The most catastrophic Masters meltdown ever televised

AUGUSTA, Ga. — When someone sees a disaster, several interesting things happen in the brain in an instant.

The autonomic nervous system floods the body with adrenaline and cortisol, speeding up sensory processing in the amygdala and supercharged memory encoding – basically turning the brain into a vector for transcription. Sometimes, this environmental response creates something called “tonic dysfunction,” where the witness of a tragic event does not run away or fight, but it is freezing.

In this situation, the witness is helpless – trapped in a period of unforgivable fear, unable to do anything to change the situation, and facing a moment of physical stress when their brain is numbed in a different way to remember all the painful details.

This is the sad situation that befell several hundred patrons on the side of the 13th hole on Sunday afternoon at the Masters, when Haotong Li endured the worst 30 minutes of his golfing life, then recorded his tournament-winning score and defied belief: A quintuple-bogey 10.

The trauma started innocently enough. On his second shot from the fairway, Li overcooked his 3-wood into the twisty part of Rae’s Creek that includes the hole. Under normal circumstances, the situation he faces would be simple: Return the ball to the creek, land it on dry land not close to the hole, and play a wedge approach shot to the green.

Except, as it were, Li’s method did not arrive under normal conditions. Instead of settling inside the tributary, his ball bounced off a large rock and veered to the left, landing on the ground. deep through the woods and continued up the hill on the far side of the river.

Li made his way down the street without much concern – but he realized his bad luck as soon as he arrived at the scene. Li’s player, Jady de Beer, drew the short grass, dropped the bag and tripped into Rae’s Creek as he went into the woods chasing the ball.

After a few seconds, patrons on the far side of the fairway took pity on the caddy and began shouting instructions. in abundancedirecting de Beer at the golf ball, he finally found it. (Left, left! Up! Up!) After a long discussion, Li took the sword and crossed the river to check the lie in the trees.

This may have seemed like a good idea to both parties at the time of the decision, but it seemed clear to everyone the opposite side of the fairway that it was an unforgivable mistake because it introduced a powerful, terrifying force: temptation. Football was almost unplayable; Li seemed to be better served returning to his former position than risking more. But after some discussion, Li ignored the gallery’s better judgment and ran his chip into the middle of the fence by crawling through a tree and fighting through a bunch of branches just to get his club down.

At last, he swung, and the great fear of the crowd was evident. The ball traveled less than 15 feet, an angle almost exactly where he intended to hit the ball, and landed consistently.

It was at this point that my colleague, cv vDylan Dethier, and I realized that we might be on the verge of witnessing something not only bad, but truly terrifying. Li’s football has been in hell. Now it was worse. He no longer had the option of returning to his original gun position. Instead he can take several club lengths and drop that way.

Li seemed to realize this as his mind finally made up and he returned the ball to the forest. He spent a moment trying to settle into this new, more sinister lie – at one point intending to finish off a group of onlookers – before looking down at his football and walking out.

Finally, and to the great relief of those who were sitting between the laser-to-the-shins range, he decided to lower, which is when a new character enters our story for the first time: The officer of the law, who has been working as an innocent until now.

The problem was that Li appeared to pick up his ball from the ground, like a child might pluck a dandelion, but he was not actually in the penalty area. The red lines delineating the area that was behind him; he had just dropped his ball in live action, or at least that’s how it appeared in our area, so the rules official reacted like Li had just cut the wrong wire on a pipe bomb, furiously swinging the golf ball back into place so he could land properly in the deep hell hole. Put another way: You are not allowed to do that.

In the end, the officials and Li found a solution – although the official seemed very worried about the whole matter – and after a long long trip of Rae’s zig-zagging, Li calmed down the unplayable spirit, found the right golf club, and was willing to play the ball that raised his ball on the green. (Aside: At one point during the twist, de Beer realized he had left the bag about 30 feet from where it was needed, and began running back to collect it at very close to full speed. Two thoughts on that decision: 1. No running at Augusta National. 2. It had been 15 minutes since he entered the odd stream when he started to press the stream into the car. about speed to play.)

Li played his pitch shot, though he used a surprisingly full swing and sent it high over the trees and long and left of the green, landing mercifully on the safe side of Rae’s Creek. The crowd, which was by this time equal parts disappointed and completely stunned, responded with Augusta National first: The Bronx’s joy of a golfer, who quickly escaped from the wrong side of Rae’s Creek and up onto the green.

It was now, about a full 25 minutes after Haotong Li first entered the wilderness, that the crowd’s attention turned to the rest golfer he shared the hole with: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who was preparing to hit what could be described as one of the most consecutive shots of his entire Masters week, a birdie putt to cut the deficit to leader Rory McIlroy to 2.

Say what you will about Scheffler’s recent neglect by the media and himself, the man handled the first act of Li’s tragedy with the patience of a saint. He was walking back and forth down the fairway, up to the green, back behind his ball, and now he was running at the ball and hitting a good – if not great – to about 11 feet.

Scheffler may reasonably expect that his birdie putt may come soon after that shot. Common sense would force Li to play his next shot with some anticipation, given the delay his misfortune has already caused. Justin Rose was waiting on the fairway now, after all. But Li was in no rush at any point during the process and he hadn’t started now.

Li may have hoped that this part would wrap up quickly. Instead he made a short, aggressive stroke with his putter towards the Sunday pin and it was clear that his disaster had just begun. Li watched in stunned disbelief as his ball rolled through the hole, past his caddy tending to the clubs, past the edge of the green and into the water.

It was at this point that the crowd reacted as if they had witnessed the conflict in person, letting out a low, horrified, disbelieving noise that one might hear behind a bell, or discover that they are cockroaches.

Li, to his credit, was a good sport about the debacle, holding his hands to the sky in a show of derision after finally escaping with 10. And CBS, to its credit, was a good sport about it as well, choosing not to show Li’s fall from 5-under-the-thick-of-it to fit and deeply disappoint.

But for those watching the action up close, the trip was a shocker of the kind of trauma that only Augusta National can deliver.

The momentary pain was real to Haotong Li, but the memory was even more real to those who saw it up close, and now will live their lives trying to forget.

“I always thought I wanted to play this hole,” said one of the victims on Sunday afternoon. “Now I’m not sure.”

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