Bernhard Langer reveals his one Masters remorse as golf legend prepares for emotional farewell throughout Augusta swansong

When Bernhard Langer finally signs off on his time as a competitor in the Masters in this coming week, he will leave just one minor wish unfulfilled.

It concerns an experiment and something he has been unable to test in his 40 previous visits to Augusta.

As this edition will be his last, and because the club is not known for lending itself to such sideshows, chances are he’ll never know how it would have gone. But there is a lingering curiosity.

‘It could be fun to see,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘What if you put an average amateur, maybe a handicap 20, on the green in zero, at the furthest part from the flag on every green, and see the score for 18 holes against a pro playing from the tee?

‘If we play to par, 72, they have to average four putts a hole to tie. I think that would be a good match.’

He knows it would – the victims of those putting surfaces make for a long list. ‘When I first played there (in 1982), I made 11 three-putts in 36 holes,’ he says.

Bernhard Langer is preparing to bid an emotional farewell to Augusta this week

The two-time Masters champion says he has one unfulfilled wish from the major

‘I remember being on the ninth green one year and my next shot was from the fairway. I’m not the only one. I think it was Tom Kite, six or seven under par, and he hit it to about six feet on 18 and putted it off the green – I think he took three more to get down.

‘It’s not an easy place.’

And so speaks a man who has tamed Augusta twice, the first of which came 40 years ago this month. But age gets to everyone eventually, even a 67-year-old golfer whose career is unmatched for the duration of its Indian summer.

When he won the Charles Schwab Cup last November, not only was it his 47th win on the seniors’ circuit, and an extension of his record in that competitive afterlife, but it was also his 18th straight year of landing at least one title. There are evergreens at Augusta that would envy his endurance.

But as for continuing at the Masters, where has nine top-10 finishes, including those victories in 1985 and 1993, this edition will be his last. Ultimately, he is no longer a sufficient match for the bigger hitters.

‘I’m still averaging around 275 yards off the tee,’ he says. ‘But these guys hit it so far. I played a tournament around five years ago and hit a drive 299 yards and I’m thinking, “Oh, that had to be top 30”. So I asked where was it was in the distance ranking. I get told it was around 95th. Holy moly. So there’s literally almost 100 guys then that hit it over 300.

‘So yeah, it’s, it’s a different game for the young guys.’

Age has shown itself in other ways, too. What made his win last November so memorable was the fact he had ruptured his Achilles tendon playing pickleball at the start of the year.

Langer knows more than anybody about the layout and mysteries of Augusta 

‘That wasn’t fun,’ he says. ‘It was a freak accident. Somebody lobbed me when I was near the net, or near the kitchen as they call it in pickleball, so I made three or four steps backwards and I jumped up to smash it.

‘As I came down, I landed on my left foot and I hear this sound like a gunshot. The feeling was like somebody hit me with a hammer on my heel.’

That injury killed his plans of saying goodbye to the Masters in 2024 and instead rolled the plan back a year. His exit as a competitor will come with the distinction of being one of only 18 multiple winners of the tournament.

Having experienced eras from Arnold Palmer to Scottie Scheffler, he knows more than most about this layout and its mysteries. His technical breakdown of the nuances is fascinating.

‘It’s really not a normal golf course,’ says Langer, an ambassador for Mercedes Benz. ‘It’s very different now than what it used to be like in the Eighties – it had the widest fairways in the world and then trees, so it was more about the second shot then.

‘Now they have what they call an intermediate cut, but let’s call it rough, and the fairways are much narrower, so driving has become much more important. What people maybe don’t see is if you are in that rough, even though it isn’t deep, the ball comes out with less spin, so controlling the ball into those greens is even harder. And the greens are extremely demanding as we’ve already said.

‘Another thing people can’t even see on television is how undulating the fairways are. If you play 18 holes, you may get one flat line. Everything is sidehill, downhill, uphill, all so awkward, and from them you are aiming for an area the size of a table top, maybe four feet by four feet.’

As with many golfers, Langer’s introduction to the course in 1982 was greeted by a missed cut and an epiphany that assisted in a run of making every cut between 1984 and 2002.

‘Practise rounds were something I learned to take very seriously. Learning where to miss. You could miss a green 10 yards right and get it up and down, but if you miss it one yard left with a certain pin, there is no chance to get it up and down. That is what I got from the practise rounds.

‘The other is the grass – it always seems to be growing into you around the greens, which makes chipping very difficult. I’m a fairly decent pitcher and chipper, but it’s a fine a line between duffing a chip or hitting it good, so I learned to chip with a four iron or a hybrid or putter, not always a lob wedge, because it’s too difficult.’

The German is a Mercedes ambassador. Mercedes Benz is a Global Sponsor of the Masters

Langer’s hole-by-hole dissection is summed by two words: unique and hard.

‘The first is not that easy since they lengthened it,’ he says. ‘Four and five are hard, seven has got very long. And then you have 10, 11, that are always hard. Now, 12 is a piece of cake when there’s no wind. But how many days do you get there with no wind? It’s always swirling, and often you literally guess what club to hit.

‘The 17th is long and the green is sloping away. That’s okay for Rory McIlroy who is long enough that he can stop his second shot. I’m hitting a long iron and it won’t stop. I have to aim for the bunker and get up and down. The challenges are everywhere. Nowhere is boring, every one of them is unique.’

Few have navigated them better than Langer. If nous counts for a few shots, it would be foolish to rule him out of making the weekend one last time.

Mercedes Benz is a Global Sponsor of the Masters