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1) The “shot heard round the world” (1935)

When Craig Wood birdied the final hole of the second Augusta National Invitation Tournament in 1935 – the Masters wouldn’t be called the Masters for another four years – he must have thought he had put what was fast becoming a jinx to bed. Wood was the Greg Norman of his day: by far the longest hitter on tour, but never able to convert this prodigious advantage into titles, outrageous bad luck nixing him every time.

In 1933, he went into an 18-hole play-off for the Open championship at St Andrews as favourite, but early in the round an abnormally huge 440-yard drive found sand and cost him a shot. Wood never recovered momentum and Denny Chute took the prize. In the inaugural Augusta National Invitation Tournament the following year, Wood missed out on the title by one stroke, Horton Smith sinking a monster to win on 17. Then Wood lost the final of the PGA, then a matchplay tournament — the unfancied Paul Runyan, who had an unnerving habit of getting up and down from all sorts of foliage-related bother, holding on for dear life for 36 holes, then sinking a sudden-death sucker punch from 10-feet on the second extra hole.

But that final-hole birdie at Augusta in the spring of 1935 looked to have finally sealed the deal for Wood. It meant he had posted a clubhouse score of 282, three ahead of his nearest leaderboard challenger. That man was Gene Sarazen, who as a cheer went up in celebration of Wood’s birdie, stood in the centre of the fairway at the par-five 15th, having hit his drive 225 yards down the 520-yard hole. “Well, that’s that,” said Walter Hagen, Sarazen’s playing partner for the day. “Oh I don’t know,” smiled Sarazen, “they might go in from anywhere.”

Sarazen’s caddy, a chap improbably called Stovepipe, informed him that he would definitely need a three-wood to clear the water in front of the green. But Sarazen ummed and ahhed, and eventually decided Stovepipe was talking through his hat, plumping for a four-wood instead. “Hey, hurry up, Gene,” laughed Hagen, “I got a date tonight.” Sarazen finally got on with it, creaming a shot straight towards the green, 40 feet into the air. It eventually landed a few inches in front of the green, before rolling towards the far-right corner of the putting surface and dropping into the hole. Albatross. Three holes later, three difficult par putts sunk, he was in the clubhouse, tied with the hapless Wood. Inevitably, Sarazen won the 36-hole play off, triumphing by five shots thanks mainly to a hot putter. But it was his shot with his 4-wood that had been heard around the world, and that put the Masters on the map.

Wood’s personal nightmare wasn’t over. In 1939, he made the play-off of the US Open, only to lose out to Byron Nelson. It meant he had become the first player to lose all four majors in play-offs. The only other player to subsequently match this dubious feat? You’ve guessed it: Norman, who infamously failed to win a Masters despite coming second three times, third three times, and fourth, fifth and sixth once apiece. Wood, unlike Norman, eventually made peace with Augusta, though, leading from the very first day to win the 1941 tournament, and following it up immediately with a US Open win too.

2) Nicklaus’s forgotten miracle (1986)

The pivotal moment of the 1986 Masters – the greatest of all – has gone down in legend. Jack Nicklaus had mounted a charge, with birdies at 9, 10 and 11, and an eagle at 15, but was still two behind leader Seve Ballesteros. He then hit his tee shot at 16 to four feet. Meanwhile Seve was coming down the 15th, in prime position in the centre of the fairway. He addresses his ball and prepares to go for the green – but then steps away as a cheer rings round the course: Jack has made his birdie putt on 16. Spooked, Seve steps up again, only to top his second into the lake. Bogey. Nicklaus goes on to birdie 17, taking over the lead from a haunted Seve and eventually winning the green jacket at the age of 46 years and three months.

Nicklaus’s antics on the back nine – he came home in 30 strokes – define that tournament. Even if you’re not a golf nut, you’ll remember the image of the week: the celebration on 17, the Golden Bear lunging forward after the ball, splay footed, putter raised in the air just as the ball’s about to drop. But none of it would have been possible without a now oft-forgotten miracle moment on the 8th, arguably the real pivotal moment that day.

“I was on my way to watch Seve,” explains legendary Observer golf writer Bill Elliott, one of the very few who witnessed Nicklaus’s miracle shot that day. In order to follow the Spaniard, Elliott had to cross the 8th fairway. He waited for Nicklaus to drive, and saw the 17-time major winner slice his ball into the woods on the right. “I thought: I might as well see how the old bugger handles that! There was only about a dozen people following him. He wasn’t a contender. As things stood, he was in about 35th or 40th place.

“Jack’s son Steve was caddying, and handed him a seven-iron to chip back out sideways. Jack stood in the trees with his hands on his hips and finally said ‘Wait a minute, I see a gap’.” Nicklaus took his three wood and clattered his ball through a two-foot gap that was 40 yards ahead of him. “He trudged into those trees,” remembers Elliott, “and marched out of them. It got his juices flowing.” Nicklaus was able to save par, and on the very next hole he birdied to begin his famous charge.

