DOWN AMONG the dogwood in Amen Corner, Sandy Lyle and Dave Musgrove were dealing with the crisis of the 12th hole in very different ways. Lyle, the tournament leader with just seven holes of the 1988 Masters left to play, had all the coolness of a furnace, whacking the peak of his cap and cursing out loud at the sight of his ball trickling ruinously off a bank and into Rae's Creek, the watery grave that protects the most famous par three in world golf.
"Shit, shit, shit," spat the Scot as he walked to the drop zone.
Lyle was emotional but Musgrove, his Nottinghamshire caddie, was the opposite. He was the pragmatist with the detached air. A man of vast experience – he carried Seve Ballesteros's b
ag to glory before hooking up with Lyle – his dry wit is the same as it was back then, as well-honed as his penchant for playing down his own role in one of the great stories of Scottish golf.
Asked last week if he was nervous about his man's chances when he saw the creek ripple, he replied: "Nervous? What had I to be nervous about? I wasn't the one playing the shots. Lyle was the one in the shit at the time." So as Lyle pondered Armageddon at the 12th, the sage on the bag said nothing? "Oh, I said plenty. I said 'we don't need your head coming off now, Sandy.' When the head comes off, it comes off, don't it? I said, 'this third shot is one of the hardest on the golf course. You're off a tight lie with bugger all to aim for. Short's no good, long's no good. Concentrate, get a five and let's get the f*** out of here'. That's what I said, more or less."
A five is what Lyle took. A double bogey. On that April Sunday, almost 20 years ago, he stood on the 12th tee with an unflappable demeanour and a catch-me-if-you-can look in his eye. He had a two-shot lead at that stage and seemed immune to the charge of Mark Calcavecchia ahead of him.
Calc was five shots behind Lyle at one point on Sunday and then started throwing birdies at him left, right and centre. He picked up shots at the eighth, the ninth, the 11th and the 13th. By the time the Scot had walked off the 12th green he trailed Calc by one. The ice man of before was in danger of melting. "We had an exchange, me and Mussie," said Lyle the other day. "I was angry with myself and a little bit frightened I suppose. My lead was gone in the blink of an eye and I had to refocus somehow. Mussie talked about discipline. I remember that. You're in silence on the 13th tee.
"It's the one spot on the golf course where you are completely detached from the spectators and he said it wasn't a bad thing that I'd lost the lead. It was a heavy burden to carry. I'd had it for two days and it was a lot of pressure. He told me, 'let somebody else carry it for a while and see how they like it. We've got somebody to chase now and you're a better man when you're chasing'. Mussie was a huge help though he'll hardly admit it."
Musgrove's recollection of this seminal moment in Lyle's career varies slightly. "The 13th tee is a nice spot. The Masters crowd is not a good crowd really. It's a very exclusive place and all they want to do is go there and be seen. They haven't a clue about the game. You stand on the 10th tee in front of the clubhouse and there's a load of drunks behind you shouting their heads off, all pissed-up at five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. The 13th is tranquil. There's none of those idiots near you.
"I just told Sandy to get on with it. I said 'don't be laying any of your troubles at my door because I've enough of my own'. I was always direct. There'd be times, when he was playing bad, when I'd say to him, 'look, if you don't perk up I'm taking the Telegraph out of the bag and I'm doing the crossword'. I didn't say it that day, though."
Lyle and Musgrove had been through a lot together. The Englishman, aged 65 now and still carrying a bag on the odd occasion, had worked for the Scot at hundreds of tournaments by then. Three years earlier they'd won the Open together. A week before the '88 Masters they'd swept all before them at the Greater Greensboro Open, a big tournament with a chunky cheque. Nobody since Sam Snead in 1949 had pulled off the Greater Greensboro/ Masters double. Nobody since Arnold Palmer in 1960 had won a green jacket with a birdie on the 72nd hole. All of this was waiting for Lyle, all he had to do was play the greatest golf of his life to achieve it.
Musgrove knew Lyle inside out but he wasn't one to pry. In 1987, Lyle's first marriage came to an abrupt end when his wife Christine upped and left the family home with their two young children. Musgrove was close to his player but he didn't ask any questions. Didn't see it as his place to ask. "We never discussed it," he says. "He didn't brood on it, that's for sure. I'm not saying he wasn't hurt or upset – he must have been – but he just plodded along day by day. In fact, Sandy played his best golf between the end of his first marriage and the beginning of his second marriage. Those years, 1987-1989, where when he was at his absolute peak."
The 72nd hole was when greatness descended on Lyle. Needing a par four to tie Calcavecchia and a birdie three to win he put his one-iron tee-shot into the one place he didn't want to be; the bunker on the left side of the fairway. "I thought it was over at that point," he says.
"It was a terrible moment. The ball just drifted away on me. It was Trepidation City by then."
Enter Mussie and his words of wisdom? Not quite. Not the way he tells it anyway. "I could have given him 250 yards of hope but there was no point. We both knew that ball was in the worst spot. What did I do? I probably did my best to avoid him asking me if he was buggered or not. I had a right pain in my back at that stage as well. I might have said, 'we can't go into a play-off, my back is broken from lugging this bloody bag around'."
Up by the green, Calcavecchia could see the trouble Lyle was in. He had 143 yards to the pin, if he could make it that far, which most observers doubted. Putting it close was not a thought on anybody's mind, not even on Lyle's. The ball was lying well but nobody made birdie from there. "Some radio guy stuck a microphone in my face and asked, 'what do you think about a play-off?'" Calcavecchia remarked at the time. "I said, 'I don't want one.' And I didn't get one."
Lyle's immortal seven-iron was sent on its way. "I ran after it, happy that I'd hit it as sweet as I possibly could have." Musgrove grabbed the rake and fixed the damage in the bunker. "You can't see a ball land from where I was but you could hear the crowd. The noise level was quiet at first then it grew and grew. I said, 'that ball is coming back to the hole, it's bloody well coming back.'" Calcavecchia muttered "awesome" under his breath. It came to rest 15ft from the cup and with a gentle wave of his magic wand across the slickest of slick greens, Lyle sank the putt.
His parents, Alex and Agnes, greeted him and for Musgrove that was the best of it. Not the seven-iron or the famous putt but the sight of Lyle's mum and dad embracing their boy. "They were good people; lovely, lovely people. They were modest and homely. I liked them a lot. Sandy had done them proud and it was a great moment for the family. Me? I had a quick drink with them and got out of there. I went into town with the other caddies and drank for England."
He kept a diary and published it later. Life With Lyle was a fine piece of work. Much like the remarkable man at the centre of it all.
The full article contains 1473 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
