When Mike Weir won the Masters in 2003, it excited the attention of the country's second-most committed golfer.
"You're so cool and so good," then-prime minister Jean Chrétien hooted at Weir in a phone call. "We were jumping in the room when you won."
"I really appreciate the call," Weir said.
Then he hung up.
Once he'd passed into golf's upper reaches, nothing changed about Weir. In public, he remained almost absurdly modest. Nearly mute. Close to invisible.
Now, on the way back down, he maintains that quiet poise. He's not the greatest Canadian athlete of all time, but he may be the most Canadian. And he was also pretty great.
Weir claims that swinging a golf club isn't painful for him. It's certainly painful for the rest of us.
He's suffering from the lingering effects of multiple elbow injuries and surgeries. In order to be any good, he needs to keep his right arm straight through his shot. He cannot.
"Even though in my mind I want to keep it short, it just keeps bending."
I might get that line carved on my tombstone.
The result is an ugly, Rube-Goldberg-machine of a golf swing that repeatedly ran Weir into trouble on Thursday. He bogeyed nine of 18 holes (including two double-bogeys). Weir's short game remains world-class, but his driving has drifted back to talented high-schooler levels.
He was among the first men off the tee on Thursday, along with Canadian amateur Corey Conners. He hasn't changed much in 12 years. He's ropier and darker. He seems to budget out his smiles for the day. He now refers to what he does as "grinding."
The round took forever, since Weir continued spraying the ball into the woods. Augusta demands an all-rounder's game, front-to-back precision. Unless he's within throwing distance of the green, Weir has none.
They gave him a polite clap as he came up 18. It sounded a little like pity. He finished at 82 – 10-over par. It was his worst round ever at Augusta.
Just ahead of him, Tom Watson had finished at 1-under. Watson is 65. Weir is 44.
It feels like only one of them has much high-quality golf ahead of him. Once your levers start crumbling to bone dust, they don't tend to return to elite athletic quality.
Afterward, Watson was holding court, doing a hole-by-hole dissection of his day. That man could monologue a kidnapper into surrendering. Standing alongside, Weir was his usual – camouflaged by humility.
"It was a bottle of laughs," Weir said of his play.
Even his idioms have gone awry.
In trying to describe what's going on inside his arm, Weir used words such as "fatigue," "weakness," "tightness," "lack of mobility" and "no range of motion." Give this man credit – he played one of the world's most unforgiving courses with one arm, and managed not to humiliate himself.
But by his own standard, this must have been deflating, no?
"Masters champion or no, it's no fun to play bad."
It'd be much worse if he couldn't start that sentence with "Masters champion."
Later in the day, 21-year-old amateur Gunn Yang and 63-year-old Ben Crenshaw fell beneath him. But only those two. This is not the sort of company Weir is used to sharing – boys and graybeards.
By virtue of his win, Weir has a lifetime exemption to the Masters. As long as he can crawl up to a tee, they can't stop him from playing.
However, there are unspoken traditions. From time to time, it may be suggested to certain past winners that it's time to rethink their plans in April. By all means, come to the champions' dinner. Play the par-three contest. Walk around and have a ball. But maybe give the tournament itself a pass.
Ten years ago, 1970 champion Billy Casper – a stone-cold legend, now unjustly fading from memory – showed up. He was 73 years old and hobbled by a double hip replacement.
Augusta officials had already tried to unsubtly discourage Casper from entering any more, by sending him a letter to that effect. Casper co-operated for a few years, and then came back.
He shot 106, the worst round in Masters history. He put five straight balls into the water on 16.
"I wanted to do it one more time," Casper said afterward. "Now, I'm satisfied."
He didn't turn in his scorecard. Though he lived another decade, he never played the Masters again.
After competing at Augusta 44 times, Crenshaw is edging into that territory – putting up rounds in the 80s on a consistent basis.
Weir's had only 16 tries. He's not close to folding, but he's closer to that than being competitive.
Over the past five years, Weir's played in 85 events. He's made 32 cuts. There was a renaissance in 2014, but then the elbow went. Again.
He's just about to fall out of the top 200 in the world. He made more prize money in 2009 ($2.4-million U.S.) than in the next six years combined. He's damn close to paying to play golf, like the rest of us.
He's already out of the running after his round on Thursday. He's become one of those guys. The former champions who come here like Casper, to have some fun, and so that their children and grandchildren can watch them walk the greatest course in the world. The tourists.
Weir wouldn't see it that way. Clearly, the arm will not let him play competently. Would he consider withdrawing now, rather than go back out on Friday and be cut?
Weir has a lot of Alec Guinness to him – everything he says, he says with his eyes.
They widened in what was a momentary display of pride, hurt or amazement. Maybe all three. It's not like him to take offence, but he was offended. The hardest thing about losing your edge is the mental transition from superhero back to average citizen.
"As a player, I'm going to keep playing," Weir said. "That's my plan."
Sometimes the game has other plans.
Cathal Kelly