AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sandy Lyle had never played with Jack Nicklaus before the final round of the 1986 Masters. And they never were paired together again. Only one time during Lyle’s Hall of Fame career that began on the PGA Tour in 1980.
OK, there was that one time they played nine holes together at Pebble Beach because his amateur partner was friendly with Jack’s son, but it was rained out. Lyle doesn’t count that and we won’t either. It just so happened that one time was one of the most magical and memorable rounds ever, the day Nicklaus shot 65 to rally from four strokes back to win his sixth and final Green Jacket.
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“Can you believe my luck?” Lyle asked, cracking an oversized smile.
It’s a day Lyle says he gets reminded about all the time. It still seems improbable. “There were no signs the first eight holes,” he said.
Nicklaus’s back-nine charge remains fresh in Lyle’s memory. “We were walking up 13,” Lyle recounted, “and Jack turned to me and said, ‘Did you hear what Jackie said to me? He says this is too much for his young heart to handle. What about me, I’m 46.’”
Jack Nicklaus at the 1986 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.
Lyle remembers the putts best. They started to fall in bunches. First there was the eagle putt at 15.
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“I’ve never heard a roar like that. The crowd went bananas,” he says. “It raised the hairs on the back of my neck.”
After Nicklaus knocked his tee shot stiff at 16, Lyle said everyone was rooting for Nicklaus. Patrons told him about Ballesteros’s watery fate at 15. “He knew how important that putt was at 17 but it was also his hardest putt of the day,” Lyle remembered. “It had to be paced just right. It had to be firm enough to keep the line but it could’ve easily gone flying by the hole. It was a very steady putt that just knew its way in.”
Lyle said Nicklaus was unlucky that his approach shot to 18 rolled down the hill to the lower level of the green, leaving him a testy 50-foot putt. “He hit a hell of a putt. It stopped inches short,” Lyle recalled. “If he made that putt there, I would’ve bowed to him.”
Ultimately, everyone in the field bowed to his greatness. Lyle was never a factor that day, shooting 71 and finishing T-11, his best finish there to that point. In 1988, he won the Green Jacket thanks in no small part to what he learned from Nicklaus that day.
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“Jack was so focused,” Lyle said. “He kept the same rhythm and the same pace all day and that was something I learned from and tried to mimic.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: 1986 Masters: Sandy Lyle recalls Jack Nicklaus winning at Augusta
