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- [00:00]
A
Huddle up. It's me, Angel Reese. You can't beat the post Skin burger and fries, right? Know what else you can't beat? The Angel Reese Special. Let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and a drink. It's gonna be a high C for me. Sound good? All you have to do to get it is beat me in a one on one. I'm just playing get the Angel Reese special at McDonald's now. Ba da ba ba ba.
- [00:29]
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I participate in restaurants for a limited time. The rest of this is for golfers or for anybody who ever loved one. Ken hit one great golf shot. It was his third shot on the par five 15th, his approach to the green, and he nailed it. I mean, the ball ought to have spun hard, but then this is golf, and things don't always happen the way they're supposed to. So when Ken plastered that approach iron smothering the flag, when the ball stabbed the green nine feet past the hole, instead of sucking back toward the cup as it was supposed to, the ball just stuck. How in the world could it do that? The green is steeply downhill back to front, and the wind is blowing in the same direction. And the putting surface is as hard as concrete. And yet that ball just stuck. No way a ball is going to stay put after it lands. But this one did. You walk up there and gently place any ball on that green, it's going to roll toward the front. But not today. Not this shot. And as Ken is walking up the fairway to the green, he just can't believe his eyes. After he marks the ball, is it going to start rolling when he replaces it? And more intriguing still, how will he ever put that ball softly enough to stop it anywhere near the hole? Well, Ken has to try. Figures. You'll just barely touch the ball with the face of the putter. Barely start it moving, and maybe it'll get close, and maybe with any luck, it'll drop. Well, I'll tell you how softly Ken stroked that ball as it rolled toward the cup. It is rolling so slowly that he can read the label on it, and yet ever so slightly missing the lip of the cup. The ball rolls past the hole in slow motion and then terrifyingly starts picking up speed. When the ball finally stops, it's almost as far from the cup as when it started. So it's going to take two more putts to get the ball underground. Ken bogeys the hole you ask Ken today how he lost that tournament, he'll tell you. He knows. That shot that cost him the whole shebang. That mysteriously sticky approach on 15 in the final round, despite wins so strong that they blew the scoreboard down. He hit 15 greens that day and yet lost by one stroke. And one stroke in particular, the one you just saw him make. Ken was an amateur back then. Had he won that tournament, his future would have been assured. He would have remained an amateur. He would have accepted an offer to become a vice president of Ford Motors. He would have inherited from the immortal Bobby Jones the titular leadership of Augusta National. That's right. Ken, in 1956, as an amateur, almost won the prestigious Masters Championship, except for that one stroke by which he dramatically altered the course of his life forever after. For instead, Ken pursued a professional career in golf. Accumulated 14 titles in less than 10 years, including the U.S. open Championship. The future, as it turned out, brought him such honors as PGA Player of the Year, Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the year, a happy 26 years as a golf analyst on television. Would he even have met and married his forever sweetheart, Ken wonders, had he won that 1956 Masters as an amateur? For Ken Venturi in 1956 was perhaps too young to see how sometimes by losing, you win. But now you've just watched him hit a shot that stopped impossibly on a downwind hill, the little big shot that cost him everything but paid him back with interest every day for the rest of his life. Now you know the rest of the story.