AUGUSTA, Ga.—Years have passed since the compelling competitive battle between Jack Nicklaus, Tom Weiskopf, and Johnny Miller at the 1975 Masters.
Each man was at the peak of their golfing skills. Nicklaus played in the penultimate group seeking his fifth green jacket. Weiskopf and Miller were together in the final pairing—each wanting a Masters title to add to their portfolio of wins.
Nicklaus had long been a fixture at the top of golf’s pecking order since turning professional in 1962. The Golden Bear needed to push back Weiskopf and Miller, each looking to push Jack off the mountaintop he had long occupied.
Nicklaus started that final round one shot behind Weiskopf, but birdies at the par-5 15th in tandem with a spectacular 40-foot birdie putt at the par-3 16th placed him at the top of the leaderboard. He would complete the round with two final pars.
After watching Jack’s sensational putt at the 16th, Weiskopf played a poor approach, and a three-putt bogey ensued, causing him to drop a shot behind. Miller got into the fray with a birdie at the 17th, and when both men arrived at the 18th, each was one stroke behind Nicklaus, needing a birdie to get into a playoff.
Miller’s birdie putt at the 18th came from 15 feet, and his ball slid just left of the hole. After a prodigious drive, Weiskopf played a superb approach to eight feet. Weiskopf observed Miller’s putt, and he stroked what appeared to be a tie-making effort, but his golf ball refused to move left and remained just outside right. When all the competitive dust settled, Nicklaus had finally secured his fifth green jacket.
The 1975 Masters was simply riveting. The only comparable event that surpassed it came 11 years later in 1986, when several elite players all competed down to the wire. A 46-year-old Nicklaus put the exclamation point on his swan song to professional golf with a record sixth Masters win and doing so over the likes of Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros, and Tom Kite.
The Masters has seen other engrossing duels featuring the best players in the world, all vying for the coveted green jacket.
In 1954, a golfer by the name of Billy Joe Patton nearly became the first amateur to win the title. The tussle included the two best players in the world with Sam Snead and Ben Hogan in contention. Patton took aggressive plays at the par-5 13th and 15th holes and each time found water fronting the green. Snead outlasted them all and added his third Masters and seventh and final major championship title.
In 1961, Arnold Palmer was the undisputed “king” of golf, and he was on the cusp of doing what no player had done previously at Augusta—defend his title. Palmer entered the final round five shots behind leader Gary Player, but Arnold had made up the deficit and simply needed to par the final hole to defeat Player and win by two shots over the brilliant amateur Charlie Coe.
Palmer allowed his concentration to be disrupted after acknowledging a familiar person in the gallery who congratulated him when leaving the 18th tee.
Unfortunately, the event was not over, and Arnold then bunkered his approach and took four more shots before finally holing out and losing by one. Player’s win marked the first foreign golfer to earn the green jacket.
Player would be in another epic competition 17 years later at Augusta. Trailing by six shots, the South African played a spectacular find round 64—climaxing with a 15-foot final hole birdie. But the outcome was not finished as three players—including the best player in the world, Tom Watson, U.S. Open champion Hubert Green, and journeyman professional Rod Funseth—all vied for the title.
Augusta’s Fitting Finale—Green Jacket or Straitjacket?
Securing a green jacket means an inevitable rendezvous with Augusta National’s 18th hole.Originally played as the ninth hole, the present-day 18th assumed the position during the second event in 1935. All holes at Augusta National are named for a specific plant—the 18th is called “Holly.”
The fitting finale plays considerably uphill—more than what television shows. The tee shot must be slotted through a canopy of thick Georgia pines that stand as tall sentinels on both sides. Unlike many other holes at Augusta National, which move in a right-to-left direction, the closing hole goes in the opposite direction, left-to-right.
The hole originally played anywhere from 405 to 420 yards, but in 2002, 60 yards were added, along with the tee box shifting five yards to the right, making the angle even more acute.
Left unsaid by Masters officials were the reasons for the changes. The actions were dubbed “Tiger-proofing,” given the manner by which Woods had rendered many of the holes irrelevant during his overwhelming 12-shot victory in 1997.
Modifications to the 18th have been carried out in past years. A decorative cross bunker—roughly 60 yards short of the green—was filled in during the 1940s.
Double bunkers were added to the left side of the driving zone in 1967 to prevent extremely long hitters such as Jack Nicklaus from routinely playing down that side to avoid being blocked by towering pines that guard the right side of the fairway.
Two greenside bunkers flank the putting surface, which features a false front preventing balls from staying there if an approach shot is short.
The putting surface is quite deep—roughly 40 yards total—and features a lower half and a rear plateau section. Gauging club selection is never easy, because players cannot see where their approach finishes given the elevation change.
The aforementioned fairway bunkers were further adjusted in 2002. Now it takes a herculean wallop of 335 yards to carry them—an impossibility for nearly all competitors. The bunkers were also deepened so that any ball too close to the front edge will require an extremely lofted club to escape.
Stroke average for the 18th for all Masters is 4.23—making it the seventh most difficult hole. But the 18th plays even tougher as the event draws to a close. Masters pressure can propel some to a green jacket while others sense they have been placed in a paralyzing straitjacket.
The 18th does not possess the inherent beauty so spectacularly seen by other holes at Augusta National, but it has and will continue to play a pivotal role in providing the ultimate examination for any golfer seeking a green jacket come Sunday’s final round.
2025 Masters
This year’s Masters could well see such a contest between a number of the leading players.At the top of the pyramid are the two highest-ranked players in the world—Scottie Scheffler in the top position in the world rankings followed by Rory McIlroy.
Scheffler is the defending champion, and while he has not won an event in 2025, his form is rounding into shape with his most recent runner-up finish in Houston. A win by Scheffler would be his third green jacket in four years, equaling a mark set by Nicklaus between 1963–1966.
McIlroy comes to Augusta in search of ending a streak of 10-plus years in not winning a major. The last came in 2014 at the PGA Championship at Valhalla. The 35-year-old has had close moments in other majors—the most recent coming when he limped home on the final three holes at the U.S. Open last year at Pinehurst, providing a pathway for Bryson DeChambeau to claim the championship.
Should McIlroy finally end the major-less streak, he would become just the sixth golfer to have won the career Grand Slam, joining such elite players as Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Player, Nicklaus, and Woods.
Having McIlroy and Scheffler paired together in a final round, with each seeking to gain the edge over the other down the stretch, would be a classical match-up between the two best players in the game.
Add in one or more highly touted players such as DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Aberg, and Brooks Koepka, among others, and the 2025 Masters could rise to a notable edge-of-your-seat conclusion.
Looking back, Johnny Miller, and Tom Weiskopf firmly believed future opportunities to win a Masters would be forthcoming. None ever came as close as the intersection with Nicklaus in 1975. Now, 50 years later, the pleasure and pain could well surface for any number of key players.
Who will seize it? Who will rise to the occasion? Who will painfully fail and wonder if another opportunity will ever come again?
These questions and answers begin Thursday with the 89th Masters.
