The Masters. Another foreign champion. A player of enormous talent finally realizing unfulfilled promise.
The story line held up. Just substitute the name Jose Maria Olazabal for Greg Norman.This was to be the Masters that Norman finally won, but it became the major Olazabal finally won. The Spaniard stumbled over the last two holes, but so did Tom Lehman and Larry Mize.
Olazabal's solid closing round of 69 on Sunday gave him 279 for 72 holes, two strokes ahead of Lehman and three ahead of Mize, the winner here in 1987.
Playing in the same group with Lehman and just behind Mize, Olazabal scrambled when he had to, tamed the tricky Augusta greens and never cracked in the pressure down the stretch. He didn't make a bogey until he hit a poor chip on the 17th.
Olazabal all but closed it out by rolling in a 40-foot eagle putt on the par-5 15th after his second shot just barely cleared the water and didn't roll back into the pond as others had all week.
Lehman, who shot 72, made a great run at a 20-foot eagle try on the same hole but left it just short. He fell to the ground and pounded the rock-hard Augusta green with his fists in disappointment.
His last shot to put pressure on Olazabal came at 18, but he missed a 20-foot par putt after driving into a sand trap.
Olazabal, who started the day 6 under, one stroke behind Lehman, birdied Nos. 2 and 8 on the front nine - both par 5s - and then ran off six consecutive pars before his eagle.
Olazabal took home $360,000, Lehman earned $216,000 and Mize collected $136,000.
It was the sixth time in seven years a non-American walked off with the championship. It was the 10th victory by a foreign golfer here since Gary Player started the streak in 1978, a streak that includes Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and Nick Faldo - all of whom won twice - and Sandy Lyle and Ian Woosnam.
Norman, the Australian who has won a ton of money but has let a slew of major championships slip away from him, could have shaken his label as the shark without the killer instinct. Instead, he closed horribly, shooting 77 in the final round to finish at 292, 13 strokes behind.
Tom Kite finished fourth at 5-under-par 283.
Jay Haas, Loren Roberts and Jim McGovern finished at 3-under-par 285. Corey Pavin and Ernie Els were at 286. Ian Baker-Finch of Australia, John Huston and Raymond Floyd finished at 287. Tom Watson was at even par 288.
In hot, humid conditions, with annoying gusts of the wind that had bedeviled the course all week, Olazabal, 28, was every bit the champion he had yet to prove he was.
He won the British Amateur and then turned pro in 1985 when he was just 19 years old. Big things were expected, something on the scale of the five major championships won by his countryman, Ballesteros.
While Olazabal has won 15 tournaments on the European PGA Tour, he has won only twice in the United States.
He has been in contention at majors several times, finishing second in the the 1991 Masters and third in the 1992 British Open.
"Hopefully what I learned three years ago I will use to my advantage," he said before the third round. "I will try to be calm and play the course as it is supposed to be played."
That's exactly what he did on Sunday.
Olazabal banged his drive off a tree on No. 1. It dropped down in the fairway but overhanging limbs made it impossible for him to loft the ball to the green. So he punched a low iron shot, bouncing it onto the green and two-putted from 40 feet for par.
When he just missed a long, curling birdie putt on No. 9 he simply shrugged his shoulders. When his tee shot missed the 13th fairway far right, he brazenly picked dead pine needles away from his ball, risking a two-stroke penalty if it moved. And when he rolled in that glorious eagle, he merely raised his hand, walked to the hole and picked his ball out.
Dave Renwick, Olazabal's caddy, was out early walking the course and checking pin positions. "They look about as tough as they've been all week," he said.
"He's playing very well," said Renwick, who comes from Edinburgh, Scotland, and a regular caddy for Olazabal. "He was just a bit unlucky on 13 yesterday," he said, referring to Olazabal's bogey after his ball bounced into the water.
"I think about 8 under will win it."
The caddy was off by one stroke, but it was his boss who made him wrong.
This year, the threat by the other foreigners faded early. Norman, who came into the Masters off a stunning 24-under par performance at The Players Championship where he made only one bogey, was in great shape after two rounds but played himself out of contention with a 75 on Saturday.
Langer, the defending champion from Germany, finished at 293, 14 strokes back. Faldo of England shot 296. The Scotsman, Lyle, was at 299. Woosnam of Wales needed 301 strokes to get around and Ballesteros totaled 292.
Nick Price, who has won a dozen tournaments around the world in the last year and a half, finished at 298.
Many of the American contenders also played poorly. Fuzzy Zoeller, coming off three consecutive second-place finishes this year, was at 298. John Daly was at 304. U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen shot 295. And Ben Crenshaw finished at 292.
Norman had a lot of excess baggage he hoped to unload here. In 1986, he led all four major championships going to the final round. He won the British Open and was second in the Masters and the PGA Championship. He was also runner-up in the 1984 U.S. Open, the 1987 Masters and the PGA last year, when he won his second British Open.
"I don't think the end of my tenure has arrived if I don't win this year," Norman, 39, said earlier this week.
But a 77 on Sunday at Augusta will be difficult to live down.
Jeff Maggert made a double-eagle 2 on the 485-yard par-5 13th hole, the first double-eagle at the Masters since Bruce Devlin did it on No. 8 in the first round in 1967. The most famous 2 here was by Gene Sarazen on the 15th hole of the final round in 1935. That got him in a playoff with Craig Wood, which Sarazen won.
Maggert's double eagle had less impact. He finished at 305, tied for last in the field.