AUGUSTA, Ga. — The yips — the sudden lack of ability to make even quick putts — have ended careers {of professional} golfers.
For Bernhard Langer, they introduced him to his knees.
“Those were the hardest times in my life, in my golfing life, I should say,” mentioned Langer, 67, who this week will play in his forty first and closing Masters. “I’ve had the yips on four different occasions. It seems like every seven years for some reason, just not lately, thank goodness.”
“It’s very emotional.”
Bernhard Langer is making his closing Masters begin this week.
The 67-year-old has been taking part in at Augusta since 1982. pic.twitter.com/bHLvaGZJVJ
— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) April 7, 2025
The depths for him got here in 1989 on the Buick Invitational in Detroit, after his first of two Masters victories, when he missed the reduce regardless of hitting 17 greens in regulation on Thursday and 16 on Friday. His placing was so shaky, although, that he was a forehead-slapping 11 over par.
“I went back to my hotel and literally got on my knees,” he mentioned. “I was already a believer at the time, and said a prayer like, ‘God, if you want me done with this game, I’m ready to give it up. Just show me what you want me to do and I’ll pack it up, no more golf.”
A good friend was praying with him and mentioned, “I don’t think he’s done with you yet.”
Not by a mile. Not solely would Langer go on to win at Augusta Nationwide once more in 1993, however he went on to develop into the best senior participant in historical past, with 12 senior main championships and not less than one victory in every of his 18 years on the senior tour.
The native of Germany considers these two inexperienced jackets to be the head of his success, and his voice trembled with emotion Monday after watching a Masters spotlight video of himself within the media middle auditorium.
Bernhard Langer celebrates after successful his second Masters title in 1993.
(Ed Reinke / Related Press)
“It’s been an incredible journey for a young man being born in a village of 800 people in an area where golf was nothing, to make it here,” he mentioned. “To get an invitation to play the Masters [the] first time around when it was extremely difficult for a European or international players to get an invitation, and then to win the first Masters on the third go-around was just a dream come true. It’s just incredible.”
Langer, as in-shape and youthful as a participant half his age, missed the Masters final yr after struggling a torn Achilles tendon whereas taking part in pickleball in Boca Raton, Fla., the place he lives.
4 years in the past, when the Masters was moved to November amid the COVID pandemic, Langer, then 63, turned the oldest participant ever to make the reduce. It may not look it, however age is catching as much as him.
“The course is just getting too long and I’m getting shorter and shorter,” he mentioned. “I’m hitting hybrids where the other kids are hitting 9 irons and 8 irons, maybe even wedges. So I knew I wasn’t going to be in contention anymore.
“A few years back, I asked the chairman of the club, ‘Is there a time limit? Do we time out when we’re 60?’ He said, ‘No, you will know when it’s time to quit. It’s totally up to you.’”
That day has come.
“It’s time to quit,” he mentioned. “I’m just not competitive on this course anymore. We’re playing at, what, 7,500-plus yards, and I’m used to playing courses around 7,100. I can still compete there, but not at this distance.”
Bernhard Langer hits from a bunker onto the third inexperienced throughout the closing spherical of the PNC Championship in Orlando, Fla., in December.
(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Related Press)
Both of these distances pales compared to the gap Langer has come from his youth in tiny Anhausen, Germany, a farming village the place his father was a bricklayer and bike courier.
Golf was an unique and obscure pursuit for a German child on the time, and Langer mentioned there have been solely 100 or so programs within the nation on the time. His older brother was a caddie at a course about eight miles from the household house, and Langer adopted in his footsteps. As a teenager, Bernhard would journey his bike to the course, and spend days lugging golf luggage that have been nearly as tall as he was.
“I would say I fell in love with money first,” he mentioned. “As a caddie, I was earning money as a 9-year-old. That was pretty cool.”
In a 2019 essay for Golf Digest, Langer recalled ready for work with different caddies in a small shed, sitting on a bench and staring for hours at a swing sequence of Jack Nicklaus.
“For years, I didn’t know who Jack, Arnold Palmer or Ben Hogan even were,” he wrote. “There was almost no golf on TV, no golf books and a very small number of golf magazines. Golf was such a small sport.”
It didn’t take alongside, nonetheless, for him to develop a love of the sport that not less than rivaled his love for the cash that lined his pockets.
“We were able to practice a little bit and chip and putt and hit balls on the range if there were no members to caddie for,” he mentioned. “We couldn’t afford golf clubs, but one of the members discarded some of his old sticks. They actually had bamboo shafts. It was a 2 wood, 3 iron, a 7 iron and a putter with a bent shaft. So I always say that’s where my putting problems came from.”
He can chuckle about that now. However at varied factors all through his profession, his placing points have been profession threatening. Most well-known was his missed, do-or-die 6-footer within the 1991 Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island. He burned the best edge, halving his match with Hale Irwin and giving the US a slender victory. That broke a streak through which the Europeans had gained in 1985 and ’87 and tied in ’89.
Bernhard Langer celebrates after making a putt to win the PNC Championship in December.
(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Related Press)
“It was devastating because I let my teammates down,” Langer wrote in his Golf Digest essay. “The next week was the German Masters, a tournament I helped found. On the final hole, I faced a 15-footer to get into a playoff. Two voices were in my head. One said, ‘You missed a six-footer last week; what makes you think you can make a 15-footer now?’ The other voice said, ‘The past is irrelevant; you will make this putt.’
“The second voice must have been louder, because I made the putt and then defeated Rodger Davis in the playoff. Since that time, I’ve managed to quiet the first voice.”
Langer, who has tried nearly each placing type all through his profession, was capable of quiet that voice. However, as he’ll seemingly be reminded typically throughout his closing Masters look, his success speaks loud sufficient for everybody to listen to.
