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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Maybe you’re like me, starting to feel old. Or you’re already old. Or you are, by most measures, young, but getting older. Such stages of life are the only inevitability we all have in common, right? Until death, at least.
Fred Couples started feeling old more than 20 years ago. He had a hard time with it. By 2002, the 14-time winner on the PGA Tour had gone four years without a victory and was rarely in contention anymore. He felt like the game had raced by him. The young guys were too good, too strong. He looked around and saw Tiger Woods and Ernie Els and didn’t recognize the sport.
Couples wrote about it all in a March 2002 issue of Sports Illustrated. In a forgotten chapter in golf history, he was a front-facing backer for a possible new entity known as the Majors Tour. The venture (what one might call a, *raises eyebrows*, breakaway league) was meant to offer a platform for prominent players in the shallow swamp between their prime play and their senior tour eligibility. At the time, guys like Couples, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman were still out there playing a regular schedule but feeling borderline embarrassed.
“I’m 42 and not having a lot of fun on Tour,” Couples wrote. “I can’t compete with the young guys, and I don’t see that changing. A lot of players my age end up rotting before they’re old enough to join the Senior tour.”
I am 42 now and also not having a lot of fun. My back needs surgery, or maybe a seance, and I, too, exist with a general sense of rot. As for my golf game, my current swing speed wouldn’t draw sirens on any highway. Sure, I’m roughly the same age as tournament leader Justin Rose, 44, but I sure as hell don’t feel like it.
So while everyone at this Masters tournament is enjoying the impending cage fight between Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau, I’ve been over here watching 65-year-old Frederick Steven Couples for two days. That’s who I want to relate to.
Talk about aspirational.
Couples gave it a mighty run this week. An opening round 1-under 71 put him in position to break his record as the oldest player to make the Masters cut. He did so two years ago at 63 years old. The 71 made him the second-oldest man ever to shoot under par at the Masters. He finished Thursday in a 16-way tie for 11th.
Then came Friday. Couples was 2-over on the day through 13 holes and still in position to play the weekend. A bogey on 14 put him on the cut line. A dead pull into the trees on 15 — “The worst drive I’ve hit in 20 years,” he said later — led to another bogey. By the 18th, Couples needed a birdie to see Saturday. Patrons hustled to the final green, first to say goodbye to Bernhard Langer, then to cheer for Couples. Everyone wanted to see the same story. Suzanne Couples, Fred’s wife, rose to her tippy toes to look over the gallery.
A bogey ended the day with a 5-over 77. Couples missed the cut by two strokes. He tipped his cap anyway and everyone cheered, yelling his name.
“The goal is to make the cut at my age,” he said afterward. “I didn’t, and I’m kind of spinning my wheels thinking just why it was so mediocre.”
He was anything but.
To the contrary, Freddie offered lessons in approaching the game and navigating the years. Watching him, one thought tolled over and over in my head: Take your time, but don’t go slow.
Even with a chance to make the cut and carve more memories out of 40 Aprils in Augusta, Couples approached the practice area Friday like on a casual morning stroll. He walked onto the green, dropped three balls, gripped his putter (left hand low) and smacked putts for 10 minutes or so. Didn’t line one ’em up. Didn’t use one training aide. Then he and caddie Mark Chaney went to hit balls.
For the record — no one can spend more time on a driving range and hit fewer balls than Fred Couples. He talks. He looks around. He leans one hand on a club and rests the other on his hip. He sort of … putzes around. Twice Friday, he addressed the ball and, before swinging, backed off to continue a conversation. As he did, he gripped the club without a glove on his left hand. As he does, he hit every shot without receiving an ounce of data in return, other than that in his mind.
Four spots to Couples’ left, meanwhile, Langer, another ancient, diligently went through his pre-round routine, standing over a Trackman. Then, Aaron Rai showed up next to him, wearing not one glove, but two! Then came Brian Harman, fidgeting over each practice swing.
The only time Couples looked uncomfortable was when adjusting the giant heating pad wrapped around his midsection. As it goes with age, Freddie’s back is mostly shot. Time brings such limitations. The smart ones accept them. The cool ones embrace them.
Couples’ golf bag, as everyone knows by now, looks like a club swap bin at your local golf store. Head covers everywhere. He carries a driver, 3-wood, 5-wood and 3-, 4-, 5- and 6-hybrids. The rest: 7, 8, 9, irons, some wedges and a putter.
A lot of pride keeps a lot of men from turning their bags into a bouquet of rescue irons. Couples says he wishes he did so back when he was 50. Now I’m over here trying to think of the last time I actually pure’d my 5-iron.
As Friday’s warmup wrapped, Chaney teed up four balls a few inches away from each other. Couples pulled the cover off a driver and, without a practice swing or seemingly any thought whatsoever, he pulled back and hit one. He addressed the next one. Hit it. Then the next two. Chaney put four balls down. Couples did the same thing.
And that was it. He set off for the course. And fans swooned.
This is the part that can’t be taught, can’t be learned.
Cool is cool.
Couples still looks decidedly like Fred Couples. He long ago let the gray take over, never trying to hide from reality. Now he looks like what he is: A former matinee idol who has spent the last 20 years being one of the game’s great legacy acts. Couples is the guy every fan yells to. He’s the guy every player talks to. He’s the guy who doesn’t look out of place talking to Hall of Famers or mingling with 20-somethings. His disposition makes you think he can control the weather.
When you take your time, you’re in the moment.
Thursday’s biggest roar at Augusta came when a yellow ball hit a yellow flagstick, dropping in the cup. An eagle on No. 14. Back in the fairway, Couples had talked the ball in, making that familiar lean forward, watching it land and commanding, “Go. Get up. Go. Go. Go.” Seeing it fall, Couples celebrated not with some dorkish, fervid freak out, but with a single arm in the air, a few shouts over to the gallery, and a kiss for his 6-hybrid.
He said later he wasn’t sure if he ever eagled a par-4 at Augusta. Seems like something someone would recall, no? But Couples has played 142 competitive rounds in the Masters. Who needs to get caught up in the details?
If you don’t go slow, you don’t worry about the small stuff.
All this, it’s a lesson in how to stay above the fray. That’s where to be and how to grow old. When I asked Couples after his round if he cared about being an inspiration to folks of a certain age, he dodged the question, cracked a joke and said, again, he just wished he had a better day out there.
But he said, yeah, he knows, from 30 to 70, all the people trekking around out here want to relate to him.
The smart ones do.
(Top photo: Andrew Redington / Getty Images)