Luck played a big part – years later, Dave Musgrove, caddying for Nicklaus’s playing partner Sandy Lyle, revealed that Jack admitted he’d missed the gap he was aiming for, but the ball flew through an even smaller one anyway – but that should take nothing away from Nicklaus, who according to Elliott should be applauded for his “shot execution, bravado, imagination and balls”. Nicklaus’s subsequent performance that hazy afternoon set the seal on his amazing career, and arguably ruined two others: a deeply affected Seve was never the same again, while Greg Norman, looking to par the last to force a play-off with Nicklaus, wilted in the face of the Golden Bear’s partisan support and bogeyed, his first Masters runner-up spot surely planting a seed of doubt that would eventually consume him ten years later in spectacular fashion.

Now that’s pivotal.

3) Sandy Lyle’s bunker shot (1988)

By the time Sandy Lyle reached Amen Corner during the fourth round of the 1988 Masters, he had used up an awful lot of nervous energy. He had won the previous week’s Greater Greensboro Open, leading for most of that event. He had been leading at Augusta since midway through the second round. And now, as he hit the turn on the final day, he was eight under par, holding a three-shot advantage over Mark Calcavecchia. “I like leading tournaments,” he had said the evening before. But no golfer is truly at ease with the prize theirs to lose, and the pressure would suddenly tell.

He bogeyed 11, then double bogeyed the short 12th, covering his face as his tee shot rippled the water. Suddenly his advantage was gone, and soon Calcavecchia took advantage of Lyle’s stumble to move ahead. “We led for 40 holes and the strain was awful,” Lyle’s caddy, Dave Musgrove, remembered later. “When Sandy lost the lead at 14, he started to play again. It was great seeing Calcavecchia ahead of us at 15 with the weight on his shoulders for a change.” Still, the American kept steady enough to post a clubhouse total of six under.

Lyle needed to make a move. After missing an easy birdie putt at 15, he rolled in a long, fast, slippery one on the next hole to draw level with the clubhouse leader. After parring 17, Lyle was looking for par at the last to force a play-off. At which point he nearly threw the title away again, driving his one-iron straight into the first of the fairway bunkers, 256 yards from the tee. “As soon as Sandy hit the tee shot on the last, he thought he’d lost the championship,” recalled Musgrove. “He said he couldn’t get a par from there.”

But there was hope. “He didn’t want to be in the bunker, like, but if he had to be, then on the upslope was perfect,” continued the caddy. “When we got there Sandy checked with a TV guy to see what Calcavecchia had done, and then he knew he needed a par. We’d got 150 yards to the pin, eight-iron distance, but the ball comes off the club slower out of sand, so we hit the seven.” Lyle clipped the ball cleanly off the sand with precision bordering on perfection. The ball arced over the flag, bit into the upslope at the back of the green, and slowly – teasingly – dribbled back down the gradient and stopped eight feet from the cup. Pandemonium time.

“We knew it were good by the cheers,” said Musgrove. “We couldn’t see it, but I knew he couldn’t hole it. That sort of thing only happens in fairy stories, so there I am, slogging up that hill, me back’s hurting and I’m thinking there’s going to be a bleeding play-off when all I want to do is get off and have a beer.

“He had a good look at that putt, though. He looked at the setting sun, because that affects the grain, and we reckoned it were a two-way borrow. So he hit it straight and it went in. Christ, I was glad that bugger was over.” Meanwhile Lyle danced a little dance, too exhausted to boogie, but relaxed in the knowledge he’d just hit the greatest bunker shot in the history of the game – and arguably the greatest pressure shot of all time.

4) Bob Goalby seizes the moment (1968)

The 1968 Masters is remembered for one thing, and one thing alone: a hangdog Roberto De Vicenzo leaving the scorer’s tent in high distress, after being told he’d signed for a four rather than the birdie three he actually made at the 17th hole, and had therefore cost himself the chance to meet Bob Goalby in a play-off the following day. It’s arguably the most distressing story in the history of competitive golf, not least because it happened on De Vicenzo’s 45th birthday.

The mistake – first made by De Vicenzo’s playing partner and scorer Tommy Aaron (who would win the Masters himself in 1973) though ultimately by the Argentinian himself, who missed the error and signed for the higher score – has obscured much that was good about the tournament. Two things. First that De Vicenzo’s final round was majestic: it began with a nine-iron floated gently into the 1st green, pitching a foot from the hole, and spinning into the cup. “The crowd erupted, the caddy extracted the ball and kissed it,” wrote legendary Guardian golf writer Pat Ward-Thomas. “De Vicenzo strolled beaming to the green in his imperial fashion as the crowd sang Happy Birthday To You. As he walked to the next tee he said to me: I need 17 more like that. He swung at the next drive so easily and smoothly that nothing might have happened.”

