required for a green jacket.

“There are 24 guys here for the first time,” he said. “But there’s a reason they are here, no?”

Nowhere to be found, of course, was Tiger Woods.

Out of golf until the summer because of back surgery, out of the Masters for the first time in his career, the show goes on.

“Well, we miss Tiger, as does the entire golf world,” Masters chairman Billy Payne said. “He is always a threat to make a run and do well and win here at Augusta National. … Nevertheless, this is the Masters. This is what we hope is the best tournament in the world, one of the greatest sporting events. And I think we will have a very impressive audience and have another great champion to crown this year.”

The course closed for practice Wednesday afternoon, and a stream of fans made their way over to the Par 3 Tournament, where occasional cheers broke the silence. It was a precursor of what was sure to follow over the next four days at a major that rarely fails to deliver drama.

Even without Woods.

“It’s probably the most anticipated week of the year,” Rory McIlroy said. “It’s been eight months since we’ve had a major. It’s Augusta. … There’s a lot of guys that seem like once they drive up Magnolia Lane here, something lights up inside them.”

That could be Phil Mickelson, who last year won the British Open at age 42 and now has a chance to join Woods and Arnold Palmer with a fourth green jacket. It could be Adam Scott, trying to join Woods, Nick Faldo and Jack Nicklaus as the only back-to-back winners.

Considering how this year has gone, it could be anybody.

Jason Day, Sergio Garcia and former Masters champion Zach Johnson are the only players from the top 10 who have won anywhere in the world. Only one of the last seven winners on the PGA Tour was ranked in the top 75.

“I think if you’re outside the top 50 in the world this week, you’ve got a great chance,” U.S. Open champion Justin Rose said with a laugh.

Rose, however, falls on the side of experience – knowing where to miss, knowing where you can’t afford to miss, where the hole locations tend to be on the contoured greens and using the slope to get the ball close.

“Always you can have the unknowns,” he said. “But I would say 15 guys are pretty strong favorites.”

Woods has become a polarizing figure in golf, especially at the Masters. Since he last won a green jacket in 2005, only once has Woods finished out of the top six. That’s what made him so compelling at Augusta. He always seems to be there.

And that’s why this Masters seems to lack definition.

No one is dominating golf at the moment. Walker has the most PGA Tour wins (three) this season, but this is his first Masters. Scott had a chance to go to No. 1 in the world three weeks ago at Bay Hill, but he lost a three-shot lead in the final round to Matt Every, who had never won in his career.

Never has there been this much chatter about Masters rookies. Then again, there has never been this many. And they’re not bashful about their chances.

“Doesn’t matter if you’ve played here once or if you’ve played here 50 times,” Reed said. “When it comes down to it, it’s just going to be that whoever is playing the best is going to walk away with the trophy.”

So maybe it’s not that hard to figure out, after all.

AUGUSTA, Ga. –  Jordan Spieth speaks with reverence when hanging out with the greats of the game at Augusta National.

It’s always “Mr. Watson” this, “Mr. Crenshaw” that.

But, in his first trip to the Masters, Spieth feels he’s got as good a chance as anyone to capture a green jacket.

That’s the way it is with these kids today.

They’re not very patient.

A new wave of 20-somethings is taking golf by storm, eager to make their mark and not at all beaten down by the aura of Tiger Woods, who hasn’t won a major championship since 2008 and isn’t even at Augusta this week as he recovers from the latest in a series of injuries.

Nine players under the age of 30 have won PGA Tour events since the official start of the season last fall, including a pair of victories by brash 23-year-old Patrick Reed.

That list doesn’t even include perhaps the best of the youngsters: Rory McIlroy, already a two-time major champion at age 24, and Spieth, who last summer became the youngest Tour winner since the Depression before he even celebrated his 20th birthday.

“It helps me when I’m on the course when I can see younger and younger guys winning golf tournaments,” Spieth said. “I believe that it doesn’t take as much experience as maybe guys would have thought five years ago, six years ago.”

Arnold Palmer is certainly impressed with a group that also includes Webb Simpson, Dustin Johnson, Jason Day, Harris English, Chris Kirk, Scott Stallings, Russell Henley and Chesson Hadley.

“I’ve been watching these young guys,” Palmer said Tuesday, “and it’s amazing how they hit the golf ball, how well they play. I’ve never ceased to be pleased and surprised to see the physical conditioning that these young people are coming with, to see their ability, to see how they play the game.

“I look at them and you think about a 23, 22, 25-year-old, and you see the shots they are hitting and how far they are hitting the golf ball, I’m startled, surprised and pleased.”

Spieth credits players such as Woods and Phil Mickelson for inspiring this new generation _ and not just in the United States. Look at someone such as Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, who turned pro a year ago and, before the season was done, had tied for sixth at the British Open.

He’s only 22, and getting ready for his first Masters as a paid player.

“Everybody in the field has a chance to win it,” said Matsuyama, who was the low amateur at the 2011 Masters. “I feel like I’m one of those, too, that has a chance.”

Spieth feels the same way, even though he’s playing the Masters for the first time.

The last Augusta rookie to claim the green jacket was Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. The only other ones to do it were the first two winners: Horton Smith in 1934 and Gene Sarazen in ’35.

“It’s getting younger,” Spieth said, talking about the potential contenders. “The game is getting better, younger, and vastly spreading to different and more places. I think that we’ll continue to see younger and younger players step up and be able to win early, such as we have.”

Reed is as confident as anyone. He’s won three times in seven months going back to last season, including a World Golf Championship, and declared on national television that he already feels like one of the top five players in the world.

