DeChambeau leaps to 3M lead; Mickelson out

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AUGUSTA, Ga. - Cameron Smith had no idea he had just become the answer to a new bizarre sports trivia question. Still contemplating what might have been, the 27-year-old two-time PGA TOUR winner walked off Augusta National as the first player ever to record four rounds in the 60s at the Masters. In 84 versions of this tournament it had never been done before. RELATED: Final leaderboard | DJ breaks Masters scoring record Not by Tiger Woods, nor Jack Nicklaus. Not by Arnold Palmer or Phil Mickelson. Or Gary Player. Not Bobby Jones or Gene Sarazen. No one. But despite the feat, Smith was not heading to Butler Cabin to get a new Green Jacket. Not even close. He had run into a buzzsaw. FedExCup champion Dustin Johnson was five shots clear at the top. “That’s pretty harsh to get that record and not win," three-time Masters winner Nick Faldo said of Smith's achievement. Smith not only entered the record books for his sub-70 rounds, but his 15-under 273 total was the best ever by a runner up. He shared that mark with his International Presidents Cup teammate Sungjae Im. In all but seven previous Masters 15 under would have won. "It would have been cool to do that and win. I was actually saying I’d take 15‑under around here the rest of my career and I might win a couple," Smith mused of both the achievements. "I honestly can’t believe it, but I put it down to scrambling and digging deep. But credit to DJ. He was just too good this week." Even if Smith's 67-68-69-69 wasn't good enough to win. It will forever be folklore. He managed to get there with a scrambling clinic. On Saturday afternoon, the young Australian missed the final three greens in brutal places. He parred each hole. On Sunday, he cut Johnson's initial four shot lead to two at the turn after two all-world birdies. Last season's Sony Open in Hawaii champion faced what appeared a certain punch out to, at best, a greenside bunker on the par-4 seventh hole after his drive leaked right into the trees. But Smith saw a tiny window up through the branches. He decided to gamble. Swinging as hard as he could he launched the ball into orbit and it cleared through the debris and onto the putting surface from 120 yards to 10-feet before making the putt. "I wasn't here to finish second," Smith said of his aggressive play. "I knew I had to keep the pressure on Dustin. There was a small gap up there. The club was pretty good. Just had to hit it really hard and it turned out well." Smith then hit a brilliant approach from the pine straw on the par-4 ninth to a few feet and nailed the putt to be within two of the lead. But his hopes of victory faded with a bogey on the par-4 11th. And despite another brilliant up and down on the 15th for birdie, Johnson pulled away. "I felt as though I needed to shoot three or four under on that back nine," Smith said. "I still felt I had a chance after 15 if I birdied the last four... it would at least make him think about it. But it wasn’t to be. This is a massive confidence booster. It's a shame I’m not going to play a tournament for a couple months, but I can’t wait to start back up in Hawai’i, and obviously try and defend there would be awesome," Smith added. "And then we have some other good tournaments, including THE PLAYERS Championship where I'm based before another crack at this here. Good times ahead." For Im, the final round started well. After five holes he had cut Johnson's lead from four to one but as Johnson produced a great birdie on the par-3 sixth, Im was on his way to a bogey. The South Korean dropped three back and it was four a hole later after another bogey. He never got closer from that point on. "This is definitely going to be a memorable Masters for me, not only because this is my first appearance, but my initial goal at the start of the week was just to make a cut and get into the weekend. So to finish tied for second is unbelievable," the former PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year and current Honda Classic champion Im said. "Dustin definitely plays at another level. Just watching him play, he makes the game look so easy. Leading up to this week, I struggled with my putting a little bit. So I made a change with my putter and I putted so well, and that’s what made the difference."

