“Once you think it’s going,” he said, “then it just about never does.”
True enough. But that didn’t stop his British Open-winning father from expecting the ball to wind up within the cup.
“Often a whole lot of times anyway, you hear it was form of a mis-hit or whatever,” Stewart Cink, 48, said. “This was not a mis-hit. This was exactly the best way I’d have drawn it up. It was like a dream shot.”
And as he watched the ball travel, the spectators sitting close by became a giveaway about its trajectory on the green.
“They knew it was in, they usually all got up,” he said. “Once they got up, I knew it wasn’t missing.”
No. 16 has seen a burst of hole-in-one activity in recent times, with nine golfers now having aced it since 2016.
“It’s very special,” Tommy Fleetwood said after he holed a tee shot on No. 16 last yr. “Doing it at a significant is great, doing it competitively is great, but at Augusta might be just one other edge.”
But Cink, who had been playing exceptional golf recently, would have sacrificed the triumph for a probability to play on Saturday and Sunday.
“I’d throw the opening in a single ball right within the water if I could make the cut and compete for 2 more rounds, but I’m missing the cut,” he said. “That stings greater than the opening in a single. It doesn’t boost my spirits like missing the cut hurts my spirits. I absolutely detest not playing here on the weekend, and it hurts.”
The shot, though, did make for a simple birthday present for Reagan.
He got to maintain the ball.
