AUGUSTA, Ga. – There’s a fun scene in the movie “Big” where Tom Hanks, playing the grown-up version of a 13-year-old boy, is talking to a neurotic and increasingly jaded co-worker named Susan. He tells her that she’s nice.
“You don’t know me that well,” Susan says.
“Yes I do,” he says. “You’re one of the nicest people I’ve met.”
She looks at him – there’s just this wonderful innocence on his face, completely devoid of cynicism and world-weariness and all the things that she had grown accustomed to in the adult world. She is so disarmed by his look, so disarmed by the childhood wonder on his face, that all of her defenses just fall away and she is, in this crazy way, happy.
“How do you do it?” she asks.
That’s the question I think people really wanted to ask Jordan Spieth Saturday evening. How do you do it? The questions were mostly about the astonishing story that builds around him. Spieth is 20 years old. He’s at his first Masters. And he goes into Sunday tied with Bubba Watson for the lead. Nothing at all about this makes much sense.
Look: No first-timer has won the Masters since Fuzzy Zoeller somehow beat Tom Watson and Ed Sneed in a playoff in 1979. No 20-year-old has ever won it. This, after all, is Augusta National. The most used word Masters week – with the possible exceptions of “patron” and “tradition" and “pimento cheese” – is “experience.” All you ever hear about is how experience, course knowledge, a sense of the land is imperative if you want to contend. Six 50-somethings made the cut this year. Augusta National is a country for old men.