For the record, the Masters will be his first major.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve played here once or if you’ve played here 50 times,” Reed said. “When it comes down to it, it’s just going to be one of those things that whoever is playing the best is going to walk away with the trophy.”

Of course, if he was a betting man, he’d be betting on himself.

“Experience always helps,” Reed said, “but at the same time, with how many young guys are coming out and winning and all that kind of thing, I feel like … whoever it playing the best – whether you have experience or don’t – is going to pull off a victory.”

Woods’ troubles – personal issues, a body that’s starting to break down, the longest drought of his career in the majors – has certainly contributed to that new swagger among the youngsters.

There were plenty of talented players who came along at the same time as Woods, but they knew their chances of winning the biggest tournament were pretty much nil when he was on his game.

Now, there’s no such roadblock standing in the way.

These guys feel like they can win any tournament.

“It’s changed now,” Spieth said. “With the younger guys not being scared to win, I think that can only be better for the game.”

AUGUSTA, Ga. – With rare exception, no other major championship inflicts as much emotional pain as Augusta National. The perks of winning include a lifetime exemption to the Masters and a spot in the most exclusive locker room in golf.

The scars of finishing second linger because players return to the same course year after year.

Think back 10 years ago.

Everyone remembers Phil Mickelson’s birdie curling into the cup, and Lefty leaping with legs splayed to celebrate his first major.

Equally compelling was the image of Ernie Els on the putting green preparing for a playoff. He turned toward the 18th green when he heard the gallery erupt in cheers for the winning birdie, and then the Big Easy hung his head, scooped up his golf balls and walked quietly away.

Tom Weiskopf was runner-up four times, the most of anyone who never wore a green jacket, including 1975 when Jack Nicklaus holed that 45-foot birdie putt on the 16th.

Years later while working as a TV analyst, Weiskopf was asked what Nicklaus was thinking. “If I knew what he was thinking, I would have won this championship,” he said.

Here are the five most heartbreaking losses at the Masters:

5. KEN VENTURI: Venturi isn’t the only 54-hole leader at the Masters to shoot 80 in the final round, which he did in 1956 in what remains the closest an amateur ever came to winning a green jacket. He three-putted six times to finish one shot behind Jack Burke Jr., who rallied from a record eight shots behind to win. Venturi later said if he had won, he would have stayed an amateur forever.

He was a pro in 1958, the leading money winner on tour and one of the favorites. Venturi finished two shots behind Arnold Palmer in the Masters known for Palmer playing two balls behind the 12th green while successfully appealing a ruling. And then in 1960, Venturi was in the clubhouse at 5-under 283. Palmer birdied the last two holes to beat him by one shot. Venturi, who died last year, had to settle for a lone U.S. Open title.

4. SCOTT HOCH: Hoch was never a regular contender at the Masters, though his one close call ranks among the most famous missed putts in Augusta National history.

Often overlooked is a short par putt Hoch missed on the 17th hole in regulation in 1989. He made par on the final hole for a 69 and headed for a sudden-death playoff with Nick Faldo. The playoff began on the 10th hole, with an advantage immediately to Hoch when Faldo struggled to make a bogey.

Hoch had two putts for a green jacket. He rolled his birdie putt by the cup – some references say 2 feet, others 3 feet, but it was just over tap-in range. Hoch studied it from both sides, backed off – and then missed it, flipping his putter in the air. Faldo won with a birdie on the next hole.

3. ED SNEED: Sneed had three PGA Tour wins and had never finished better than 18th in the 13 majors he played. But he looked like a world-beater at Augusta National in 1979 when he took a five-shot lead into the final round.

Sneed still led by three shots with three holes to play when one of the greatest collapses at the Masters unfolded. He closed with three bogeys for a 76 to slip into a sudden-death playoff – the first at the Masters – with Tom Watson and Masters rookie Fuzzy Zoeller. They all made par on No. 10, and Zoeller won with a birdie on the 11th.

“Ed Sneed needs one par in three holes to win the Masters, and we never heard from him again,” Gary Player said recently.

2. ROBERTO DE VICENZO: One year after the Argentine captured the British Open, De Vicenzo was on the cusp of winning the 1968 Masters until he made a bogey on the 18th hole to fall into a tie with Bob Goalby.

The bogey turned out to be the least of his problems. He still closed with a 65, only that’s not what was on the scorecard kept by Tommy Aaron. The birdie 3 that De Vicenzo made on the 17th to take the lead had been entered as a 4, and De Vicenzo signed his card. Under the Rules of Golf, if a score on the card is lower than what a player made, the penalty is disqualification. If the score is higher, it stands. The 65 became a 66. Instead of a playoff, he was a runner-up.

That led to one of the most famous lines in golf from De Vicenzo: “What a stupid I am.”

1. GREG NORMAN: No other player symbolizes heartbreak at Augusta National than the Shark.

His best opportunity was in 1996, when Norman set a major championship record by blowing a six-shot lead in the final round to Nick Faldo. Ten years earlier, Norman ran off four straight birdies late in the round to tie Jack Nicklaus, only to hit 4-iron from the 18th fairway into the gallery to make bogey.

But the most crushing blow was in 1987.

At the previous major, the 1986 PGA Championship, Norman lost on the final hole when Bob Tway holed out from a bunker. At the Masters, he had the upper hand on the second hole of a playoff against Larry Mize, who had missed the green at No. 11 well to the right. Mize chipped across the 11th green, and it was picking up speed when it rammed into the pin and dropped for birdie.