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Steve Rider: Masters memories from on the course and in the studio

When I first started presenting golf for ITV, if you go back to the late seventies, early eighties, most of the golf coverage of the European Tour was on ITV, on our programme called World of Sport. We would cover tournaments such as the Bob Hope British Classic at Moor Park and the European Open. But wherever I went, other commentators would talk about the Augusta National, The Masters and all that went with the magic of the place. I thought at the time, if circumstances ever arise by which I get an invitation I would love to go to Augusta to work.

Lo and behold, in the early eighties the TV rights moved away from the BBC and were bought by ITV. I was brought in, not to go to Augusta, but to front the coverage of the 1982 Masters tournament, from the studios of London Weekend. It was my first big network job for ITV and we were sitting in the studio with a guy called Renton Laidlaw, who was an established golf commentator. We sat watching the monitor in the studio and interjected with our thoughts on the golf, as and when required.

I remember the producer saying to turn the lights up in the studio as when the clock ticks round to midnight, “it’s just something we have to be careful of, we might lose the satellite for a few seconds because there is a bit of confusion over the booking”. So we all sat up straight and the lights came up. The clock ticked up to midnight and then beyond and……

Nothing happened. So we all sat back to relax at which point off went the sound and pictures and up came the colour bars on every monitor. The satellite link had gone, just as Craig Stadler stood on the eighteenth tee requiring a four to win The Masters.

This was in the days before mobile phones and internet, so there was no way of communicating with anyone at Augusta. So I’m now sat in the studio, live on air, with a huge audience watching and I chat with Renton about the names of the holes, the splendour of the course and all that sort of thing, to fill time. You can imagine how irritated the TV audience back home was getting. At one stage we managed to get an update via a radio, that stated Stadler had made a five at the last and there was now to be a play off. So now we were in an even worse position, the wretched thing had gone to sudden death play off and we had no pictures!

In the end we came off the air without anyone knowing the result. I remember the following day, Ian Wooldridge in the Daily Mail writing half a page saying ITV should never again be trusted with a major sporting event. This had been my debut at Augusta!

But from that point on, I was lucky enough to cover the Tournament for ITV, then Channel 4 and finally the BBC and did so for twenty three straight years, so got to see all the wonderful victories that took place for European golf and for British golf during that time.

I was there for Sandy Lyle’s win, Nick Faldo winning back to back, Ian Woosnam, Olazabal, Langer all went on to win and I saw Seve’s second victory in 1983.

One year that really sticks in my mind was 1986, the year Jack Nicklaus triumphed, which was maybe the most astonishing Masters of all those I covered. The whole place just erupted, Jack winning the title at 46 years of age.

But I remember that weekend for one thing in particular. Severiano Ballesteros was the man who everyone was backing to win. We had to do a little sequence for Grandstand, where we went to as many great players as we could do and get one quote from them.

“What does it feel like to walk up the eighteenth hole, with a chance of winning The Masters?”

We captured plenty of great names who gave us a quote to use, but the one player we hadn’t yet managed to speak with was Seve. We went out to the practice ground on the Wednesday night and he was on the driving range, so we stood back and Seve spent about thirty minutes practising, hitting balls. It started to rain, so he came back in and he sheltered under the front of the clubhouse and so I approached him and asked just for one line for him.

“When rain stops, I go hit more balls” was the reply. OK, I’d wait till then, so off he went and hit more balls for another thirty minutes. Approaching Seve once more, back came the reply “No I go putt”, so off he goes to the putting green. He must have been on there for an hour or maybe even an hour and a half. It’s now about twenty to seven in the evening and we had a camera man who was starting to get a bit irritated. He actually walked on to the putting green with a light meter in hand, strode over to Seve and placed the meter next to Seve’s head!

Well it worked, Seve got the hint and he came across. I explained there was just one question I needed to ask ; “What does it feel like to walk up the eighteenth hole, with a chance of winning The Masters?”

Seve’s reply? “The question does not apply to me. I will win The Masters this year by the fifteenth hole.”

There were a couple of local journalists nearby who picked up on this and ran these big headlines of ‘Arrogant Ballesteros says he will win The Masters by the fifteenth’.

Come Sunday afternoon, the final day, Seve gets to the par five fifteenth, Jack Nicklaus on the sixteenth, the crowd are going absolutely crazy as Jack makes his big charge, eagle at fifteen, birdie at sixteen.

You have to remember in those days, our coverage was quite primitive. You see pictures of the white tables outside the clubhouse, well in those days we didn’t have a studio, we would sit round one of the tables, in the open. I was sat with Nick Price, who had shot a course record earlier in the day. We had a big wooden monitor showing live coverage from the course. It being long before the days of digital coverage, ours was the only monitor around the clubhouse. As the tournament got more and more exciting, more and more people gathered around us to try and see the action, till they were about ten deep around it. Our Head of Sport at the BBC had somewhat of an ex-military air about him. He marched up to the crowd, which by then probably numbered about three hundred people, at which point he ordered everyone to move back. “move back, there’s nothing to see hear, nothing to see,” at which point he virtually got lynched. We were live on the air with Nick Price as scuffles and fights began to break out behind us in front of the clubhouse of The Augusta National!

Back to the action and Seve is stood over his second shot to the fifteenth. Facing a long carry over the lake to hit the green in two, which could set up an eagle or easy birdie chance. You could see the intensity on his face and he finally stepped up to his ball. Seve swings and he puts the ball straight into the lake in front of the green. His chance of winning The Masters was gone. He didn’t win it at the fifteenth. He lost it at the fifteenth.

In the following years, covering the tournaments for twenty years we became friends and we talked about that weekend and that shot, which he felt changed the whole course of his career.

It removed Seve from being the great champion he was, to being a champion who had doubts, frailties and insecurities. He was never the champion he was after that experience. That one shot at fifteen which he said was going to win him The Masters and yet in many ways signalled the beginning of the end of his career.

The Masters and Augusta National holds so many memories, it is such a special place.

Steve Rider

Memory added on January 23, 2013

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