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By Melanie Hauser PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. -- The ball was 4 feet from the hole and he was already moving. His heart was racing. His fingers were digging a hole in his palm. He could see the ball tracking toward the hole. Curving slightly. Catching the edge. Disappearing. It was a little Justin Leonard, a lot Fred Couples. A moment that defines a career; a freeze-frame heard ‘round the world. Chris DiMarco, the man who thought his match wouldn’t much matter was the man. Finally. The exclamation point. The winning point in The Presidents Cup. And, no. His feet weren’t touching the ground. “I guarantee you he’s about 6-foot-5 right now,’’ said Leonard, a man who knows a little bit about clutch team putts. “His spikes aren’t making any marks on the green.’’ The video highlights will show you those final 15 feet. The leap. The celebration that followed a putt that took guts. And talent. And that infernal claw grip of his. But the real deal? We point you to the shot that set it up. The one from 146 yards out in the rough where the ball was in the thick stuff and his feet were in the bunker. Good lie. He took a deep breath and gouged it out. “I tried to stay real still and hit a good, solid shot and get it right of the hole and give me a good putt at it -- at least have a chance -- and it came out perfect,’’ he said. Couples shook his head. “Chris DiMarco is unbelievable. That was a great shot.’’ In a day filled with great shots, DiMarco’s final two are ones we’ll remember. An approach, a putt. A moment he’d been waiting for his entire life. “So go ahead,’’ said caddie Pat O’Bryon, ‘’and do it.’’ If there was a doubt, we didn’t see it. We saw the in-your-face guy Jack Nicklaus chose to bring it home. His go-to guy if this thing got tight. A guy who doesn’t back down from anything. He read it. From every direction. He knew what was on the line. He stepped up, wrapped his hands around the grip like a claw and made it. “It’s sheer exhilaration to know I did it,’’ DiMarco said standing on the 18th green. Couples and Leonard just smiled. Leonard was the man six years ago at the Ryder Cup when he sealed the biggest comeback win in Cup history with a 45-foot bomb on the 17th green. And Couples? The man basically took The Presidents Cup from curiosity to big-time event with a 9-iron to 2 feet at the final hole in 1994 that beat Nick Price and sealed the U.S. win and, then, two years later, a 30-foot birdie at the 17th hole that beat Vijay Singh. And, you guessed it, clinched the Cup. Which brings us to Sunday. And what Couples would call a karma moment. There he was rolling in a putt to beat Singh 1-up at the 18th again. “I think it’s the only putt I made all week,’’ he joked. It was also the one thing DiMarco saw when he looked up at the Jumbotron on the 13th hole. He thought of that when he stepped onto the 18th green. “The putt? I thought I might whiff I was so nervous,’’ he said. “But I was able to make contact. And it went right in the middle.’’ As he sat there, you thought back to five months ago when DiMarco didn’t, as one television announcer said, play for second. When, instead, he closed with a 68 and came within an in-and-out of beating Tiger at the Masters Tournament.
To 2003 when, as Nicklaus said, DiMarco found out he could get to the next level. “He keeps chipping away at that next level, and, you know, I would be very surprised if he doesn’t go right there the next time he’s out,’’ Nicklaus said. DiMarco is now ranked eighth in the world. Perhaps with a bullet. You don’t get to bat cleanup in a team event for Nicklaus unless he believes in you. And DiMarco was the man Nicklaus wanted. He knew DiMarco was tough. That he was still raw over what he called a spanking at last year’s Ryder Cup. That he was playing lights out. That he wouldn’t back down. “We needed this Cup,’’ DiMarco said. “We really needed it.’’ And DiMarco? He needed that shot. That putt. And now, that next step. |
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