England’s Danny Willett was the shock winner of the 80th Masters on Sunday thanks to a bogey-free final round and an epic back-nine collapse by defending champion Jordan Spieth.
Willett fired a five-under 67 for a three-shot victory that brought the 28-year-old Englishman the green jacket symbolic of victory at Augusta National, as well as US$1.8 million from the US$10 million purse.
“It’s crazy. It’s surreal,” Willett said. “Words can’t describe the emotions and feelings. You do something special and it still doesn’t quite sink in what you have achieved.”
Photo: AFP
Willett, five down to Spieth with six holes to play, birdied the par-five 13th, par-four 14th and par-three 16th to charge into the clubhouse, while the 22-year-old American endured a nightmare meltdown with bogeys at 10 and 11 and a quadruple-bogey at the par-three 12th.
“I just put a couple of weak swings on it and suddenly I’m not leading anymore,” Spieth said. “I’ll be disappointed with that one. It was a very tough 30 minutes for me. I hope I never experience it again.”
Willett finished 72 holes at five-under 283, with Spieth and English playing partner Lee Westwood sharing second on 286.
Westwood, trying to win his first major title at age 42, shot 69, while Spieth, who defends his US Open title in June at Oakmont, fired a 73.
Spieth, as defending champion, presented Willett with the green jacket that he looked to make his own for most of the week, leading after all three prior rounds.
“It was a very surreal day when I look back at the ebbs and flows,” Willett said. “I was able to make a couple of good putts and here I am.”
Willett was not even going to play the Masters because his wife was due to give birth on Sunday, but she gave birth on March 30 and he was able to come down Magnolia Lane for his date with destiny.
“You talk about fate and everything else that goes with it — it has been a crazy week,” Willett said.
World No. 12 Willett took his first major crown in only his 12th major start, becoming only the second English golfer to win the Masters after Nick Faldo, the champion in 1989, 1990 and 1996.
Spieth, a wire-to-wire winner last year, had a last-gasp with birdies and 13 and 15, but he missed a eight-foot birdie putt at 16 and a bogey at 17 sealed his fate.
World No. 2 Spieth closed the front nine with four birdies in a row to reach the turn with a five-shot lead over Willett.
Then came a back-nine horror show as frightful as anything Augusta National’s famed Amen Corner has ever inflicted.
Spieth went bogey-bogey to begin the back nine and disaster struck at 12 when Spieth plunked his tee shot and his third into Rae’s Creek, his lead vanishing as the ball did in a splashdown to plunge him from the lead at five-under to one-under and three back.
“It’s tough. It’s really tough,” Spieth said. “Just put a bad swing on it right at the wrong time. Just compounded mistakes. Just lack of discipline.”
Even his rivals felt sympathy.
“Anything can happen in Amen Corner,” Westwood said. “It’s a fine line between disaster and success at this place. That’s how it is in major championship golf. It throws you some shocks.”
Willett sank four-foot birdie putts at 13 and 14 to reach four-under. Westwood chipped in for birdie at 15 to pull within a shot, but Willett responded with a birdie at 16 while a Westwood bogey dropped him three back.
Willett, who shared 38th last year in his Masters debut, joined Phil Mickelson and Doug Ford as the only Masters winners to shoot 67 or better in a bogey-free last round.
England’s Paul Casey, and Americans Dustin Johnson and J.B. Holmes shared fourth place on 287, with Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, Denmark’s Soren Kjeldsen and England’s Matthew Fitzpatrick another stroke back in seventh.
Anticipation built for the wild back nine after a record three aces at the par-three 16th in the same round.
Ireland’s Shane Lowry and US Ryder Cup captain Davis Love made the first two at the 170-yard hole, before South African Louis Oosthuizen added a third when his ball struck billiards-style off that of playing partner Holmes and into the cup.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier