Fred Couples hoping to make another Masters cut. But is a goodbye coming?

Fred Couples, on a warm Florida range, sounds both optimistic and understanding, which is a much more preferred mental lie to sit in than the one he occupied 10 months earlier, in front of a black microphone in Georgia.

There, at last year’s Masters, Couples said he was just hurting. There, he’d shot rounds of 80 and 76, though it was the manner in which he accumulated the numbers that troubled him more. 

“My back is shot,” the 1992 Masters winner said at the time.

“I have more stuff on just to play. The longer the club, I’m OK. I didn’t have any speed. I was driving it 260 [yards]. But most of them were going straight. It was fun. It was really difficult. If I’d have had more woods, honestly, yesterday, I probably could have shot 75, but I didn’t know — I kind of downplayed how bad I felt. I should have had 11-wood to hit 140 yards. I couldn’t even hit an 8-iron. I couldn’t swing.”

It wasn’t ideal. But that was a year ago, and time actually did heal wounds. While he hasn’t used an 11-wood, he’s proudly added some headcovers to his bag, a collection of easier-to-strike fairway metals and hybrids. Ahead of this week’s PGA Tour Champions event, the Chubb Classic, he says his game is OK. He’s talking about the Masters again, too. The 65-year-old’s as much a part of the event as the pimento cheese sandwiches.

Can he make the cut, a feat he achieved two years ago, making him the oldest ever to do so? Why not? He said he’ll play this week, take a month off, play two straight events at the end of next month and be ready.  

“Last year should I have played? I don’t know,” Couples said Thursday. “I had a bunch of cortisone shots. But to be honest with you, besides shedding a few tears down the seventh, I couldn’t even walk. I broke 80 that day and I played pretty darn well.

“So I’m looking forward to it. I really think if I get there and I’m feeling OK, I can compete with this cut everyone talks about. I can’t compete with the Jon Rahms and the [Brooks] Koepkas and [Scottie] Schefflers and [Xander] Schauffeles and [Patrick] Cantlays, but I can compete with that cut number. And that for me is a goal.

“Out here, it’s more competing to maybe work my way in the last group or the second-to-the-last group and then, hey, a hot Sunday, anything can happen. Everyone is so good now. People just the other day said why are — there’s so many young guys. It’s not like when I played. I was a young guy, too. I couldn’t compete with these guys. Most of them were late 30s, early 40s that were great when I was 21, 22. Now they’re 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 years old, and they’re all knocking on the door, winning, and incredible players.”

Couples is also pragmatic. Even in golf, where there’s seemingly always another shot, always another round, always another year, there’s a limit, and with it, a decision. Couples is aware. Maybe it’s crystallized some over the past year. 

Maybe he’ll soon stop cashing in the lifetime exemption given to former champions. At Augusta this year, he’ll watch Bernhard Langer, a 67-year-old green jacket owner, play his final Masters, and before a reporter can finish a question about when that day might be coming for Couples, he answers. 

“Well, I might be there, too,” Couples said. “I have to sit down with Fred Ridley [the Augusta National and Masters chairman]. I’m 65. But I’ve missed a couple, so I’m going to throw in there, hey, Fred, you know, my back went out a few years ago.

“It’ll be great with Bernhard. And Bernhard’s a guy that can break this record I have as the oldest guy to make the cut. But he is such a competitor and he plays well there. But he’ll tell you that everything has got to go really, really well. I mean, now I have woods anyway so I can say I’m hitting woods. But two, three years ago, I rarely hit a 7- or an 8-iron to any holes. Maybe No. 3. So we got to really maneuver the ball around and putt well. If anyone can do it, he can.”

Or maybe Couples could.

Which, of course, is a more comfortable thought than the ones he was having a year ago. 

“I just feel like the way I play at Augusta,” he said, “I still have a shot, too.”