Ian Woosnam on winning the Masters and Britain’s long-lost dominance of Augusta
Ian Woosnam on winning the Masters, this year’s contenders and why he’ll be watching from home in Barbados rather than playing.
As a child cutting his teeth on the golf courses of Shropshire, Ian Woosnam and friends liked to pretend they were the titans of the game tussling for its biggest prizes.
“I used to stand there with my mates and go ‘I’m Gary Player, he’s Jack Nicklaus and he’s Arnold Palmer. And this is for the Open Championship, this is for the Masters’,” he says.
This week the best players in the world, and especially those from the United Kingdom, will be hoping to emulate Woosnam himself by claiming the Green Jacket.
The Welshman’s 1991 triumph came during a golden four-year run for Britons at Augusta, in which England’s Nick Faldo won twice and Scot Sandy Lyle once.
It was an era in which Europeans gave as good as they got at the major, but since then only one other Brit – Yorkshireman Danny Willett in 2016 – has become Masters champion.
“We just had a run there for a while. We were competing in Europe against each other a lot: Seve [Ballesteros], myself, Faldo, Lyle, [Bernhard] Langer,” he says.
“I was the youngest, and you get dragged on. You get to the Masters and you think ‘well, Faldo’s won, Seve’s won. If he can do it, I can do it because I can beat him half the time’.
“Over the last few years, the [Lee] Westwoods and other players have had the opportunity. Danny did it. Hopefully in the future more British players will be challenging to win it again.”
Woosnam, now 66, reached world No1 but rates the Masters victory as his finest hour. “That tops your career off. You don’t really get recognised if you haven’t won a major,” he says.
He still loves the tournament for the test it presents – “Augusta asks you to do everything correctly” – and agrees that hot favourite Scottie Scheffler will take some stopping.
“What’s a little bit concerning is that I saw some niggling in his shoulders. Is that going to cause trouble in the future? But at the moment, he looks good,” he says.
Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, “seems to be making too many mistakes”. Woosnam is just glad that the best players will be in one place this week, following the split in men’s golf.
One man who won’t be playing this year is Woosnam, despite past champions being entitled to in perpetuity. He bowed out in 2021 after deciding that the topography took too much of a toll.
“At 66, the Masters is just too difficult. It’s a really, really hilly golf course and it’s a difficult walk. You’ve got to be extremely fit. If you’re not, you’re going to struggle,” he says.
He still made the trip to Georgia for Jon Rahm’s champions dinner and to play the par three contest before returning to his home in Barbados to put his feet up and watch on TV.
Woosnam now divides his time between Jersey and the Caribbean, spending his winters in Barbados, where he is an ambassador for the Apes Hill golf resort.
“We first came in 1983 and I have loved the place since then. We decided on the beach one day to buy a house in Royal Westmoreland and we’ve had one here for nearly 30 years,” he says.
“It’s great, especially if I’ve got a bad back – it’s so much easier. I can feel more relaxed, have more freedom in my swing and it allows me to just rest my back a little bit better.”
Injury has kept him out of competition since last summer but he hopes to be fit enough to take part in a Legends Tour event he is hosting at Apes Hill next month.
“I’m still trying to play 6-10 tournaments a year,” he says. “Last year, I got tennis elbow halfway through the season, and haven’t played since. I hope I’ll be able to play a bit more this year.”
