AUGUSTA – Chris DiMarco knows he’ll be nervous today when he tees off with Phil Mickelson in the final group of the 68th Masters. But he’ll lean on his experience at last year’s Presidents Cup to stay focused enough to try to win his first major championship.
DiMarco drained a birdie putt on the 17th hole to win his match with Stuart Appleby and help the Americans tie the International team last fall in South Africa. The Presidents Cup isn’t quite like trying to win the Masters at Augusta National, but it’s close.
“I think the Presidents Cup really helped me,” DiMarco said. “To be under that kind of pressure and to be able to perform really lifted me. I felt like it brought my game to a new level.”
That level was good enough to tie Mickelson at 6-under-par heading into today’s final round. DiMarco enjoyed a bogey-free round yesterday, shooting a 4-under-par 68.
“I just kind of stayed confident and just kept hitting shots on the middle of the greens,” DiMarco said. “I hit a lot of greens and the ones I didn’t hit I left in the right position.”
DiMarco, who was born in Huntington, L.I., has three tour victories, and while this is his 17th major, it is only his fourth Masters. He withdrew last year after his score soared during the 36-hole marathon that Friday. He later wrote a letter of apology to the tournament committee.
“That was a big mistake on my part,” DiMarco said. “I learned a lot from that. It was no disrespect to Augusta at all. It was just a poor decision on my part.”
Since 1991, the Masters champion has come from the final pairing, a trend DiMarco hopes continues with him emerging with a victory.
“I’m going to play smart,” he said. “There’s certain pins you can go at, certain pins you can’t go at, and you’ve got to kind of play your game and not necessarily watch what everybody else is doing and just play good solid golf.”