AUGUSTA, Ga. — As the years roll by, for a tiny number of people in a tiny number of fields, it becomes a thing: You’re a legend, whether you like it or not. So you might as well carry yourself like one. Enter George Clooney, actor; Bruce Springsteen, musician; Jack Nicklaus, golfer. Living legend, living legend, living legend.
Tony Finau, the 34-year-old golfer in search of his first major title, came up in the game watching two golfing legends on TV, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. He played with Woods when Woods won the 2019 Masters. He saw at close range what the man, a soon-to-be five-time Masters champion, did to close and win, and he learned from it. On Thursday, he played with Mickelson, a three-time winner at Augusta, for the first time at the Masters. Finau was watching closely. So was the group’s third, Sepp Straka.
“Sepp and I were like, ‘Can you believe how good he hits it?’” Finau said on Thursday afternoon. Finau had shot one under. Straka had shot one over. Mickelson, 53, did, too. That score, 73, put the two golfers in the middle of the pack and in good position to make the 36-hole cut. At last year’s Masters, Mickelson and Brooks Koepka finished in a tie for second, four shots behind Jon Rahm.
The threesome got to 17. The wind was swirly. All three players were playing well. Two marshals were about 100 yards short of the green. They noted the first shot, solid and in the middle of the fairway. The next guy was in the middle of the fairway, too, 20 yards past the first player.
“That’s Phil,” the one marshal said to the other.
Mickelson has been playing, by his standards, some very ordinary golf since last year’s Masters. He finished 47th last week in the 54-man field at the LIV Golf event at Doral, a course where he’s won and often played well in the past. But Augusta is Augusta for him, and that fact was not lost on Finau.
On the par-5 13th, Finau played a curving, electric shot to the green off the pine straw. It brought to mind a certain curving electric shot off the pine straw at 13 that Mickelson once played, en route to his Masters win in 2010.
“That’s a great shot,” Mickelson said to Finau.
“His shot there is a little more famous than mine,” Finau said, talking to two radio broadcasters from Utah, where Finau lives, and a third reporter. One of the radio men was Bob Casper, son of the Utah golf legend Billy Casper.
