AUGUSTA, GA—It’s been said many times the Masters doesn’t really get started till the final 9 holes. For 22-year-old Jordan Spieth, the final nine holes he played in the 2016 Masters will be etched into his memory for a lifetime. The defending champion had birdied the final four holes of the front nine and was cruising with a lead of several shots. Given the reality that the Texan had led the field each day for the last seven rounds at Augusta National Golf Club—a tournament record—there seemed little reason to think anything less than another Masters green jacket was likely.
The unthinkable happened—and one man seized the moment.
Ahead of Spieth was 28-year-old Englishman Danny Willett. Playing a bogey-free round Willett fired a five-under-par 67, tied for the day’s low round with two other Englishmen—Paul Casey and Matthew Fitzpatrick. Willett admitted afterwards that he believed a 66 in the final round would be good enough to have an impact, nonetheless his four-round total of 283—the highest winning score at The Masters in the last nine years—provided a three-shot edge over Spieth and fellow Englishman Lee Westwood who tied for second.
Even with Willett’s fine play it took an extraordinary set of circumstances for Spieth to collapse and allow another competitor to reap the bounty.
Spieth bogied the par-4 10th and par-4 11th holes but his lead was still a solid two shots after Willett had birdied the par-5 13th. Standing on the famed par-3 12th—a hole long known for its epic impacts on past Masters—Spieth needed to make a solid shot to avoid the fronting water. Inexplicably, Spieth hit a weak iron shot pushed to the right and never came anywhere near the green. The ball found a watery grave.
