The main course was fajitas. For dessert, some small churros with chocolate. The menu was run by Tiger Woods at the champions’ dinner held last Tuesday. Tradition is not touched despite the pandemic leaving some chairs empty. The green jacket club reconvened. Sergio García absent due to covid, José María Olazabal carried the little Spanish flag while the oldest told stories around the tablecloth. In front Jack Nicklaus, 80 years old and six of those clothes in the closet. Five collects Tiger. Olazabal doubled (1994 and 1999), as did Bernhard Langer (1985 and 1993).
The Masters is grateful to those who win at Augusta and all of its winners have the eternal right to play the tournament each year. That luxury is given to Olazabal, although at 54 he has not enjoyed making the cut since 2014 (he said goodbye with +14). Time does not pass the same for everyone, although there are those who seem to have drunk from the fountain of eternal youth. He is Langer, the German who at 63 not only retains some of his adolescent hair, but also a master’s sleight of hand. Langer closed the first lap with -4 (the best in his record since 1993, and that year he won), quickly charged the batteries of his old body and jumped back to the grass to deliver +1 in the second and with -3 overall. become the oldest golfer to make the cut in the history of the Masters: at 63 years and a month he surpassed Tommy Aaron by a few weeks and his April 2000 record – the record in a great is Sam Snead, 67 years in the PGA 79—.
Langer has 37 Masters and 126 rounds at Augusta behind him. Olazabal, 31 and 98. The German incombustible is the figure of the Champions Tour, the senior circuit, in which he amasses 41 victories and in 2020 he has been the player with the most earnings ahead of Ernie Els, Kevin Sutherland and Miguel Ángel Jiménez.
Nicklaus is the oldest winner of the Masters, with 46 years in 1986. Julius Boros, the oldest winner in a big one. He was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA. Tom Watson was one finger from history when he almost won the 2009 Open with 59 on the card. Langer, at 63, is 45 years older than the youngest in this Masters, Argentine Abel Gallegos. The German almost doubles the average age of the one who conquers Augusta (32.2). In a circuit in which seven of the 10 best in the world are in their twenties, the Teuton still claims what wrinkles are worth.
