AUGUSTA, Ga. -- By 5:55 p.m. the preparations were complete. Ten rows of folding chairs arranged just so. The green outdoor carpet runner tapped into place. The podium set atop the table. Trophies lined up on the taut felt cover.
As it turned, the only thing missing an hour or so later was Jordan Spieth.
The Masters giveth and the Masters taketh your lunch money, dunketh your head into Rae's Creek, rubbeth your face into its Bonneville Salt Flats greens. It tests you. Humbles you. And often breaks you.
It didn't break the 20-year-old Masters rookie on Sunday, but it did provide the kind of priceless golf education that you only get by finishing second (OK, tied for second) in a Masters.
"This is the frickin' Harvard, Yale ... this is the whole Ivy League of it," said Spieth, as he stood in the nearly deserted Augusta National locker room moments after packing up his belongings. "This was fast-track learning while competing on the biggest stage in golf."
Spieth didn't lose the Masters; Bubba Watson won it. Spieth didn't gag, choke or collapse. He didn't need a binky or a vomit bag. He got beat fair and square by a now-two-time Masters champion who does things to a golf ball that defy the laws of physics. Watson's 366-yard cut drive on the par-5 13th was in the air so long that they showed a movie on the flight.
A Bubba victory is always good theater. But a Spieth win would have been history. Had he matched Watson's 3-under-par 69 instead of shooting 72, we would have had a playoff. And then we might have had the youngest-ever Masters champion and the youngest major winner since 1931.
Of course, the Masters is always about ifs. If his third shot on the par-5 eighth hole hadn't somehow dug its claws into the marble floor green ... If he hadn't 3-putted on the same green for bogey ... If his 9-iron on the cruel par-3 12th hadn't somersaulted into the waters of Rae's Creek ... If a putt here, a putt there hadn't rolled toward the cup and then said, "Never mind."
There's a reason why the Earl of Augusta National, longtime Ben Crenshaw caddie Carl Jackson, kept gushing about Spieth. Earlier in the week he pulled Spieth's caddie Michael Greller aside and said, "What I love about Jordan, he has moxie."