It's the most famous acreage in golf, and it can be the loneliest - even with the eyes of millions watching it.

Charles Howell stares at his ball after he failed to pitch out on the 11th hole. It took him four tries, and he carded a quintuple bogey. (Ross Taylor/Staff)

Charles Howell stood alone in the middle of it. For all of his evolving fashion sense, he might as well have been naked.

"There's nowhere to hide," Howell's father said.

There's a place behind the 13th tee where players disappear from view. Nobody would have blamed Howell if he'd hidden back there and wept. Or if he had the urge to crawl through the woods, onto his childhood course and away from prying eyes.

But there was no escape.

Anyone who has had the "naked dream" understands what Howell was living Friday. His nightmare grew worse in the place he loves the most. His good walk was already spoiled when he reached Amen Corner with little hope of a miracle.

Then four whacks in a bunker on 11 and a cruel gust of wind on 12 compounded and drowned his pain. He made the record books with a tying nine on the 11th hole, and it's not the way he wants to be remembered in the major championship he's been dreaming about since he was 7.

"I can't imagine what's going through his head out there," said Howell's mother, Debra. "He must feel like he's been gutted."

Howell, understandably, wasn't ready to share how he felt. On a day when the "thru" score operators stopped posting his numbers coming in, the pain was obvious.

"I don't know what to say," Howell said, as he walked numbly to the locker room to get his stuff and go home. "I really don't know what to say. Thanks."

That feeling was mutual. His mother was just as lost for words. She already had reached as far as she could for the right thing to say after a heart-breaking opening 80 on Thursday. What could she tell her oldest child after a gut-wrenching 84 left him in last place?

"All I could say last night was, 'I love you,'" she said.

Sadly, that was a common feeling among the locals. Fellow hometown golfer Vaughn Taylor was fighting a sore back and desperate hope to make the cut in his Masters debut, and the view was killing his mother, Lynn.

"It's brutal," she said as she nervously prayed for Taylor's par putt to drop on the 17th green and keep hope alive. "I'm proud of him no matter what he does, but he's the one who wants this the most."

That's the hardest part - the wanting. And watching good kids - local kids - suffer is tough.

Fuzzy Zoeller, the 1979 champion who played with Howell, admired how the 26-year-old carried his pain.

"It's the game, and it's the nature of the beast of this sport we play," Zoeller said. "We were sitting out there and I'll say one thing for him - he smiled all the way around and didn't bitch, moan or complain and he was trying his hardest. But that's golf."

How would Zoeller have handled it at Howell's age?

"I don't know how you react to that," he said. "It's just golf. There were a lot of nice-looking golf shots he hit that just hit the wrong side of the mound and just got totally screwed. At this place, there are just some places you can't play from."

Howell arrived at his fifth Masters in the diciest of situations. In the past month, he's changed the course of 14 years of training to make himself better. That it would not click on the week when his internal pressure is the highest was unfortunate.

Combining a game in flux with unfiltered desire was like mixing ammonium nitrate with gasoline. The outcome was explosive.

Was it enough to end Howell's love affair with Augusta National and the Masters? Probably not. Was it the rock bottom he needed to hit before bouncing back up? We hope so.

"You have got to learn to forget it," Zoeller said. "That's the difference between your amateurs and your professionals. Your amateurs run to find help, but as a pro you have to have the patience to wait. It will turn around for him, and he's not that far off."

It must have seemed like a million miles away as he stood out there stripped of everything in the corner of the course he grew up staring at through the trees from Augusta Country Club. Surely he was embarrassed, but he couldn't let it show.

Howell never cried after missing his first cut at the Masters last year. The only time he's done that was after the third round in 2004, when he started the day in contention playing with eventual champion Phil Mickelson and shot himself out with 76.

There will be better days - probably not nearly as far off as they seemed this week. Howell will have other chances at Augusta, and maybe one day he will beat it.

"We talked all the way around, and I just told him to keep his head up and keep swinging," Zoeller said. "I just said, 'You know it's going to change. It's just like the new sun that comes up every morning, it will change. You just have to have patience with it.'"

It won't feel any better this morning when the sun comes up and the Masters goes on without him. But at least he's not alone anymore with his pain exposed to the world.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.