Booklist Starred Review
“There have been several similar tournament histories written over the last decade or so—beginning with Mark Frost’s The Greatest Game Ever Played (2002), about Francis Ouimet’s unlikely triumph at the 1913 U.S. Open—but Capp’s recounting of perhaps the most memorable Masters ever stands shoulder to shoulder with all of them.”
The argument can be made that golf has never had a more extraordinary day than Sunday at the 1975 Masters. Two majors champions--Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf dueled with the game's greatest player in golf's most dramatic setting. Gil Capps has recreated that day and that week in detail that makes the reader feel as if he's been transported back in time to that remarkable April afternoon.
-John Feinstein, New York Times best-selling author
The 1975 Masters Tournament always seemed destined for the record books. A veritable Hall of Fame list of competitors had gathered that spring in Augusta, Georgia, for the game's most famous event, including Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Hale Irwin, Billy Casper, and Sam Snead. The lead-up had been dominated by Lee Elder, the first black golfer ever invited to the exclusive club's tourney. But by the weekend, the tournament turned into a showdown between the three heavyweights of the time: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, and Tom Weiskopf. Never before had golf's top three players of the moment summoned the best golf of their lives in the same major championship. Their back-and-forth battle would rivet the sporting world and dramatically culminate in one of the greatest finishes in golf history.
In The Magnificent Masters, Gil Capps, a twenty-two-year veteran of the golf industry with NBC Sports and Golf Channel, recaptures hole-by-hole the thrilling drama of this singular event during golf’s golden era, from the media-crazed build-up and intertwined careers of the three combatants to the tournament's final dramatic putts that would change the game of golf forever.
Gil Capps is an Emmy award-winning associate producer on NBC Sports golf telecasts and managing editor at Golf Channel. He has spent his entire working career in golf media, having founded a regional golf magazine right out of Davidson College and written extensively about the game before jumping into television. Capps has worked on-site at more than 400 tournaments around the world—most spent sitting in NBC's main tower providing editorial direction to its broadcasts and announcers such as Johnny Miller, Dan Hicks, and Dick Enberg. Since 2012, he has led the creation of Golf Channel's Editorial Research Unit, which he oversees. A native of North Carolina, Capps now resides with his family in Winter Park, Florida. GilCapps.com