📍 This article is part of our Masters 2026 Hub — your complete guide to the most beautiful week in golf.
I am not a golf historian. I am a 15-handicap who three-putts from 12 feet and occasionally hits a draw on purpose. My qualifications for ranking the greatest Masters moments are: (1) I have watched every single one of these clips more times than I've watched my own wedding video, and (2) I have opinions.
That's the entire resume. Let's go.
10. Bubba Watson's Impossible Hook Shot (2012)
The situation: sudden-death playoff against Louis Oosthuizen, second hole. Bubba's drive goes right and deep into the trees on 10. He's standing on pine straw with no obvious shot to the green. Sane golfers punch out.
Bubba Watson has never been accused of being sane.
He pulls out a gap wedge and hits a sweeping, 40-yard hook that bends around the trees, carries over the bunker, and settles on the green. Then he two-putts for the win.
The shot itself defies geometry. Most of us can't hit a controlled 40-yard hook from the fairway, let alone from a pine straw lie with a tournament on the line. But the thing that makes this moment is Bubba breaking down in tears afterward — a grown man, sobbing in his caddie's arms, because he just won the Masters with a shot he saw in his head and somehow his hands agreed to hit.
I've tried that shot at my local muni. I hit a tree. Two trees, actually.
9. Larry Mize's Chip-In to Stun Greg Norman (1987)
Greg Norman had one of the great careers in golf, but the number of times he got his heart ripped out in majors is genuinely unfair. Exhibit A: the 1987 Masters playoff.
On the second playoff hole (the 11th), Mize was 140 feet from the pin, off the green, facing an impossible up-and-down. Norman was safely on the green. This should have been Norman's green jacket.
Mize chipped it in. The ball took one bounce, tracked toward the hole like it was on rails, and dropped. Norman, standing on the green with a straightforward two-putt for the win, watched his Masters vanish in three seconds.
The lesson: golf is cruel, and if you're Greg Norman, it's crueler.
8. Phil Mickelson's Shot Through the Trees (2010)
Phil Mickelson does not play conservative golf. This is both his greatest strength and the reason he's hit more shots from pine straw than any Hall of Famer in history.
On the 13th hole during the final round in 2010, Phil's drive found the trees right of the fairway. He had 207 yards to the pin, a narrow window between two pine trees, Rae's Creek guarding the front of the green, and every reason to lay up.
He grabbed a 6-iron and threaded a shot through a gap that looked approximately 4 feet wide on TV (and was probably 12 feet, but still). The ball cleared the creek, landed on the green, and set up a birdie that propelled him to his third green jacket.
His caddie, Bones Mackay, later said he was nervous watching it. Phil reportedly told him: "Let's go for it." That's Phil in four words. The shot through the trees on 13 — along with his aggressive play through Amen Corner all week — is peak Mickelson. Reckless genius rewarded.
7. Tiger Woods' 1997 Dominance
Sometimes the greatest moment isn't a single shot. It's a 72-hole demolition.
Tiger Woods arrived at Augusta in 1997 as a 21-year-old in a field that didn't know what hit them. He shot 40 on his front nine Thursday — and then proceeded to play the remaining 63 holes in 22 under par. He won by 12 strokes. Twelve.
To put that in perspective: the second-place finisher, Tom Kite, would have needed to play nearly three more rounds at his scoring pace just to catch Tiger. It was less a golf tournament and more a nature documentary about apex predation.
But the moment that transcends sport is the hug with his father, Earl, behind the 18th green. Tiger, the first Black golfer to win the Masters at a club that didn't admit its first Black member until 1990, embracing his father who had dreamed of this before Tiger could hold a club. Earl passed away in 2006, which makes watching that hug hit different every single time.
6. Sandy Lyle's Fairway Bunker Shot on 18 (1988)
This one doesn't get enough love, probably because it happened in 1988 and the YouTube algorithm hasn't figured out that it's incredible.
Sandy Lyle needed a par on 18 to get into a playoff. He drove it into the fairway bunker. From 145 yards out, in sand, with the tournament on the line, he hit a 7-iron to 12 feet and sank the birdie putt to win outright.
No playoff. No drama. Just a Scotsman hitting a perfect 7-iron from a bunker when anything less than perfect meant going home. The putt celebration — arms raised, putter over his head — is one of the purest joy moments in Masters history.
5. Verne Lundquist: "Yes Sir!" — Jack Nicklaus on 17 (1986)
We'll get to the full 1986 performance in a moment, but this specific shot deserves its own entry because it produced maybe the most iconic commentary call in golf history.
Jack Nicklaus, 46 years old, already in the middle of an absurd back-nine charge, stands over an 11-foot birdie putt on 17. He needs it to take the lead.
