Verplank's Nelson win remindful of Crenshaw's second Masters

Was I the only observer struck by the similarity between Scott Verplank’s fall-to-the-knees manuever after holing the short putt to win the Byron Nelson Classic the other day, and the comparable “I can’t believe it” moment of Ben Crenshaw, back in ‘95, when he won an improbable second Masters?

Avid PGA Tour fans might recall that Crenshaw won the title just days after serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of mentor and long-time instructor Harvey Penick, who taught him the game at Austin CC in Texas.

Verplank, a Dallas native, might not have had the same lifelong bond with Lord Byron as did Crenshaw with Penick, but he was a long-time admirer of Nelson, revered both the man and his position in the golf pantheon, and always thirsted to win his namesake event, which Verplank referred to as “my fifth Major.”

When he fell to his knees in shock and disbelief as the winning putt went subterranean, in the first Byron Nelson Classic played after Nelson’s passing, this observer was immediately taken back a dozen years, to the spring of 1995, when Ben Crenshaw, who, by the way, won the Nelson in ‘83, did pretty much the exact same thing on the final green of Augusta National.