The yips — the sudden inability to make even short putts — have ended careers of professional golfers.
For Bernhard Langer, they brought him to his knees.
“Those were the hardest times in my life, in my golfing life, I should say,” said Langer, 67, who this week will play in his 41st and final 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.”
— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) April 7, 2025
Bernhard Langer is making his final Masters start this week.
The 67-year-old has been playing at Augusta since 1982. pic.twitter.com/bHLvaGZJVJ
The depths for him came in 1989 at the Buick Invitational in Detroit, after his first of two Masters victories, when he missed the cut despite hitting 17 greens in regulation on Thursday and 16 on Friday. His putting was so shaky, though, that he was a forehead-slapping 11 over par.
“I went back to my hotel and literally got on my knees,” he said. “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 friend was praying with him and said, “I don’t think he’s done with you yet.”
Not by a mile. Not only would Langer go on to win at Augusta National again in 1993, but he went on to become the greatest senior player in history, with 12 senior major championships and at least one victory in each of his 18 years on the senior tour.
The native of Germany considers those two green jackets to be the pinnacle of his success, and his voice trembled with emotion Monday after watching a Masters highlight video of himself in the media center auditorium.
“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 said. “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 player half his age, missed the Masters last year after suffering a torn Achilles tendon while playing pickleball in Boca Raton, Fla., where he lives.
Four years ago, when the Masters was moved to November amid the COVID pandemic, Langer, then 63, became the oldest player ever to make the cut. It might not look it, but age is catching up to ...
