‘I’m good’: Larry Mize bids an emotional farewell to the Masters

I t was raining when Larry Mize came to the 18th on Saturday morning and if that wasn’t exactly how he had pictured it when he was thinking about the end of his 120th, and final, round here in the Masters, he may reflect it was for the best anyway. If nothing else it meant you couldn’t quite tell whether or not those were tears he was brushing off as he stood in the tee box.

Mize watched as his playing partners, Min-Woo Lee and Harrison Crowe, each clobbered mighty drives up the hill, then wiped his club on his calf and set himself for one last tee shot … which he sent skittering into the trees 150 yards away. “There’s a reason why this is my last Masters,” Mize said.

Mize followed it up with, in his words, “a chunky five iron up the middle and then a thin six iron on the green, so how about that?” He was so nervous, he said, that he couldn’t stop his clubs shaking.

He finished with a one-foot putt that rattled around the lip and back out again to leave him one last tap-in for a double bogey. Not that any of that was what mattered. Mize, 64, is the only man born in Augusta to win the Masters. He used to come here as a spectator when he was a kid and spent his teenage years working the scoreboard behind the 3rd green.

Mize walked on to the green alone, while Crowe, Lee and the three caddies lined up behind him on the fairway. The crowd clapped and cried out thank yous. Mize doffed his cap and clapped them back. “To get a reception like that, I didn’t expect that, I didn’t expect that at all,” he said.

Which is typical of him. Sandy Lyle, who succeeded Mize as Masters champion, in 1988, had just finished his own farewell appearance here and was waiting by the side of the green. Lyle raced out to greet him and presented