Try to imagine peeking through the fence and trees and seeing Augusta National Golf Club just out of reach of the childhood course you played every day. Imagine peeking through the little windows of the third-hole scoreboard you operated as a teenager and seeing Tommy Aaron become the first Georgian to win the green jacket. Imagine peeking at the pictures on the walls at Georgia Tech of your school’s greatest golfer, Bobby Jones, as you yearned to make a career in the game.
Then imagine peaking as a 28-year-old professional in your hometown of Augusta, Georgia, with arguably the greatest shot in Masters history and having a seat at the Champions Dinner for the rest of your life.
“I don’t think my dreams ever got that far,” said Larry Mize, who in 1987 became the only native Augustan to win a green jacket.
Mize, 64, will tee off in his 40th and final Masters next month. It is a difficult decision for any major-champion golfer to stop competing, but it’s made easier by a course that has grown 640 yards in the 36 years since Mize won.
“It’s just time,” Mize said of his decision to step away after one last Masters start. “You know, that course is not made for old guys; it’s made for young guys. It’s been a great time for me playing in the tournament for so many years, but this course is so long it’s just a beast. I love playing it, but from those back tees it is so tough. I just think it’s time for me to end my playing career there.
“Bernhard (Langer) and I talked last year. He asked me how much longer I was going to play, and I said I think next year will be my last. Because you know we’re hitting long irons, hybrids and fairway woods in occasionally. I’ve got a fairway wood into 5, a fairway wood into 11. Sometimes I’ve had to hit 5-wood into a couple other par 4s.
“It’s getting harder and harder for me to make the cut, and that’s another sign it’s time to stop.”
Mize didn’t used to worry about making cuts. He played the weekend in his first 11 starts at Augusta, finishing top 20 seven times, including a solo third in 1994 and T6 in 1992. He made the cut three times from 2014 to ’17, at ages 55, 57 and 58, respectively. He’d love to do it one more time, breaking the record set by a 63-year-old Langer in 2020, clipping Aaron’s achievement in 2000 by one month.
“I’m going to work hard to go out making the cut in the last year and have a good week,” said Mize, who has also curtailed his playing on PGA Tour Champions with some lingering back issues. “Just not get too emotional; that’s my main goal. Nothing special planned. I mean, I’ll have my family with me, as always, and it’s gonna be another week like it has been. It’ll just be the last time, and I’m looking forward to it.”
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Mize was born in Augusta just five months after Arnold Palmer won his first green jacket in 1958, but it was the Hawk and not the eventual King who inspired Mize’s middle name – Hogan – and portended his life in the game. Mize vaguely remembers first going to a golf course when he was 5 or 6, but it was after his family moved away and later returned to Augusta when he was 9 that he started playing the game in earnest just across Rae’s Creek from Amen Corner at Augusta Country Club.
The first time Mize finally got the chance to play Augusta National was when the club was in the process of converting the greens from bermudagrass to bent in 1981, “but it really wasn’t the same,” he said.
“There was a bunch of temporary greens. I mean, the 10th green was down in the valley over the bunker short of the green but a temporary green. So really, the first time I played the actual course the way it is was a practice round in March ’84 before I played that year.”
He took an immediate liking to the course, tying for 11th in his Masters debut.
“That was really special,” he said. “It guaranteed me to get back in the next year.”
Two years later, Mize’s final-round 65 shared the low round of the day with Jack Nicklaus. While the 46-year-old Nicklaus famously won, Mize vaulted to a T16 result, “which got me back for ’87 and kind of gave me momentum going into the week to play well again and fortunately win it,” he said.
Mize was the only player in the field not to shoot worse than par in 1987, but few gave the hometown kid much hope of winning when he embarked in a three-man, sudden-death playoff against Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman even after making birdie on 18. But it was Mize who had the best chance to win it on the first playoff hole after Ballesteros and Norman missed birdie putts from the back fringe on No. 10. Mize’s uphill 14-footer was on line, but it didn’t have quite enough pace and curled left at the hole.
Only Norman and Mize advanced to 11 after Ballesteros three-putted for bogey, and the Aussie seized the upper hand with an approach safely on the right fringe of the 11th green after Mize flared his 5-iron from 194 yards wide right into no-man’s land roughly 130 feet from the pin perched on the far side of green with the pond looming behind it.
Hoping to just get it close enough to save par and maybe extend the playoff to the par-3 12th, Mize bumped his pitch into the side of the hill. It bounced twice before reaching the green and rolled and rolled and rolled before disappearing into the cup.
