Sports
Twenty years ago, Tiger Woods' chip shot hung in the balance, and a Masters moment was created
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Funny how time works.
Twenty years seems so short.
And 1.8 seconds seems so long.
That’s how long the golf ball that Tiger Woods hit teetered on the edge of the 16th hole at Augusta National in 2005 before tumbling into the cup — nearly two agonizing seconds — his chip-in the signature moment of his fourth Masters victory.
That Sunday miracle from behind the green ricocheted around the sports world, not only because of the transcendent player who made it but because the ball lingered on the lip just long enough to theatrically display its Nike swoosh, which was tilted vertically, before disappearing into the cup.
“Maybe the greatest shot in the history of the game,” CBS announcer Jim Nantz said. “Arguably the most commercialized and most seen.”
His network colleague Verne Lundquist, greenside at 16, was gobsmacked.
“Using all of my language skills, when it fell in I went, ‘Oh, wow,’” the retired Lundquist said this week with a chuckle. “Just relying on my vast vocabulary.”
The full call — viewed untold millions of times on a wide array of platforms — was, “Oh, wow! In your life have you ever seen anything like that!”
The behind-the-scenes story with CBS involved a truckload of intuition and a bit of insubordination, resulting in one of the great moments in televised sports. That a full two decades have passed is hard for the 84-year-old Lundquist to believe.
“Dear God,” he said, “has it been 20 years?”
The Situation
It was the final round of the 2005 Masters and Woods was battling down the stretch with Chris DiMarco, the two jostling atop the leaderboard. They got to the par-three 16th, where the Sunday pin position was in the back left of the green, just over a ridge. Woods was clinging to a one-shot lead after bogeys on the previous two holes.
Woods hit a poor tee shot that sailed long and left of the green that wound up on the fringe and left him with a nearly impossible chip, downhill, slick as a greased garage floor, with a severe left-to-right break.
His caddie, Steve Williams, didn’t know what to expect as they made their way off the tee. As he and Woods got closer to the green, Williams glanced up to tour pro-turned-analyst Ian Baker-Finch, who was in the tower at 15.
“I motioned to Ian, ‘Is he OK?’ and he gave me the thumbs up,” Williams recalled.
OK? Yes, but in a terrible position — especially considering DiMarco had hit his tee shot to within 5 feet of the cup.
The Shot
Woods and Williams took a long time surveying the situation, discussing the slope, speed and what the ball might do with spin. The idea, Williams said, was to land the ball 30 to 40 feet right of the hole, then let gravity do the work.
“He picked out a ball mark on the green and said, ‘Do you think if I landed on that ball mark it won’t pick up too much speed as it goes up the hill?’” Williams said. “I said, ‘That looks pretty good,’ and amazingly he landed right on that ball mark … and the rest was history.”
When the shot reached its apex on the slope, it made a hard right turn and meandered down to the cup, pausing for what felt like an eternity before tumbling in. Woods erupted, raising his fists in front of him as if curling an imaginary barbell, and the gallery behind him unleashed a roar.
“I was in a tower at 18,” Nantz recalled. “It felt like the ground was shaking all the way up there.”
The Decision
The drama of that 1.8 seconds of television almost didn’t happen. Steve Milton, who was directing the CBS broadcast, thought the ball was done rolling. He instructed technical director Norm Patterson to switch to an angle capturing Woods’ reaction, and away from the camera of Bob Wishnie, who had the ball perfectly in frame.
But Patterson ignored that order, instead staying on the ball for a couple more beats.
“Norm just followed his instincts,” Lundquist said. “And because he did, everybody remembers the shot.”
That was no casual decision on Patterson’s part.
“That’s a fireable offense,” Lundquist said. “It’s like being on the bridge of a ship and ignoring the captain’s orders.”
In a Golf.com article five years ago, Milton recalled those tense moments.
“I said, ‘OK, let’s cut,’ and Norm didn’t cut,” the director told the website. “He waited. He paused.”
The ball fell in the cup, and both Milton and Patterson exhaled.
“Thank you, Norm,” Milton said.
“Steve,” Patterson said, “we’re a great team.”
The Aftermath
Woods went on to win his fourth of five green jackets in a sudden-death playoff with DiMarco, and that shot was one of the most iconic and viewed moments of his storied career.
