Two pre-tournament favorites,[3][6]Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, both finished at 293 (+5) in a tie for 40th place. Phil Mickelson was in the final pairing and in contention during the final round, but a triple-bogey six on the fourth hole knocked him back and he finished two strokes behind, in a four-way tie for third.[3]Bo Van Pelt posted the lowest round of the tournament with a 64 (−8) early on Sunday, which propelled him up the leaderboard 35 places to tie for 17th.
It was the first playoff in three years at the Masters; Ángel Cabrera won on the second extra hole in 2009.
The Masters has the smallest field of the four major championships. Officially, the Masters remains an invitation event, but there is a set of qualifying criteria that determines who is included in the field.[7] Each player is classified according to the first category by which he qualified, but other categories are shown in parentheses.
Golfers who qualify based solely on their performance in amateur tournaments (categories 6–10) must remain amateurs on the starting day of the tournament to be eligible to play.
Notable absences included Mark O'Meara (injured), Ernie Els and Retief Goosen (not ranked high enough). O'Meara had appeared in the previous 27 Masters, Els in the previous 18, and Goosen in the previous 12. (Els would win the Open Championship in July to ensure an invitation to the next five Masters.)
16. Winners of PGA Tour events that award a full-point allocation for the season-ending Tour Championship, between the 2011 Masters Tournament and the 2012 Masters Tournament
For the third time in seven years, the Masters concluded on Easter Sunday. The leaderboard was active, as four players held at least a share of the lead during the final round. Louis Oosthuizen charged into the lead at the second hole with an albatross two on the par-5. It was only the fourth double eagle in Masters history and the first-ever on the second hole. The final pairing faltered: 54-hole leader Peter Hanson never got it going, with three bogeys before he carded his first birdie at the 15th hole. Three holes earlier, Hanson shanked his tee shot on the par-3 12th short of the water, bogeyed, and fell from contention. On the front nine, three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson pushed his tee shot left at the par-3 fourth and it caromed off a greenside grandstand. He made his second triple bogey of the week and came up two shots short of the playoff.[3]
In the end, it came down to a three player race between Oosthuizen, Bubba Watson, and Matt Kuchar. Kuchar hit his approach at the 15th hole to three feet (0.9 m) and eagled to temporarily tie Oosthuizen at −9, but followed it with a bogey at the par-3 16th hole and finished two strokes back, in the four-way tie for third. After Watson made a two at the 16th for his fourth consecutive birdie, he was tied at the top with Oosthuizen at −10. Playing together in the penultimate pairing, both parred the 17th hole and were on the green in regulation at the uphill 18th. Oosthuizen missed a 35-foot (11 m) birdie putt from the back shelf and Watson had 25 feet (8 m) for his first major, but he missed the putt on the high side. After Watson tapped in, Oosthuizen holed his four-footer (1.2 m) to force a sudden death playoff.[15]
The sudden death playoff started at the par-4 18th hole, where both players hit the fairway and green, and similar to the final round, Bubba Watson was closer to the pin than Louis Oosthuizen. Oosthuizen narrowly missed his 18-foot (5.5 m) birdie effort which gave Watson another opportunity to secure the title. Watson's putt from 16 feet (5 m) was low the entire way, and after both players tapped in to tie they headed to the next tee at the downhill par-4 10th hole.
Both players hit poor drives to the right, and Oosthuizen's second shot ended up short of the green. The left-handed Watson, playing from the pine straw deep in the woods, hooked his approach shot nearly 90 degrees to within 10 feet (3 m) of the hole. Oosthuizen chipped to the back of the green and narrowly missed his par putt to give Watson two putts to win. He lagged his first to a foot (0.3 m) and tapped in to become the Masters champion.[17][18]
Bubba Watson
