2-time champion Langer ready to say bye to Masters after 41 years

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — A few years ago, Bernhard Langer began to wonder when the end would come for him at the Masters.

The course had grown longer. His game had gotten shorter. And while youngsters were beginning to overpower Augusta National with their prodigious drives, the two-time champion was left trying to match them by hitting hybrids into greens.

“I asked the chairman of the club, ‘Is there a time limit?’" Langer recalled asking Fred Ridley on Monday, shortly after a rainstorm had swept through Georgia and washed out practice. “Do we age out when we're 60? Or what is it?”

“You will know when it's time to quit,” Ridley replied. “It's totally up to you.”

Langer decided it will be this year.

The 67-year-old from Germany is following in the footsteps of his dear friends Larry Mize, Sandy Lyle and Ian Woosnam in calling it a career at the Masters. Langer will stride to the first tee for the 41st time on Thursday, try one last time to make the cut and play the weekend, all while knowing full well that the emotions will flow at some point — probably the 18th green on Friday, should he play poorly, or Sunday, should he add one more memorable week to a career already full of them.

“It's very emotional,” he said. “You can tell already my voice is breaking a bit, just realizing it’s going to be my last competitive Masters. After four decades, it’s going to be bittersweet. I think I knew it was time to call it quits as a player.”

In truth, Langer wanted to call it quits last year. But when the 1985 and '93 champion tore his Achilles tendon while playing pickleball just over a year ago, Langer was forced to delay that swan song to this week.

If there were any second thoughts about it, they evaporated on the first hole of a practice round Sunday. Langer hit a drive that couldn't reach the crest of the fairway, where most of the field will be this week, leaving a blind approach. And in place of a mid-iron into the green, Langer had to hit a hybrid, one that he thought “looked pretty good.”

“It hit the middle of the green and took off," Langer said, "and I was over the green. That's no place to chip from. You don't ever want to go over that green. That's what happens when you have those kinds of clubs into the greens. It's time to quit.”

Looking back, Langer's start was something straight out of a Horatio Alger novel.

He was raised in a town of about 800 in Bavaria, and at about 9 years old, he started to caddie for some cash — “I would say I fell in love with money first,” he quipped. One day, one of the club members tossed away some old sticks. There was a 2-wood, a 3-iron and a 7-iron with bamboo shafts, and a putter with a bent one. But they were priceless to Langer, who began to pound balls on the driving range when there was nobody needing someone to carry their bag.

The thought of playing in the Masters never occurred to him, because why would it? Langer's family didn't own a TV until he was 12, when his father could finally afford one. Even then, the family could get only three channels.

His initial goal was to be the best in Europe. Only later did his dreams reach across the ocean. He was invited to the Masters for the first time in 1982 and missed the cut, but he returned two years later and pretty much never left. Langer made the cut 19 consecutive years, winning two green jackets along the way, first beating Ray Floyd, Seve Ballesteros and Curtis Strange by two shots in 1985 and pulling away from Chip Beck to win by four in '93.

He learned something in between those two triumphs: Fashion matters.

As part of his farewell Monday, the Masters pieced together a montage of Langer's memorable moments, and there he was four decades ago, wearing that bright red shirt and those bright red pants. When Ben Crenshaw helped him slip on the green jacket, it looked as if the young man with the wavy blond hair was headed for an office Christmas party.

“See? I was the one wearing a red shirt first,'" Langer would tease Tiger Woods. "You came later.”

After overcoming a case of the yips so debilitating that Langer once dropped to his knees in prayer, and told God that he was willing to give up the game for good, he triumphed at the Masters again in '93. And having learned his lesson, Langer wore some smart gray slacks and a yellow shirt that matched that green jacket so much better.

As the video rolled on Monday, and folks watched in rapt attention, Langer kept glancing away. The emotion — the magnitude of having played all those years, and of all of it coming to an end — kept threatening to overcome him.

“I’ve cried over and over at home when things have been worth crying for,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of it. My dad was the same way, and he was my hero, as well. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s many things that are worth crying about.”

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