“I remember seeing the video later after I holed that shot, and there was a gentleman in back,” Woods recalled in 2019. “He just slams his hat on the ground.”
Of course, the overwhelming majority of the patrons behind him exploded with cheers.
The gallery celebrates after Tiger Woods makes a birdie putt at No. 18 in the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to win the 2005 Masters.
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“That’s fun,” he said. “It’s exciting to be part of situations like that, that people will look back on my career and say, ‘I saw him pull that shot off.’”
The chip-in plays a prominent role in “Together We Roared,” a recently released autobiography by Williams and sportswriter Evin Priest about the caddie’s glorious run carrying the bag for Woods.
“We tried to give the reader a backstage pass to arguably one of the greatest periods of golf played by anybody,” Williams said.
Almost immediately, Nike cut that footage of the shot into a commercial.
Tragically, Patterson died of an apparent heart attack less than a year later while in San Diego to cover a golf tournament. He was 45.
Lundquist, who retired last year, counts the drama on the 16th hole as one of the great highlights of his career.
“Tiger and I have a relationship because of that shot,” he said. “He said at a news conference, ‘The two of us will be tied at the hip together because of what I did and how he described it.’
“I treasure those comments.”
Twenty years, 1.8 seconds, yet forever timeless.
Sports
Pirates star pitcher makes unfortunate history after being taken out in middle of perfect game bid
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Jared Jones was flirting with Major League Baseball history on Wednesday night — he got it, but it was not what he originally envisioned.
The Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher retired the first 18 batters he faced, but he was taken out in the middle of his perfect game bid after six innings.
Now, the Pirates certainly have their reasons — the 24-year-old Jones hasn’t thrown more than 81 pitches in eight starts since returning May 20 after missing all of last season while undergoing ulnar collateral ligament internal brace surgery on May 21, 2025. He was yanked with 77 pitches and likely would have needed more than 100 pitches to record the 25th perfect game in MLB history.
Jared Jones of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches during the first inning against the Atlanta Braves at PNC Park on July 8, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
However, Jones left the game after getting zero run support, so when the Atlanta Braves tacked on three runs late for a 3-0 victory, Jones instead found himself in the wrong chapter of the history books.
According to Opta Stats, Jones became the first pitcher in the modern era (since 1920) to pitch at least six perfect innings and not record a win.
“It does suck. Something’s cool coming on, but I’m on what? My eighth start off of surgery? I completely understand it, and it is what it is,” Jones told reporters after the game.
Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Jared Jones (17) makes his way to the field to warm up before pitching against the Atlanta Braves at PNC Park. (Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images)
JUSTIN VERLANDER ANNOUNCES HE WILL RETIRE AFTER THIS SEASON: ‘I’VE REALIZED THAT TIME HAS COME’
Jones said he didn’t entertain attempting to complete the perfect game.
“Not with the pitch count,” he said. “Not really ever expecting to go nine right now, so that was never in my head.”
Joey Bart, traded to the Braves from the Pirates on June 18, followed a double by Mike Yastrzemski with a 422-foot, two-run homer to left-center field off a slider from Dennis Santana. Drake Baldwin added an RBI single to center in the ninth for good measure.
It was the second time in less than a week that a pitcher was taken out of the game with a perfect bid through six innings — the Miami Marlins took Eury Perez out after seven innings in which he had 92 pitches. Perez, too, is in the midst of returning from injury and has surprisingly found himself right in the postseason mix.
He was pulled for Lake Bachar to start the eighth, and the Marlins allowed eight runs to the Athletics in the final two innings, but held on to win 9-8.
Jared Jones (17) of the Pittsburgh Pirates delivers a pitch during a MLB game against the Cincinnati Reds on June 27, 2026, at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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The Pirates are 4.0 games out of the final wild card spot, which is held by the Marlins.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON — The Dodgers are scheduled to visit the White House on July 23 to celebrate their latest World Series title.
“President Trump is excited to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers BACK to the White House to celebrate their World Series championship!,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Times.
The date falls on a scheduled off day in the middle of a nine-game East Coast road trip for the Dodgers. The team will play three games in Philadelphia against the Phillies July 20-22 before ending the trip with a three-game series against the New York Mets July 24 to 26.
