Coody plays young game for last round in Augusta
Web posted
Saturday, April 08, 2006
The happy ending might not have been good enough for Hollywood, but it was darn good for Augusta National Golf Club.
Charles Coody turned back the clock Friday, if not 35 years to his Masters Tournament victory, at least five years before the golf course grew too long for senior citizens.
"They told me in the tent there I'd probably get 'Most Improved,'" Coody said after following an opening 89 with a farewell 74.
The last official Masters golfing act for the 67-year-old Coody was to drain a 15-footer for par on the 18th hole. He doffed his familiar bucket hat and raised his hands as though he had won something.
In a way, he had.
"Parred my last hole, so that's a good feat," he said. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not satisfied with 74. It feels good to walk off having played a respectable round."
Coody's last round was the kind that makes the Masters special. An aging champion can still be 1-under par through 15 holes on a course that was stretched to 7,445 yards this year.
But Coody bogeyed the par-3 16th and drilled the Eisenhower Tree (not for the first time) en route to double on the 17th.
His decent round didn't change his mind about Friday's being his last lap. Future Masters will be reserved for a Sunday round with his son Kyle, the Champions Dinner and maybe the Par-3 Contest.
"I was 1 under through 15 and thought I might be just be lucky enough to shoot par," Coody said.
"It's time to quit," he said. "The golf course lengthwise is beyond the player that hits it the length I do now. ... I have a lot of respect for the golf tournament, which is the reason I won't play. I don't want to embarrass the tournament."
Coody certainly didn't embarrass himself Friday. He beat both of his playing partners - Ted Purdy and Brandt Jobe - by two shots apiece. That they are 35 and 27 years, respectively, younger than Coody makes it more impressive.
Coody birdied four holes - 3, 4, 12 and 15 - and the consecutive red marks early on got his heart racing.
"I was loving it," he said. "This is the way it used to feel."
In some ways it felt better, because the 1971 Masters champion had his son carrying the bag.
"I was just glad I had my boy here with me the last time I played," Coody said.
Said Kyle Coody, 41: "This place has meant a lot to my dad. It's been incredible and pretty emotional for us."
After Thursday's first round, Coody wasn't sure this last trip was such a good idea.
"I wasn't real sure about this year even until last week," Coody said. "I said I will go play Saturday and Sunday before the tournament and shoot a couple of practice rounds. If I played halfway decent I was going to play. If I shot 85 or 88 I wasn't going to give it a go this year. But I shot in the high 70s (75 and 79, actually) and felt that I could give it a go."
Nerves and pressure got the best of him when the tournament started. Coody never made a birdie and needed a grinding par on the 18th hole Thursday to keep from shooting 90.
"I actually thought I would play a little better than I did," he said. "I made the mistake you can't make on any golf course - you can't compound errors with other mistakes. My score just got away from me."
The round gave him pause about teeing it up again Friday morning.
"Obviously, after yesterday he was really worried about today," Kyle Coody said. "He came out and started good, had a good time. It was a memorable day for both of us."
