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Alse
No, he wasn't dreaming. It's true.
"It's a dream for me," said Schwartzel, 26, the South African who won his first major championship Sunday at Augusta National Golf Club. "It's obviously the highlight in my golfing career by a long way."
Call it fate or karma or whatever you like but Schwartzel had a feeling about this.
"I always thought if there was one that I would win, it would be this one," he said. "This is the sort of golf course that suits my eye. These are the sort of courses that I grew up on playing with the tree lines, and I just feel really comfortable around it."
Schwartzel's victory didn't come without substantial help from his friends as he prepared for his second Masters. These included mentor and countryman Ernie Els, Nick Price and Jack Nicklaus.
"This year, Nick Price gave me a really good tip," Schwartzel said. "Nick said when he came over, he used to find the fastest putt on every green and practice that and that's what I did for the last three weeks. Every tournament I went to, I just practiced the fastest putt I could find, even though they were only five feet, to learn to hit the putts that softly. It really paid off. I felt so good on these greens this week."
Nicklaus, the six-time Masters champion, also provided a great deal of help. The meeting between Nicklaus and Schwartzel, a PGA Tour rookie who has six European Tour victories, was set up a year ago by South African businessman Johan Rupert at Ernie Els' Autism Golf Day.
"I went to go sit with Mr. Rupert and he introduced me to Jack," Schwartzel said. "I've never met Jack. I was really excited. I knew he sort of liked hunting a little bit. That's the way I got the conversation going, just by talking about hunting.
"Mr. Rupert, said to him, 'Can you maybe take Charl, just give him a few tips to play Augusta?' Just thinking it's going to be just a vaguely quick little thing, and he actually took the time to take me through all 18 holes the way he used to think around Augusta and the way he used to play it, which flags he used to attack. The big thing for me was I had never, ever seen Augusta. Now, he's taking me through how to play Augusta. I've only seen it on TV. And now I'm in the presence of Mr. Nicklaus, and it's such a big awe. I'm just staring at it and taking in what I can.
"But luckily Mr. Rupert was taking a lot of notes, so afterwards we had it all."
Schwartzel has it all now, too.
As tradition dictates, the Masters began on Thursday morning with two legends of golf, Arnold Palmer and Nicklaus, hitting the ceremonial opening drives. Between them, Palmer (4) and Nicklaus (6) won 10 Green Jackets and this year marked the 25th anniversary of the remarkable victory posted by Nicklaus in 1986.
At age 46 and believed to be well past his prime, Nicklaus rekindled the flame of greatness one last time at Augusta National.
The memories flooded back to all those who had watched it or listened to it as the two icons of golf opened the proceedings. It was a big part of the week.
"There's been a lot of conversation this year about the 25th year anniversary," Nicklaus said. "I guess you can make a big conversation out of anything. But it was a long time ago, and it was an exciting week for me. It was fun having Jackie (his son) on the bag. It was fun having my mother and sister here who had not been here since 1959.
"Even more fun was I holed a few putts the back nine which made it possible that we could sit here and talk about it."
Schwartzel's achievement came on the 50th anniversary of Gary Player's first Masters win. Player is the greatest golfer and most distinguished athlete ever to come from South Africa and he completed golf's great triumvirate of Palmer, Nicklaus and Player.
Schwartzel's stylish victory - four straight birdies to close out the championship - was in direct contrast to the collapse of 21-year-old Rory McIlroy. For 54 holes, McIlroy was atop the leaderboard and playing beautifully. Then it all came undone.
"I'm very disappointed," McIlroy said. "I was leading this golf tournament with nine holes to go, and I just unraveled. Hit a bad tee shot on 10, and then never, never really recovered. You know, it's going to be hard to take for a few days, but I'll get over it. I'm fine. A couple of pretty good friends were in a similar position to me last year in Dustin Johnson and Nick Watney.
"I knew it was going to be very tough for me out there, and it was. I felt good that I hung in well for the first nine holes, and then as I said, just sort of lost my speed on the greens, lost my line, lost everything for just two, three holes and couldn't really recover after that."
On the 13th tee, after another terrible tee shot found water, McIlroy dropped his head and covered his face. That's when he knew.
"Rory is such a good player," Schwartzel said. "He's going to win a major sometime. The way he played the first three rounds, you have to think that a win is not that far away. Golf is really a funny game. One moment you're on top of it and the next it bites you. He's such a phenomenal player. He'll win one."
No doubt who's on top today. It's Charl Schwartzel and he's not dreaming. (http://www.masters.com)
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