AUGUSTA, Ga. — After 63 holes of the 80th Masters, Jordan Spieth was five strokes clear of the field. The last nine holes at Augusta National lay before him like a lush green carpet in a coronation ceremony.
At 22, Spieth was poised to become the first player to win the tournament in consecutive years since Tiger Woods did so in 2001-2 and the first in the tournament’s storied history to win back-to-back titles while holding the lead after every round.
In short order, Spieth’s round, and his victory hopes, unraveled like a cheap imitation of the coveted Masters green jacket. Fresh off a four-under-par performance on the front nine, Spieth dropped six strokes on the next three holes with consecutive bogeys and a quadruple-bogey 7 on the 155-yard, par-3 12th to give away the tournament to Danny Willett of England. Willett, 28, became the first European champion since 1999 with a five-under 67 and a 72-hole total of five-under 283, three strokes better than Spieth and another Englishman, Lee Westwood (69).
Willett, 28, was in the scoring room when Spieth bogeyed the 17th hole, assuring Willett of the win. At the time his first major victory became official, he was having a video chat on his smartphone with his wife, who had stayed behind in Rotherham, England, after giving birth last month to the couple’s first child, a boy whose due date was Sunday.
It was a stunning turn of events that left Spieth’s caddie, Michael Greller, with no words. Approached after the round, he gave a thumbs-up sign but politely declined to talk. “Not now,” he said. A shellshocked Spieth, meantime, was whisked to Butler Cabin, site of the presentation of the green jacket, where Willett told him, “I feel very fortunate to be standing here, and you not putting the jacket on yourself again.”
Spieth, who had won the last five times he held a 54-hole lead, starting with last year’s Masters, had inadvertently forecast his demise. In a news conference two days before the tournament’s start, he was asked to explain why it is often said that the Masters does not begin until Sunday on the back nine, which includes a stretch of tough holes, from the second shot on No. 11 through the tee shot on No. 13, known as the Amen Corner.
Spieth said then: “You feel like you’re almost starting another round there. You’re almost starting another tournament. You can feel the difference in momentum.”
The change in momentum was stronger than any gust during the wind-filled week. Willett, playing three groups ahead of Spieth, made a birdie at the par-3 16th to move to five under around the time Spieth was putting out at No. 12 to fall to one under. He hit his tee shot into the water and his next shot as well, using a wedge from the drop area, and had to get up and down from a bunker to salvage a 7. The quadruple bogey was the highest score that Spieth, a two-time major winner, had posted in 46 major rounds.
“I didn’t take that extra deep breath and really focus on my line,” he said, referring to his initial tee shot on No. 12. “Instead, I went up and I just put a quick swing on it.”
Spieth said he had the right club, a 9-iron, but decided as he stood over the ball to hit a fade instead of a draw. He paid dearly for his failure to commit to his original shot. “The swing just wasn’t quite there to produce the right ball flight,” he said.
The scene on the back nine on a cool afternoon called to mind Greg Norman’s six-stroke collapse in this event in 1996, which handed the tournament to the Englishman Nick Faldo. Spieth bounced back with birdies on two of the next three holes but had too much ground to make up and not enough holes. He finished with a second consecutive 73, which was three strokes higher than his closing score last year, when he matched the 72-hole score of 18 under set by Woods in 1997.
Spieth was the first player to lead the Masters for seven consecutive rounds. But his third-round 73 foreshadowed Sunday’s second-nine collapse. Spieth stumbled on his last two holes on Saturday while playing in winds that gusted to 25 miles per hour, which affected the ball flight and baked the greens so it was like putting on buttered crusts. He made a bogey at No. 17 and a double bogey at No. 18 to see his lead shrink to one stroke.
Asked if it would be difficult to erase the memory of his poor finish, Spieth said: “Honestly, I think it will be tough to put it behind. I think I will, but that wasn’t a fun last couple of holes to play from the position I was in.”
After winning his first start of 2016, at the limited-field Tournament of Champions in Maui, Spieth did not post a top-10 finish in his next five stroke-play events leading up to his first major title defense. His struggles off the tee were magnified in the fishbowl that is the year’s first men’s major.
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