The best putter at the Masters Tournament last week wasn’t winner Hideki Matsuyama. He tied for 10th in average putting strokes per hole.
It wasn’t runner-up Will Zalatoris. It wasn’t 2015 Masters champion Jordan Spieth, nor 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed.
No, the leader in putting at Augusta National in 2021 was a 55-year-old Spaniard who hadn’t sniffed a Masters cut in his last five tries.
“It was a very nice surprise (to make the cut), I have to say,” said Jose Maria Olazabal, a member of PGA TOUR Champions and a two-time Masters champion in his own right. “It’s been, what, seven years I think the last time I made the cut. It was great. It was great to make the weekend, especially on the Friday that was — it would have been Seve’s birthday. It was a bit emotional in that regard.
“Plus other things, but it was really nice. I felt proud.”
Spanish golf hero Seve Ballesteros would have turned 64 on the day of the second round of this year’s Masters. He also was a two-time Masters champion, and he and Olazabal were close friends. They also formed the greatest team in Ryder Cup history.
So it was a fitting time for Olazabal to wake the echoes among the blooming azaleas and tall pines. Few players in history have had the imagination around the greens of Ballesteros, but no one had a front row seat as often as his countryman. He and Olazabal always played practice rounds at the Masters, and local knowledge always is key to chipping and putting around the tricky, lightning-fast greens at Augusta.
“It was pretty much for me all down to saving pars, chip and putt,” said Olazabal, who averaged 1.46 putts last week, slightly better than Reed at 1.49. “I knew I was going to miss a lot of greens. I was hitting 5-woods, 7-woods into most of the par-4s over there. The greens were pretty hard, especially on Thursday, and you know you’re going to miss greens. So the key for me was to make a lot of saves, and that’s what I did. I chipped and putted well last week.”
Olazabal had three three-putts for the week, none in rounds two and four. Matsuyama had four. Zalatoris had four. Justin Thomas had five.
Olazabal played with Lanto Griffin and Matt Wallace in the first two rounds and was paired with Reed in the third round. Griffin is the oldest of the three, at 32. The Spaniard said he enjoyed the display put on by his younger counerparts.
“Well, I have to say that it’s great to watch them hit the ball,” he said. “It is very impressive, the quality of the shot, the height of the shot, the distance they hit and how straight they hit it, that is quite impressive, I have to say. When you hit it over 300 yards pretty much right down the middle of the fairway with a high ball trajectory, that is quite impressive.
“It’s great to play with them. You realize how much the game of golf has evolved throughout the last few years, and well, it’s good to be part of it.”
The hope now is Olazabal can play a more active role on PGA TOUR Champions. He is slated to play Friday at the Chubb Classic, his first Champions event of the calendar year. He has played in only 34 PGA TOUR Champions events since turning 50 because of arthritis pain and then recently because of the travel restrictions with the coronavirus pandemic.
“Well, I mean, the thing is I haven’t competed as much as I wanted because of my health conditions,” Olazabal said. “I have to take my medication. I have to take my injection every 15 days, and that limits my number of tournaments. Hopefully I will be able to play a bit more this year, COVID permitted, and that’s the idea. That’s the goal, to play more often over here.”
He actually has played well in the five events in which he has teed it up since the start of 2020. He has three top 25s, including a T5 at the Morocco Champions, his best-ever finish in an individual event on PGA TOUR Champions.
So is he ready to carry the Masters’ momentum into this weekend?
“It’s a completely different golf course,” Olazabal said. “I played, what, six, seven holes (Tuesday), obviously nothing to do with Augusta. Small greens, greens are firm and fast, that is true, but you have to position the ball here. Fairways at Augusta are much wider, and in that regard for me, that I’m not the best or the straightest driver in the world, well, that helps over there.
“But I know that here I need to be sharp off the tee in order to be able to compete for the event. But it’s a completely different golf course. I take obviously some positives from last week, especially the way I played, but the driver I need to improve, especially around this golf course.”
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