AUGUSTA, Ga. — Funny how time works.

Twenty years seems so short.

And 1.8 seconds seems so long.

That’s how long the golf ball that Tiger Woods hit teetered on the edge of the 16th hole at Augusta National in 2005 before tumbling into the cup — nearly two agonizing seconds — his chip-in the signature moment of his fourth Masters victory.

That Sunday miracle from behind the green ricocheted around the sports world, not only because of the transcendent player who made it but because the ball lingered on the lip just long enough to theatrically display its Nike swoosh, which was tilted vertically, before disappearing into the cup.

“Maybe the greatest shot in the history of the game,” CBS announcer Jim Nantz said. “Arguably the most commercialized and most seen.”

Tiger Woods and caddie Steve Williams watch Woods’ chip shot teeter at the edge of the cup before dropping in the 16th hole during the final round of the 2005 Masters tornament.

(Al Tielemans / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

His network colleague Verne Lundquist, greenside at 16, was gobsmacked.

“Using all of my language skills, when it fell in I went, ‘Oh, wow,’” the retired Lundquist said this week with a chuckle. “Just relying on my vast vocabulary.”

The full call — viewed untold millions of times on a wide array of platforms — was, “Oh, wow! In your life have you ever seen anything like that!”

The behind-the-scenes story with CBS involved a truckload of intuition and a bit of insubordination, resulting in one of the great moments in televised sports. That a full two decades have passed is hard for the 84-year-old Lundquist to believe.

“Dear God,” he said, “has it been 20 years?”

The Situation

It was the final round of the 2005 Masters and Woods was battling down the stretch with Chris DiMarco, the two jostling atop the leaderboard. They got to the par-three 16th, where the Sunday pin position was in the back left of the green, just over a ridge. Woods was clinging to a one-shot lead after bogeys on the previous two holes.

Woods hit a poor tee shot that sailed long and left of the green that wound up on the fringe and left him with a nearly impossible chip, downhill, slick as a greased garage floor, with a severe left-to-right break.

His caddie, Steve Williams, didn’t know what to expect as they made their way off the tee. As he and Woods got closer to the green, Williams glanced up to tour pro-turned-analyst Ian Baker-Finch, who was in the tower at 15.

“I motioned to Ian, ‘Is he OK?’ and he gave me the thumbs up,” Williams recalled.

OK? Yes, but in a terrible position — especially considering DiMarco had hit his tee shot to within 5 feet of the cup.

The Shot

Woods and Williams took a long time surveying the situation, discussing the slope, speed and what the ball might do with spin. The idea, Williams said, was to land the ball 30 to 40 feet right of the hole, then let gravity do the work.

“He picked out a ball mark on the green and said, ‘Do you think if I landed on that ball mark it won’t pick up too much speed as it goes up the hill?’” Williams said. “I said, ‘That looks pretty good,’ and amazingly he landed right on that ball mark … and the rest was history.”

When the shot reached its apex on the slope, it made a hard right turn and meandered down to the cup, pausing for what felt like an eternity before tumbling in. Woods erupted, raising his fists in front of him as if curling an imaginary barbell, and the gallery behind him unleashed a roar.

“I was in a tower at 18,” Nantz recalled. “It felt like the ground was shaking all the way up there.”

The Decision

The drama of that 1.8 seconds of television almost didn’t happen. Steve Milton, who was directing the CBS broadcast, thought the ball was done rolling. He instructed technical director Norm Patterson to switch to an angle capturing Woods’ reaction, and away from the camera of Bob Wishnie, who had the ball perfectly in frame.

But Patterson ignored that order, instead staying on the ball for a couple more beats.

Tiger Woods celebrates with caddie Steve Williams on the 16th green after his chip-in birdie during the 2005 Masters.

(Elise Amendola / Associated Press)

“Norm just followed his instincts,” Lundquist said. “And because he did, everybody remembers the shot.”

That was no casual decision on Patterson’s part.

“That’s a fireable offense,” Lundquist said. “It’s like being on the bridge of a ship and ignoring the captain’s orders.”

In a Golf.com article five years ago, Milton recalled those tense moments.

“I said, ‘OK, let’s cut,’ and Norm didn’t cut,” the director told the website. “He waited. He paused.”

The ball fell in the cup, and both Milton and Patterson exhaled.

“Thank you, Norm,” Milton said.

“Steve,” Patterson said, “we’re a great team.”

The Aftermath

Woods went on to win his fourth of five green jackets in a sudden-death playoff with DiMarco, and that shot was one of the most iconic and viewed moments of his storied career.

“I remember seeing the video later after I holed that shot, and there was a gentleman in back,” Woods recalled in 2019. “He just slams his hat on the ground.”

Of course, the overwhelming majority of the patrons behind him exploded with cheers.

The gallery celebrates after Tiger Woods makes a birdie putt at No. 18 in the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to win the 2005 Masters.

(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

“That’s fun,” he said. “It’s exciting to be part of situations like that, that people will look back on my career and say, ‘I saw him pull that shot off.’”

The chip-in plays a prominent role in “Together We Roared,” a recently released autobiography by Williams and sportswriter Evin Priest about the caddie’s glorious run carrying the bag for Woods.

“We tried to give the reader a backstage pass to arguably one of the greatest periods of golf played by anybody,” Williams said.

Almost immediately, Nike cut that footage of the shot into a commercial.

Tragically, Patterson died of an apparent heart attack less than a year later while in San Diego to cover a golf tournament. He was 45.

Lundquist, who retired last year, counts the drama on the 16th hole as one of the great highlights of his career.

“Tiger and I have a relationship because of that shot,” he said. “He said at a news conference, ‘The two of us will be tied at the hip together because of what I did and how he described it.’

“I treasure those comments.”

Twenty years, 1.8 seconds, yet forever timeless.