De Vicenzo nearly eagled the second, and birdied the third: four under for the first three holes. He had started the day two shots behind Gary Player; now he was two clear of the field. He continued to blaze around Augusta, with birdies at 8, 12, 15 and (fatefully) 17, before dropping a stroke at the last. Often forgotten, the six-footer he missed on the 18th would prove very costly indeed.

Also rarely remembered is the other great performance that day: that of the eventual winner, Bob Goalby. The big man did his best to keep on Di Vicenzo’s tail, and stood on the par-five 15th only two shots behind the Argentinian. But he needed to make a move. After booming a drive straight down the middle, he was faced with a 210-yard approach to the firm green. Goalby’s long irons tended to fly “lower than most”, he would admit, but this time he hit a textbook three-iron that arced high and dropped softly, holding on and rolling to eight feet. He knocked in the putt for eagle, and a tie of the lead.

He then hit a gorgeous second long iron, this time on the final hole, cutting the ball around the trees after a poor drive, finding the green, and saving par. Unlike his opponent, Goalby had remained staunch at the death. Both he and De Vicenzo had scored 66, but one man had inexplicably carded a 67, and lost the chance to compete for the green jacket. Goalby had won. “What a stupid I am,” sighed De Vicenzo after the dust settled. Goalby refused a promoter’s subsequent offer of $90,000 to take part in an 18-hole play-off the following year, arguing that he had done more than enough to win the Masters already. De Vicenzo agreed, although never quite reached closure. “I have a feeling the 1968 Masters hasn’t yet finished,” he wrote in his autobiography. “When Goalby and I meet in heaven, we are going to end this duel that has been left unfinished here on earth.”

5) Tom Weiskopf’s meltdown (1980)

Spoiler alert: the finale to Tin Cup, right here. Sort of.

Tom Weiskopf is, along with poor old Greg, one of the Masters’ foremost nearly men. Between 1969 and 1975 he finished runner up four times, and tied for sixth once. He never did win the thing. But even worse, his remarkable consistency round Augusta – he also finished in ninth, tenth and 14th place during the 1970s – is all but forgotten thanks to one meltdown in 1980.

Weiskopf, 6ft 3in tall, was prone to hot funks, which earned him the nickname of – sheer brilliance, this – the Towering Inferno. And he caught fire during the first round at Augusta in 1980, after dumping his tee shot into the water at the short par-three 12th. He had been going reasonably well up to that point, and so tried to knock his wedge from the dropping area dead.

Problem was, the pin was in a tricky position near the front; Weiskopf couldn’t hold the green, and the ball dropped into the drink again. Instead of taking his medicine and aiming for the safer, meatier part of the green, Weiskopf – on full boil (though all this was internalized; he wasn’t a club-thrower) – decided he wasn’t going to let this problem get the better of him. And so he attempted to knock the ball stone dead again. And again. And again. Three more times he found water, before finally giving up and doing what he should have done in the first place: playing safe and taking two putts.

Weiskopf had run up a score of 13 on the shortest hole on the course, a tied record for the highest score on a single hole in Masters history, though Tommy Nakajima’s 1978 disaster was at least on the par-five 13th. He ended the day with an 85, the other 17 holes played only three over par.

6) Lee Trevino’s snub (1970)

If Lee Trevino had held it together in the 1968 Masters, we might rarely mention poor Roberto De Vicenzo these days. Trevino was in contention for three and a half rounds that year, on his first visit to Augusta, before falling to pieces round Amen Corner, where he dropped eight shots on his way to a final-round 80. It helped the diminutive Mexican form an instant dislike of the course, which didn’t suit his game – he would flight the ball lower than the majority of players, while his left-to-right style was another disadvantage – and though he came back the following year to finish 19th, he decided against accepting his invitation for the 1970 tournament.

“He must be the first eminent golfer in history to decline the invitation for personal reasons,” wrote Pat Ward-Thomas in this paper. “He says that the course does not suit his type of golf. He flights the ball lower than most and Augusta does favour a long carrying flight. During much talk the other evening, humorous and sincere, Trevino would not be persuaded from the view that he wanted a rest and Augusta week was it; but the little man, who has very much a mind of his own, must have stronger reasons for not playing.”

Although reportedly unhappy at what the ultra-conservative Georgia club stood for – at the time the membership was all white (and, as it remains today, all male) – Trevino would stick to his story, before eventually returning to play from 1972 onwards, in a fruitless attempt to conquer a course many thought he had psyched himself out of playing well on. But he would never go into the clubhouse, choosing instead to put his golf shoes on in the car park.

From www.guardian.co.uk