What they are saying
At 46 minutes past noon, on a soft, sun-dappled spring afternoon in Georgia, on a golf course of unsurpassing splendor, before an enormous and worshipful gallery, The Long Goodbye began.
Arnold Palmer (Stats | Bio) played his final round at Augusta National, in the tournament he made famous. And vice versa.
Five hours and 17 minutes later, he nudged in a bogey putt, his 84th and last stroke of the day, thus finishing an astonishing run in which he played in 50 Masters, which is an unfathomable and almost certainly unreachable number.
What he shot had no relevance. What was so extraordinary is that thousands upon thousands of people turned out to watch a man of 74 years - "seventy-four" - play one last round, and do it walking all the way besides, walking over a leg-punishing course of rolling, pine-tree-lined fairways and curling, azalea-scented swales.
From the veranda of the clubhouse, when you looked out toward the first tee, it looked like a Cecil B. DeMille epic, the supporting cast of thousands stretching to the horizon. And then the masses parted and Arnold Palmer (Stats | Bio) walked through.
Make way for the King.
- Bill Lyon,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Arnie's Army gathered here Friday and watched their beloved leader march off into the sunlit azaleas one last time.
In one of the most memorable moments in golf history, Arnold Palmer (Stats | Bio) 's legions of fans lined up 10-deep, shoulder-to-shoulder along the course as Arnie slowly trudged up the 18th fairway at Augusta National for the final time. As the applause rose to a crescendo, Palmer doffed his visor, waved and then took a brief bow.
"We love you, Arnie," yelled one fan.
"Don't go, Arnie," screamed another.
But Palmer, after shooting back-to-back 84s and finishing 24-over par, acknowledged afterward that it was time to leave the Masters to the young champions. After playing a record 50th consecutive time at Augusta National, golf's renowned "King" realized it was time to abdicate the throne.
"I'm through. I'm done. Cooked. Washed up. Finished. Whatever you want to say," Palmer said and laughed after his final round.
Then he turned a bit serious.
"It's done," he said. "I can't say I'm happy it's done, but it's time for it to be done for me. ... The competitiveness is still there, but it's just not in this old body to make it happen anymore."
Palmer, quite simply, has been the grandmaster of the Masters. Even though Jack Nicklaus (Stats | Bio) has won more tournaments here at Augusta National, Arnie won more hearts.
- Mike Bianchi,
The Orlando Sentinel
(Tiger) Woods made five birdies against two bogeys in the second round as his overall game improved. He hit two more greens in regulation and took two fewer putts than he did in the first round. And he was happy with that, considering the dried-out greens at Augusta were going faster than the sale of $2 beer on a warm Georgia day.
"We saw in the practice rounds how fast this place was getting, and then we got some rain that slowed it down," Woods said. "When we finished last night, it's the slowest I've ever seen the greens here."
Then Woods proposed his own conspiracy theory that conjured images of greenskeepers manipulating the course under a cloak of darkness.
"But really, I think they might have this little suction thing going on on the greens," he said. "They sucked them dry."
-By Carlos Monarrez,
Detroit Free Press
Friday was English as a Second Language Day at the Masters.
Not quite seven years after Tiger Woods (Stats | Bio) made the locals forget how often players from the rest of the world left town wearing green jackets, there was no mistaking the message posted on the leaderboard at the end of the second round: The international crowd is back.
Four of the first five names atop it belonged, in order, to golfers born in South Africa, the Czech Republic, Spain and South Korea.
"The best players," said Alex Cejka (Stats | Bio) , whose second straight round of 70 left him trailing leader Justin Rose (Stats | Bio) by two strokes, "want to be where the best players are."
And during the first full week in April, they're always at Augusta National.
No tournament places a greater premium on precision, imaginative flair and the short game, and none is as likely to reward the kind of hunger that refuses to settle for second best.
- Jim Litke, Associated Press
K.J. Choi (Stats | Bio) 's improbable nine-hole scores of 30-40 in the second round at the Masters sound more like the numbers you'd see on a can of motor oil than a golf scorecard. Not a bad round for a 33-year-old guy once nicknamed "Tank."
What kind of moniker is that for a golfer? Tank is what Greg Norman did when he lost the Masters. "Tank" is a fullback who gets a handoff and plows up the middle on third-and-1.
But Choi, an ex-weight lifter who could power squat more than 300 pounds as a teen in South Korea, went on a birdie binge on the front nine Friday at Augusta National. He briefly grabbed the Masters lead at 7-under par after 27 holes, and is lurking only three shots off the lead at 3-under 141.
He's more Arnold Schwarzenegger than Arnold Palmer (Stats | Bio) . When asked whether he knows about Arnold the bodybuilder, Choi nods "yes," and smiles.
When asked if his countrymen think he is Tiger Woods (Stats | Bio) , he nods "yes" and smiles. He nods and smiles after every question, in fact.
"I wasn't a heavy weight lifter when I started out, and my upper body wasn't as strong compared to my lower body," Choi explained through his interpreter.
"When you are lifting weights, there is a period of maybe three seconds when you have to intensely focus right before you lift the barbell. It's the same in golf when you are addressing the ball right before you hit it."
- Gary Lundy,
Scripps Howard News Service