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The first draft of the script for “Caddyshackâ€� was 200 pages long – which was nearly twice the norm for Hollywood screenplays at the time. And believe it or not, the character named Carl Spackler, the wacky and wacked out assistant greenskeeper so central to the movie in its final form, was nowhere to be found. Oh, and what about that gopher? Well, Spackler’s nemesis started out as a mere sock puppet, appearing in just one scene where the rodent pops up and steals Al Czervik’s golf ball. Those are just two of the many interesting nuggets that can be found in Chris Nashawaty’s new book, “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story.â€� Nashawaty’s book came out in April of this year. It was born of a six-page oral history he wrote about the cult classic for Sports Illustrated in 2010, three decades after its release. The book is meticulously researched – witness the 27 pages of notes at the end of the book – and pays homage to a film that tops nearly every list of funniest sports movies. But Nashawaty, who has been the film critic for Entertainment Tonight for the last 20 years, does more than just take his reader behind the scenes of an 11-week shoot filled with drama and debauchery in south Florida. Nashawaty’s book also sets the stage, so to speak, for the movie by examining the friendship between Harold Ramis, who directed the film, and his co-writers and co-conspirators, Doug Kenney and Brian Doyle-Murray. Their bond had been cemented about a decade earlier when National Lampoon was at its zenith and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” was turning traditional comedy on its collective ear. Kenney and Ramis were fresh off the success of “Animal House,â€� which they had written with Chris Miller, when they pitched a series of irreverent comedies to Orion Pictures and Jon Peters, who was married at the time to Barbara Streisand. The one that got the greenlight became “Caddyshack,” which had its genesis in Doyle-Murray’s memories of his teenage years spent caddying at Indian Hill Club on the north shore of Chicago. Once Nashawaty turns the focus to the movie, which comes about 100 pages into the narrative, the book gains momentum. And with comic geniuses like Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Ted Knight and Rodney Dangerfield on board, there were plenty of stories for him to tell. When Murray was hired to complete the “foursome,â€� as Nashawaty puts it, his character still didn’t exist, despite numerous rewrites to the script. Not to mention, with SNL about to resume production, he only had six days to devote to “Caddyshack,” but his brother, Doyle-Murray, promised him everything would work out. Much of Murray’s oft-imitated performance was ad-libbed – most notably the iconic “Cinderella Storyâ€� monologue. All the script said was: Carl, the Greenskeeper, is absently looping the heads off bedded tulips as he practices his golf swing with a grass whip. After changing the flowers to mums at Murray’s suggestion, the cameras rolled. And he did the entire sequence in one take. “I was good back in those days,â€� Murray tells Nashawaty. “I could do something when they turned the camera on. I was wired into what I was talking about. Improvising about golf was easy for me.â€� Anyone who has seen his antics at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am would certainly agree. And while he only had that one scene with the gopher puppet, Murray was frequently filmed trying to flush the critter out with a firehose he dragged around the course. It wasn’t until after filming was complete that the gopher took on a life of its own – eventually being created by a special effects company and at Peter’s suggestion assuming a bigger “roleâ€� to help to tie together the movie’s many disjointed but funny scenes. Murray loved doing battle with the gopher. “It was a time when people were making movies like the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now,â€� Murray recalls in the book. “And that was my Vietnam movie. The ridiculously inappropriate firepower I used to kill a small rodent.â€� Speaking of firepower, there was plenty at Bushwood, aka Rolling Hills Golf Club, in Davie, Florida when the final scene was shot. Peters had taken the unknowing high-ups from the club to dinner and on an evening cruise as a diversion – but the proverbial jig was up when the explosions made the TV news and prompted a pilot to radio the nearby Ft. Lauderdale airport to report a crash. The damage to the Rolling Hills — which once hosted the likes of Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott, Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath — was minimal, though. Nashawaty’s book also delves into the complicated relationships between Chase and Murray, highlighting a fight between the two at 30 Rock during the SNL days, and between Knight and Dangerfield. Knight, a decorated war hero who won two Emmys for his work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” wasn’t exactly thrilled with being the straight man to Dangerfield’s ribald style of comedy. In the end, “Caddyshack,” wasn’t the comedic blockbuster Ramis, Doyle-Murray and Kenney had hoped, that distinction, instead, going to the movie “Airplane.” As the years have gone on, though, “Caddyshack” has more than found its niche and this book is a tribute to its popularity.

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