Tiger Woods won his 1st Masters 25 years ago. Meet the man who helped score 18th hole
Most every avid golf fan has seen the picture. You know the one. That shot of a 21-year-old Tiger Woods embracing his father, Earl, on the back of the 18th green at Augusta National after his 1997 Masters win.
The moment was plastered on newspapers and magazines nationwide at the time. It surfaced once more when Woods hugged his own son, Charlie, after his win at the 2019 rendition of the annual event.
That initial Associated Press photo — as well as Woods’ win — turns 25 years old this week. Retrospectives on Woods’ record-setting 12-shot win at Augusta that Sunday have littered the internet in recent days. Even the man himself was surprised by the amount of time that has passed.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since I won here (for the first time),” Woods said on Tuesday. “But it’s great to be back and be able to feel the energy and the excitement of the patrons again.”
What you don’t immediately notice in this image, though, is the headphoned volunteer whose head peaks out just above Earl Wood’s cap.
That man is Ron Miller, a former Augusta resident and a since-retired 26-year veteran stationary scorer at the Masters. He’s the man who helped officially log Woods’ score on that decisive final hole.
“If you knew where to look,” Miller said through a laugh, “there I was.”
That Miller ended up on the 18th green that day, let alone in legendary Associated Press photographer Dave Martin’s photo, is as much happenstance as anything else.
Miller moved to Augusta in 1976 to work as an operations manager at Proctor & Gamble’s nearby plant. He spent four-and-a-half years in town, volunteering at his first Masters, as he remembers it, in 1977 or 1978.
Back then, the tournament was quaint. The mystique and aura of Augusta were there, but it hadn’t yet developed into the worldwide spectacle it has since evolved into with major television deals and tens of thousands of patrons.
Miller said his family’s neighbor had been a scorer in previous years. He mentioned in passing he’d be interested in volunteering in some capacity. Between that year’s tournament and the next, the neighbor asked that Miller write a letter to someone involved in the volunteer selection at Augusta expressing his interest. He obliged. The club contacted him shortly thereafter with an offer to be a stationery scorer.
Miller wasn’t assigned a specific hole until he arrived for his first official shift. His neighbor, for example, had long been assigned to the sixth hole.
“OK Miller, you’re on the 18th,” an organizer announced.
“Oh!” Miller said excitedly. “OK, that’s a nice draw.”
The role of a stationery scorer, in layman’s terms, is tracking what each player in a group records on a given hole and relaying that to the scoring hub. That’s then disseminated to the scoreboards scattered around the grounds. Scorers have also since added responsibilities like tracking greens in regulation, sand saves and putts.
Augusta National and the Masters take a slightly different approach to their scorers than most every other PGA Tour event. Scorers generally walk the hole with the group inside the ropes. Not Augusta. Scorers there are positioned off the green and stick in one place for the duration of their shifts.
Over Miller’s first few tournaments, the process involved pen, paper and wading through patrons to pass along the information to the scoreboard operators changing the results by hand. That was streamlined with the advent of wireless technology.
“On Saturdays and Sundays it became a real task to try to elbow your way through a crowd to get to the scoreboard to report the score and then get back to your position so you could see what was coming on in the next (group),” Miller quipped. “But over time we upgraded to handheld BlackBerry’s and that helped dramatically.”
Back to that photo for a moment, though. The one of Tiger and Earl embracing.
The final scorecard indicates Woods capped his commanding 12-shot win with a par on the 18th. A quick google search and you’ll find the archive footage of his entire round — a 3-under-par 69 — on the Masters’ official YouTube page.
Two hours and 41 minutes into the feed, Woods mishits a driver off the tee. He misses left, wayyyyy left. “Dammit,” Woods mutters under his breath, but loud enough for the feed to pick it up.
He next sticks a 132-yard chip shot onto the back left side of the green, just over the front left hole location. His coronation takes two more shots: an initial putt that nestles four feet to the left of the cup, followed by a right-to-left bender that he holes for victory.
“There it is!” longtime CBS announcer Jim Nantz decries. “A win for the ages.”
Follow the replay a few seconds after the final putt and you’ll spot Miller, albeit briefly, watching the hug between Tiger and Earl unfold just over the younger Woods’ left shoulder. It’s in those milliseconds that Martin snapped his famous shot.
Miller concedes he doesn’t remember much from that day beyond Woods’ domination. But there’s something poetic about father and son holding onto one another behind the 18th green that day.
Miller retired from his post after 26 years in the role. His son, Matt, took on the family mantle a few years later, working as a stationary scorer, coincidentally, on the 18th green. He’d hold that post for nine years before stepping down.
Among the shots and scenes Matt watched unfold in that time? Woods’ 15-foot playoff birdie putt in a second attempt at the 18th hole to down Chris DiMarco at the 2005 Masters.
“It was really special to have that common bond,” Matt told The State on Wednesday. “And we kind of both both saw that side of it.”
Woods is expected to tee it up at Augusta this week, just 14 months after a severe car accident. With a win, he’d tie Jack Nicklaus’ record six green jackets and cap a quarter-century of Masters dominance.
Ron won’t be on the grounds this weekend, but Matt will. He and his wife, Wendy — a diehard Masters fan, Matt says — are planning to attend Friday. Matt and his son, Jack, will also head to Augusta National for Sunday’s final round after Jack goes to his senior prom on Saturday night in Atlanta.
Woods will need to make the cut to earn a shot at playing Sunday. He’s long said he wouldn’t enter a tournament if he didn’t think he could win. Woods doubled down on that notion Tuesday, assuring he feels he can contend this week.
Perhaps the five-time champ will find himself near the top of the leaderboard this weekend. Better still, Matt and Jack might just be able to find their way into the background of another championship shot on the 18th green — just as Ron did 25 years ago.
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
