Forget the green jacket: The Masters battle to avoid finishing dead last

The rider who comes last after three gruelling weeks of the Tour de France is known as the lanterne rouge, and, far from embarrassment, it is a title that carries some distinction: after all, they endured even more pain and misery than the rest. Finishing last at the Masters may not come with quite such prestige but there is a comparable premise in the idea that a player wrestled with the many pitfalls of Augusta National and lived to tell the tale.

Sometimes it is an awe-struck amateur who finishes bottom of the pile but this year the leading candidates are former winners still enjoying their champions’ exemption. Both Georgia’s own Larry Mize and Scotland’s Sandy Lyle have said this week will be their Augusta swansong – they gave emotional speeches at the Champions Dinner on Tuesday evening – so ahead of their farewell Masters, we assess who might get the upper hand one last time.

Mize, an Augusta native, won the 1987 Masters in a dramatic play-off against Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros. The Spaniard was eliminated on the first play-off hole to leave Mize vs Norman, and Mize pulled off perhaps the second-most famous chip in golf to stun Norman and win the green jacket.

This year will mark his 40th consecutive start at the Masters.

“This will be my last time competing,” he said. “It’s time. The golf course is just getting so long. It’s hard to make the cut. It’s time for me to stop playing. I’ll hate not playing, but it’s definitely time. I’ve got a lot of peace about it.”

open image in gallery

Mize is now 64 and has missed the cut in each of the past five years at the Masters. He did beat a discombobulated Bryson DeChambeau by one shot in 2022, showing that brawn is not everything around Augusta National, but he hasn’t played competitive golf since last summer and as such is the favourite with most of the bookies to finish bottom of the leaderboard.

Even so, Mize is intent on not just avoiding the wooden spoon but on making the cut.

“That’s the goal, to play on the weekend. I’m going to compete and not just play two days. Hopefully that will happen. We’re working hard to that end. It will be an emotional week, no doubt. I’m hoping and praying I can keep my emotions in check. We’ll have to wait and see to what extent I’m able to do that.”

Lyle is one year older than Mize and won the Masters one year later, becoming the first Briton to do so in 1988. If Mize hit one of the great chips then Lyle played one of golf’s legendary fairway bunker shots, followed by a downhill putt to see off Americans Mark Calcavecchia and Ben Crenshaw.

“I’ve just been talking to (1979 winner) Fuzzy Zoeller up in the locker room and he said that when it came to his time to retire, he looked at his driving licence and it said 65, so it’s time,” Lyle said this week.

open image in gallery

Lyle stepped away from the PGA Tour Champions recently after shooting 18 over par across three rounds, and has missed the past eight Masters cuts.

“It’ll be emotional. Hopefully I don’t burst into tears coming up the 18th in the second round,” he said. “Hopefully it’s a good enough score to play the weekend. The last few years it’s not worked out that way but you always live in hope.”

Jose Maria Olazabal is another Masters winner (1994 and 1999 champion) and contender at the foot of the leaderboard, as is the 1992 champion Fred Couples, one of the smoothest swings in golf who has not made the cut in the past four years. Vijay Singh (2000) and Mike Weir (2003) should be too good to finish rock bottom, as should the evergreen Bernhard Langer (1985 and 1993).

Then there are a raft of amateurs in the field, including the 30-year-old Northern Irish optometrist Matthew McClean, the 22-year-old Australian Harrison Crowe and Argentine 23-year-old Mateo Fernandez de Oliviera, who is already renowned for his short game. Last year the English amateur Laird Shepherd came bottom of the pile with a score of +22, so don’t discount the debutants on a course that rewards local knowledge.