“Someone has got to win and today was my day. If along the way fortunately you play some good golf and win some more tournaments then fantastic but we’re just going to keep doing all the things we have been doing and hope things continue”.
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Yet Spieth almost repeated as Masters champion and posted another wire-to-wire victory without his “A” game. Going to the drop zone for an awkward distance, he hit his wedge so fat that it found the water again.
Those are the shots for which this Masters will be remembered, at least in the immediate future.
The Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Talib Hussain, said the city will hold a civic reception in Willett’s honor and will award him a star on Sheffield’s “Legends” walk of fame, on the pavement outside the Town Hall.
After his win, he said: “You can’t really describe your emotions and feelings”.
Two weeks ago, Faldo was reminiscing about his six-shot comeback to beat Norman in 1996. “It was just a lapse of concentration at No. 12 and it cost me”. That made what happened on Sunday that much more unpredictable.
Willett had a bogey-free 67 that matched the lowest score on the weekend this year. The other three players ahead of him, and even those behind him, couldn’t sustain the round of golf that Willett put together.
Fame was thrust upon Willett last week and he admitted: “It’s still a bit insane, everything’s still up in the air but I think it’ll start slowly sinking in”, he said. If I’d have shot 72 and Jordan did what he did it would have been a different story. The self-belief he gained since getting it done that day and from his three subsequent tournament wins, can only have contributed to his confidence snow-balling to the levels a major champion needs. His driver let him down in several key situations – none more apparent than the final two holes of the third round when errant tee shots led to a bogey-double bogey finish – and his iron play was, by his own admission, average at best. “Obviously we’ve had a lot of encouraging messages from a lot of really nice people around the world, offering advice if I need it. We’ve got a lot of good people on our side so hopefully we can just take it in out stride and enjoy it”, he said. “It’s no surprise, certainly to the European Tour players who know him so well”. “I’m very proud of what he achieved”.
As the golfer was making history, his brother Paul Willett’s tweets went viral on social media.
Where does he go from here? His son, Zachariah, was born shortly before the Masters started.
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While Willett was putting together the round of his life on Sunday at the Masters, his brother, Paul, was becoming an unlikely star on Twitter and occasionally giving some insight into his relationship with his sibling. That’s now the day he became a major champion.
