Masters 2022: Lucas Herbert’s journey from Tiger Woods’ practice partner to Augusta National mayhem

One recipient is Lucas Herbert, your otherwise normal 26-year-old from Bendigo.

Loves his footy, his cricket, cars and a chat. He also happens to be very good at ripping a golf ball – to the tune of ranking 44th in the world.

Last October, on a windswept day in Bermuda, Herbert won his first PGA Tour event, the best part of $1.5 million and the special delivery money just can’t buy.

For as long as Herbert can remember, he’s watched the Masters.

Now, he gets to live it; with the mother of all storylines, around famed former practice partner Tiger Woods, playing out to boot.

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Three weeks ago, Herbert rolled through the entrance of Augusta National, so revered by golf nuts that Saint Peter may as well be on the front gate.

With a Masters invite comes access to practice rounds. Long before the crowds and cameras fix a gaze to them, competitors soak in the silence, acquainting themselves with 18 famous holes cut into the side of a hill in Georgia, once home to a flower nursery.

Herbert took his time reminding himself it was all real.

“For the first few holes I felt like I was still looking at the course through a television, not through my own eyes,” Herbert tells CodeSports.

Herbert played two rounds, getting used to the flawless fairways and adjusting to slopes that are more pronounced than TV will ever tell you.

“I took (out) divots in the first round and going back the next day, it was, ‘Where’d that divot go?’

“It just grows back super quick. They have 750 staff to make it perfect. It was pretty soft when we played it but once they make it firm and fast, I can tell, miss a shot and the chip to get on the green will be near impossible.

“It’s the little things. The fairways are cut with the grain back toward the tees, and the fringes of greens have the grain rolling away from the putting surface.

“There’s just that mysteriousness about the place, which adds to it.”

It takes a bit to knock Herbert off his senses.

Playing his first British Open in 2018, Herbert saw the practice sheet had open spots in Tiger Woods’ group.

The same Tiger Woods whose potential return from a near amputation of his shattered leg is dominating all and sundry in the lead-up to this week’s event.

Herbert had already tried joining up with Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, who saw Herbert’s name next to theirs and promptly changed groups.

So, what the hell, he thought, and scribbled ‘L Herbert’ next to ‘T Woods’, before strolling up to the great man on the practice green.

“OK to have a hit with you?” the no-name asked the legend.

“Sure, happy to,” Woods replied, and before long they were walking around Carnoustie, yacking away about Tiger’s kids, PlayStation and life in general.

So going to Augusta for the first time, Herbert didn’t think he’d be overawed by anything.

But it’s Augusta. Weird things happen to sane humans.

There’s a shop at Augusta, and Herbert had a little peek inside, but didn’t have any interest in loading up on merch.

“I was thinking, ‘I’d know I’ve been here without buying up’,” he says.

“Then I started to walk around the shop and knew, ‘Uh oh, I’m about to spend a lot of money.’

“Don’t know how much I spent, I just loaded up on everything and handed over the credit card. The stuff is that good you don’t really care!”

Herbert has earned the right to be spending big at Augusta.

There was a time, though, when being his own industry almost got too much.

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Despite golf appearing to be the most individual of sports, the best players have brilliant teams around them. Every shot means money, and winning money means survival.

As soon as Herbert hit the professional circuit as a confident teenager, he knew he needed the right crew to push him in the right direction.

“We’re playing for so much money, and the competition is so good, you have to invest in yourself,” Herbert says. He has a coach, a specific mental coach, a rotation of physios and his best mate handles all the logistical matters.

“But it’s been tricky to get that right. You go onto the circuit as a 19 year-old kid and you’re expected to make all these decisions. It’s really, really tough.”

With crew in tow, Herbert found his feet as a professional, with the odd good result. But by 2019, a pattern emerged. He’d play well on Thursday and Friday, but bomb out on the weekend. Pressure grew.

Herbert was the boss, with no qualifications except blasting the ball with that whippy swing helped by hypermobile joints.

“It’s hard when you fail when everyone is putting in so much and it’s just not happening. And you kind of lose your identity as a person,” Herbert says.

“That identity was so wrapped up in my sport and how I performed, it was so detrimental to me when I didn’t play well. That kicked me as a person and a golfer.”

By late 2019, he knew he had to really start listening to two people. Mental coach, Jamie Glazier. And himself.

Glazier implored Herbert to focus on the controllables. Just stay in the moment, build a career around each shot, not the final result.

Appreciation of those around him grew, like his coach Dom Azzopardi, who first started working with a 13 year-old Herbert in Bendigo.

“He just knows me so well. I can be 100 yards away, and he’ll know where my ball is going just off the swing I make,” Herbert says, now fully appreciative of what those around give him.

“They are happy to tell me the things I don’t want to hear, and potentially jeopardise their own job, but sometimes those things need to be said and I value that massively.”

By January 2020, triumph in his first European Tour event, the Dubai Desert Classic, changed everything.

On the first playoff hole, a devil of a par five with watery sin flanking a difficult green, Herbert smashed his second shot into the drink. He smiled it off, forced another playoff hole, and ended up claiming a life-changing win.

Seconds after the victory, he was asked what he was now capable of.

With a deep breath, and a moment of thought, Herbert flipped back, “A hangover tomorrow?”

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Herbert freely admits he doesn’t play golf to chip away and merely exist.

If he wanted to chip away at something, he would have followed through on those late-2018 thoughts, chucked the clubs in the cupboard and become a builder.

The switch in mindset saved a promising career, and now it’s about keeping himself as fresh as possible, playing two or three events in a row then retreating to his base in Florida, watching his Western Bulldogs or just hanging out with mates, separating himself from the golfer who might have missed last week’s cut.

There’s enough money in his pocket. The win in Bermuda did put $1.5 million in his bank account after all.

But those neat little invitations from Augusta can’t be bought.

Herbert started taking golf seriously when he was 10, spurred on by lessons from grandad on the courses around Bendigo, and urged by dad to rise early on the first weekend in April to take in scenes from a far off, mythical place.

“I pretty much know what happened in every single Masters,’ Herbert says.

“I can clearly remember Dad waking me up in 2009, American Chad Campbell was on track to break the course record. Dad says, ‘C’mon, never know when this might happen again!’

“Not many Masters aren’t iconic.”

As an Australian, one stands out.

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In 2013, Adam Scott finally broke what felt like a cruel spell, becoming the first Australian to win at Augusta.

Herbert, then a promising 16 year-old, can pinpoint exactly where he was.

“Bunbury Golf Club, playing a junior interstate event.”

Why anyone would schedule an event when the Masters is on is another point, but Herbert recalls the team coaches ordering the youngsters to the driving range to warm up properly.

They took a radio, but one by one, they had to tee off.

Herbert was last, so he found himself on Bunbury’s practice putting green, on his own, as Scott lined up his winning putt on the famed tenth at Augusta.

“I was still listening on the radio,” Herbert recalls, “and as it was telling me Scotty was lining up his putt, the clubhouse went nuts.”

The TV was ahead of the radio. Didn’t matter. Herbert smiled. Ding dong, the witch was dead.

Seven years later, after Herbert had solved the tricks in his mind to settle as a professional golfer, he played a practice round with Scott at the US Open.

“I said to him, “Scotty, you do realise pretty much every Australian who has anything to do with golf remembers where they were when you won the Masters?

“He looked at me and shot back, ‘Really?!’

Really. It means that much.

From Bunbury to Bendigo, they’ll be watching again this week.

Herbert will try and take it as it comes. Not easy in a place like Augusta.