“How’s that look? OH!” shouted Steve Melnyk on the CBS broadcast. “Words do not do justice to the greatness of that shot.”
Mize threw his putter and arms high into the air as he leapt for joy and ran around as the sustained roars echoed in Amen Corner until Mize held his hands up for the patrons to quiet down. A “crestfallen” Norman – who had beaten Mize in a six-hole playoff in the Kemper Open at Congressional in 1986 – was unable to make his 50-foot birdie try to answer, and Augusta had its only homegrown champion.
“It’s the greatest shot ever, and I’ll tell you why. It was a walk-off. It won the tournament. People talk about Tiger’s chip or Sarazen’s double eagle, but neither of those won the tournament. Mize walked ’em off.” – Carl Jackson
“I’m pretty much speechless; I’m just trying to fight back the tears,” Mize said in the Butler Cabin. “This is a special place. I was born and raised here. The crowds were great. I’ve just got to thank the good Lord for everything. I hit a good shot on 11 and a little bit of luck, I guess it was my turn to win.”
That shot and reaction, Mize’s inimitable purple shirt and Norman’s disbelief have been indelible images ever since. Though there have been other remarkable final-round shots by Masters winners through the years – Gene Sarazen’s “double eagle” on 15 in 1935, Tiger Woods’ parabolic chip-in on 16 in 2005 and Bubba Watson’s brilliantly hooked wedge from deep in the trees on 10 in a playoff in 2012 spring to the fore – Mize’s is regarded by many to be the best of them.
“It’s the greatest shot ever, and I’ll tell you why,” Carl Jackson, who caddied in a record 54 Masters and won twice with Ben Crenshaw, told The Augusta Chronicle. “It was a walk-off. It won the tournament. People talk about Tiger’s chip or Sarazen’s double eagle, but neither of those won the tournament. Mize walked ’em off.”
Mize leaves that assessment for others. All he knows is it was the greatest shot of his career – a moment he relives often, but “probably not often enough.”
“I’ve watched it many, many times, but I don’t really stop and look at it,” he said. “I mean, maybe I’ve done that a few times, but not very many. I just happen to see when it comes up.”
Every year he’s played the Masters since and gone through the 11th hole, Mize intentionally never attempted the shot again and couldn’t now even if he wanted to because of recent contour changes on the right side of the green.
“That was a really good decision of mine because it kept it just a pure memory,” Mize said. “I’ve never been back to that spot. … The shot is even harder now. You could not replicate it.”
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A year later, Mize hosted the Champions Dinner and found himself in the same room with Sarazen, Byron Nelson, Henry Picard, Herman Keiser, Sam Snead, Jack Burke Jr., Palmer, Nicklaus, Gary Player and all the other greats assembled in their green jackets.
“I was a nervous wreck; I guess you’d say that in a way I didn’t feel like I belonged,” Mize said.
But he does belong. The kid who worked at age 13 and 14 posting scores on the third hole beat two towering legends and hit the shot nobody will forget to earn his place at that table to serve his peers a steak-and-potatoes dinner with some Georgia peach cobbler for dessert. He very nearly won it again in 1994, leading after 18 and 36 holes and sharing the lead with Tom Lehman and José María Olazábal entering the back nine on Sunday.
But Mize made bogeys at 12 and 14, and by the time Olazábal eagled 15 he was three back and settled for third.
“In ’94 having a chance to win, finishing third behind José’s great win … that was a blast, you know, having a chance to win there again,” he said.
When a fan shouted “Thank you, Larry!” after he hit his drive on 18, Mize could feel the embrace from his hometown that he was indeed where he belonged.
“That appreciation I felt, I’ll never forget it,” he said.
He hopes to feel that embrace one more time. Mize will stop playing in the Masters after 40 straight years, but he’ll always keep returning every April for dinner and the Par 3 Contest and maybe even stick around to watch some of the tournament if his family wants to.
Mize has never imagined what his career and life and Aprils would be like if that ball hadn’t fallen into the cup on 11 in 1987 and sent him soaring.
“I’m very, very blessed and fortunate the way it turned out,” he said.
“As far as golf goes, there’s nothing better. I mean, to get to go back where I grew up – and I grew up watching the great players play there and worked there as a kid on the scoreboard on 3 – it’s just basically living a golf dream every year in April. That’s what it has been for 40 years.”