Destiny always seems to be the 15th club in the bag of a Masters champion.
No one can explain how a tuft of grass kept Fred Couples' ball from rolling into Rae's Creek on the par-3 12th in the final round of 1992.
Ben Crenshaw felt the hand of coach Harvey Penick, who died the week before, guiding him around the back nine when he won the 1995 Masters. Tom Kite still doesn't understand how his birdie putt stayed out of the cup in 1986, allowing Jack Nicklaus a record sixth green jacket.
Phil Mickelson felt destiny was on his side last year at the Masters.
With 6m separating him from that elusive major championship, Mickelson's birdie putt on the 18th hole last year looked good until the final few feet, when it started to turn left to the corner of the cup.
The final few centimeters are still a blur. The ball caught the left lip of the cup, slid quickly around to the right side and suddenly disappeared, setting off an explosion of cheers for a Masters victory that was long overdue.
Most people will never forget the leap, such as it was.
With both arms in the air, Mickelson jumped for joy, an estimated 30cm off the ground. President Bush poked fun at his vertical leap, and Lefty jokingly says the cameras didn't do him justice.
"I will take to my grave my belief that the cameras just did not catch me at the apex of my jump," he said.
But as he looks back on his victory, Mickelson believes he had some help.
For each of his first 21 victories on the US PGA Tour, Mickelson gave his grandfather, Al Santos, the flag from the 18th hole. But after the 2002 Greater Hartford Open, Santos lost interest.
"Don't bring me any more flags unless it's for a major," his grandfather told him. "I want the Masters up there."
Santos died three months before his grandson finally won a major.
"In the first split-second of that moment, I really believe that my grandfather nudged my ball back to the right just in the nick of time," Mickelson writes in his book, One Magical Sunday (But Winning Isn't Everything).
There were other factors.
Mickelson got the perfect read from Chris DiMarco, whose Masters hopes already had faded. He took two shots to get out of the bunker on No. 18, and the second one trickled 2.5cm beyond Mickelson's marker.
They are good friends, and some wondered if DiMarco hit it there on purpose.
"Yeah, right," DiMarco says. "If I could have put it that close to his mark, why didn't I hit it that close to the hole?"
As he lined up his putt, Mickelson told him, "Show me the way."
"That was the only putt I really felt nervous on all day -- I mean really, really nervous," DiMarco said. "Because I knew if I didn't put a good putt on it, it was not going to show him anything. I knew he was going to make it. I might have been the only one. But I knew it was his time.
"He did it, and it was awesome."
Mike Weir, the defending champion who slipped the size 43-long green jacket over Mickelson's shoulders at the award ceremony, offered a telling comment about destiny in an interview with Golf World magazine.
"At Augusta, your putts have to go in the center of the hole if you expect to make them," Weir said. "You don't see many putts catch the lip and go in, especially on the low side. This one lipped back and went in, and that never happens.
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