The putt goes in. Jack raises his putter like a sword. And Verne Lundquist, in a voice that carries the full emotional weight of watching a legend refuse to be old, says:
"Maybe... yes sir!"
That's it. Three words. Perfect in their simplicity. Verne didn't over-explain. He didn't add statistics. He let the moment breathe and dropped "yes sir" like a man watching something he might never see again.
He was right. We never did.
4. Tiger's 2019 Comeback
This isn't just a golf moment. This is one of the great redemption arcs in sports history.
By 2017, Tiger Woods was done. Four back surgeries. Couldn't sit in a chair without pain. Got arrested asleep at a wheel, a cocktail of painkillers in his system. Every reasonable assessment said his career as a competitive golfer was over.
Two years later, he won the Masters.
The final round was nervy, messy, and very human — Tiger made a bogey on 5, doubled 10, and didn't look like the dominant Tiger of the 2000s. He looked like a 43-year-old man grinding out pars with everything he had left. And it was enough.
The walk up 18 with the crowd roaring. The hug with his kids behind the green — mirroring the hug with his father 22 years earlier. Tiger, in tears, because he'd done the thing that nobody (maybe including himself) thought was possible anymore.
I'm not going to pretend I didn't tear up watching it. You probably did too.
3. Jack Nicklaus' Back Nine, 1986
The full performance deserves the full entry.
Jack Nicklaus was 46 years old. He hadn't won a major in six years. A newspaper column that week said he was "done, through, washed up, finished." Jack taped that column to the refrigerator in his rental house.
On Sunday, he turned for home at 2-over for the day. What followed was the greatest nine holes of golf ever played in a major championship.
Birdie on 9. Birdie on 10. Birdie on 11. Birdie on 13 (eagle putt lipped out). Eagle on 15 (a 4-iron to 12 feet that made the crowd lose its collective mind). Birdie on 16 (a 5-iron to 3 feet). Birdie on 17 (the "yes sir" putt).
He shot 30 on the back nine. Seven under par on the final nine holes of a major, at 46 years old, with everyone counting him out.
His son, Jackie, was caddying for him. Watching them walk up 18 together, Jack knowing he'd just done something impossible, is the kind of moment that makes you believe in sports as something more than entertainment.
Jack finished at 9-under 279. The sixth and final green jacket. The greatest final round in Masters history. The greatest final round in golf history. I will not be taking questions.
2. Tiger's Chip-In on 16 (2005)
You know the shot. Even if you don't follow golf, you know the shot.
Final round, 2005. Tiger's ball is on the upper shelf of the 16th green, pin cut front-left on the lower tier. He's facing a 25-foot chip that has to go up a ridge, across a plateau, and down a slope to the pin.
He aims 20 feet left of the hole. The ball crests the ridge, catches the slope, turns right, and begins tracking toward the cup. The crowd starts buzzing. The ball slows. It reaches the lip of the hole and... stops.
For a full second — the longest second in golf broadcasting history — the ball sits on the edge of the cup. You can see the Nike swoosh. Verne Lundquist starts to speak: "Oh my goodness..."
It drops.
"IN YOUR LIFE have you seen anything like that?!"
No, Verne. No, we have not.
Tiger reacted with a fist pump that could power a small city. He went on to win in a playoff the next day. But the shot — the geometry, the hang on the lip, the eruption from the patrons — is the single greatest shot in Masters history.
I have watched this clip so many times that YouTube probably thinks I have a problem. YouTube is not wrong.
1. The Masters Itself
I know, I know. "That's a cop-out." Hear me out.
Every moment on this list happened because of the place. Augusta National makes moments bigger. The manicured perfection. The roars that cascade through the pines and tell you something incredible just happened three holes away before you even see it on a leaderboard. The traditions that make you feel like you're part of something sacred.
The 12th hole at Amen Corner, where careers go to die over 155 yards of swirling wind. The walk up the 18th fairway with the clubhouse glowing above. The Par 3 Contest on Wednesday, where grown men skip balls across ponds and everyone smiles.
No other tournament does this. The US Open is a grind. The Open Championship is weather roulette. The PGA Championship is... fine. The Masters is the Masters.
It's the reason a weekend golfer like me — a guy who loses three balls a round and considers breaking 90 a personal triumph — can watch Tiger's chip on 16 for the 48th time and still feel something. It's the reason Jack's charge at 46 still makes you believe anything is possible, even if the most you've accomplished at 46 is finally figuring out your short game (you haven't).
The greatest Masters moment is the next one. It hasn't happened yet. But when it does, it'll happen at Augusta, and it'll matter more because of it.
See you in April.
Want to know the course like the pros do? Read our Amen Corner deep dive, or check out our 2026 sleeper picks for who might create the next great moment.
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