Larry Mize picked up his two sons, David, 6, and Patrick, 3, in happy celebration of his victory in the Northern Telecom Open.
It was a cheerful, squirming armful of less than 100 pounds; much, much lighter than the burden of frustration Mize had been toting for more than five years.That burden was placed on his shoulders, Mize said, by one of golf's truly historic shots: the 140-foot pitch-in playoff birdie that beat Greg Norman in the 1987 Masters.
"I think that shot at the Masters hurt me psychologically," Mize said Sunday after a 5-under-par 67 lifted him to a two-shot victory, his first in this country since that long-ago day in Augusta, Ga. "After something like that, you want to put your expectations pretty high. But you don't want them to be so high that all you get is frustration."
And that's what happened to him.
"I started trying to play perfect golf. You can't do that," he said.
So he adopted a new attitude, a new mind-set for the 1993 PGA Tour season.
"And enjoy playing golf. You're not going to hit every shot perfect, so you need to be in a frame of mind to be able to enjoy playing the trouble shots," Mize said.
That's precisely the formula he followed in the run down the stretch at Tucson National, breaking away from a closely bunched pack with a 32 and six one-putts on the back nine.
The third victory of his 12-year tour career came on a 271 total, 17 under par, and was worth $198,000 from the total purse of $1.1 million.