The visit continues a tradition from the Dodgers’ two previous World Series championships. They were hosted by President Biden in 2021 and President Trump in April 2025.
After the Dodgers claimed their second consecutive World Series title with a dramatic Game 7 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, a visit to the White House was planned, but it wasn’t until Thursday that a date was officially booked and confirmed.
Questions swirled around whether players would decline the visit this year after it did not happen during a scheduled visit to Washington in April.
Kiké Hernández said in 2018 he was unsure he would have gone had the Dodgers won the World Series the previous year. Mookie Betts said he was undecided and needed to talk it over with his family when last year’s visit was announced. After winning his first World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2018, Betts skipped their trip to the White House the following year during Trump’s first term.
Both players, along with every returning member of the 2024 team who was with the team during its road trip, participated in the visit. The only notable absence was first baseman Freddie Freeman, who remained in Los Angeles to nurse an ankle injury.
Manager Dave Roberts, who indicated in comments to The Times in 2019 he might not go to the White House if Trump was president, also participated in last year’s ceremony.
Asked at the Dodgers’ fan festival in January about the possibility of returning to the White House, Roberts told The Times’ Bill Shaikin: “For me, I stand by: I’m a baseball manager. That’s my job.”
“I was raised — by a man who served our country for 30 years — to respect the highest office in our country,” Roberts said. “For me, it doesn’t matter who is in the office, I’m going to go to the White House. I’ve never tried to be political. … For me, I am going to continue to try to do what tradition says and not try to make political statements, because I am not a politician.”
Clayton Kershaw, who retired after last season but was on Team USA for this year’s World Baseball Classic, told The Times in the spring that he was aware Dodgers fans are split over whether the team should visit the White House again this year, but he said he is looking forward to it.
“I went when President Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”
Times deputy sports editor Ed Guzman contributed to this report.
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All eyes were on Caitlin Clark on Wednesday night as she made her anticipated return from injury in a road matchup in Los Angeles.
But instead of a triumphant comeback, the Fever spent the entire night chasing the Sparks as Clark’s rough return fueled a 106-92 rout.
The superstar never found a groove, looking completely out of sync in her return from a back injury.
STEPHANIE WHITE GIVES CAITLIN CLARK STATUS UPDATE AHEAD OF FEVER-SPARKS, BUT HER NEXT MOVE RAISES QUESTIONS
Caitlin Clark huddles with teammates as the Indiana Fever battle the Sparks. (Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images) ((Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images))
Much of that disjointed performance falls squarely on head coach Stephanie White, who kept Clark on a ridiculously tight leash by limiting her to just 16 minutes. The stop-and-go approach could have sabotaged any chance for the phenom to establish a rhythm.
Clark finished with just 9 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists. Her minus-16 plus-minus told the story.
The Los Angeles Sparks were severely shorthanded, taking the floor without stars Kelsey Plum and Cameron Brink.
MERCURY’S NOW-DELETED SOCIAL MEDIA POST MOCKING CAITLIN CLARK DRAWS SCRUTINY AFTER STAR’S INJURY
Yet while a depleted Sparks roster played to win, Indiana spent the night over-managing its biggest asset.
With Clark on a minutes restriction and Aliyah Boston out of the lineup, Kelsey Mitchell was forced to shoulder the entire offensive burden.
Mitchell did her part, pouring in 29 points while shooting 5-of-9 from beyond the arc.
Caitlin Clark orchestrates the Fever offense as Indiana battles the Los Angeles Sparks in primetime action. (Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images) ((Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images))
But one hot hand couldn’t stop an efficient LA squad.
The Sparks shot 45% from three-point range, going 9-of-20 from deep to cruise to the 106-92 victory.
White’s next move is to sit Clark against the Mercury on Thursday while Boston returns.
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After Wednesday’s loss to a shorthanded Sparks team, it’s fair to question whether Indiana’s cautious approach is working. The Fever dropped to 12-9.
Caitlin Clark and Dearica Hamby face off as Fever and Sparks battle at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. (Photo by Tyler Ross/NBAE via Getty Images) ((Photo by Tyler Ross/NBAE via Getty Images))
Send us your thoughts: alejandro.avila@outkick.com / Follow along on X: @alejandroaveela
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