The photo shows Hideki Matsuyama and Xander Schauffele, playing together today at Augusta in the final round of The Masters, in a happy moment about an hour before the golf course mugged them.

I was watching the TV and just about to make a knowing comment about Hideki’s seeming nerves of steel because he was leading the tournament by four or five strokes and hitting approach shots closer than the gravy bowl at Thanksgiving.

But he promptly hit an enthusiastic shot on the 15th hole that made the following noises: whoosh!! emphatic bounce! lesser bounce. SPLASH!!!

Bogey.

Meanwhile, Schauffele, his playing partner, was busy studying his manicure in between making four birdies in a row. He was stalking Matsuyama and now he was getting close.

But then. on the sixteenth, Schauffele hit a tee shot that went whoosh!! *whisper whisper.* dribble… splash. It made lovely ringlets in the water, like little fishes coming up to feed.

The penalty shot described a high arc and then went emphatic bounce! …skid…. LOOK OUT, MARTHA!!! It landed among four male spectators with an aggregate age of about 308. At least two of them must have seen Gene Sarazen’s double eagle at the 1935 Masters.

Triple bogey.

Schauffele was in pain, and it was painful to watch the young man’s face.

Matsuyama finished the tournament by hitting his approach into the bunker on the 18th hole in front of God and everybody. He won by one stroke.

He not only won the Masters. He survived it.

Hideki walked off the 18th green with tears in his eyes, gently touching outstretched hands. At the end of the congratulatory gauntlet, Jordan Spieth was waiting for him with a big grin on his face.

Because I tend to think cinematically, what happened next reminded me of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. I think there are two supremely beautiful scenes in this film. In one of them, Scarlett Johansson’s character, alone in a Kyoto park, watches transfixed as a wedding party approaches.

In the other, Bill Murray hits a lovely tee shot down an impossibly verdant fairway far below Mt. Fuji. You know the scene meant much to Coppola because she composed it so carefully.

It’s as if a golf course can be as evocative of life and grace as the garden that frames the wedding party. Maybe, in the way that the Japanese understand landscape architecture, that is exactly so. I think they understand golf, too, with an aesthetic that eludes the American golfers who attempt to overwhelm a golf course with their brawn.

That kind of golfer doesn’t do well at The Masters. No one overwhelmed Augusta this year. Matsuyama won because he learned to play within the will of one of the most beautiful golf courses in the world.  

He understands that this course has a life of its own. I know this is true because of what happened at the end of the tournament.

The champion was gone, but the network camera captured his caddy, alone on the 18th green.

Hideki’s caddy replaced the flag. Then he turned toward the fairway and bowed.