Fred Couples is contending in the Masters at 57, and that’s awesome

The world’s 1,893rd-ranked golfer is in contention at the Masters.

If you win the Masters once, you get an exemption to play the tournament every year until your body doesn’t let you. Fred Couples won the green jacket as a 32-year-old in 1992. He’s now a 57-year-old in 2017, and Couples is impressively competing near the top of the leaderboard in this 93-man field. He could hang around all weekend.

Couples was one stroke under par for the tournament when he made the turn at Augusta in Friday’s second round. That placed him three shots back of leaders Charley Hoffman and Sergio Garcia at 4-under. He’s right in the thick of things, even though everybody near him on the leaderboard, including 46-year-old Phil Mickelson, is at least a decade his junior. What he’s done in this tournament is really cool to see.

Couples has been a fixture at Augusta since his 1992 win, but this year might hold some special significance. He had to miss the Masters last year for the first time in 22 years due to often-recurring back problems, and that was a big shame. Couples is a popular player among peers, fans, and media alike. He seems cool and nice, and it hurt not to have him.

Augusta is a golf cathedral, and Couples will always have a close mutual relationship with the place. Take this scene SB Nation’s Brendan Porath reported on earlier in the week, while people were milling around the course:

There were more accomplished players, businessmen, and celebrities hanging around the first tee, but everyone wanted a piece of Fred Couples. And he was thrilled to be back holding court at Augusta National. He laughed, hugged, backslapped, and engaged just about everyone inside the ropes who came around the first tee over the course of a 30 to 40 minute stretch. Everyone wanted to BS with Freddie.

He has this one specific move where he puts his hands on both shoulders of the person he really wants to chat up. He puts the bill of his cap almost against his chatting partner’s hat and then bobs around looking like he’s having the most easygoing conversation in the world. The only time I laughed out loud happened when Couples enthusiastically grabbed the shoulders of distinguished Secretary Condoleezza Rice as she walked up onto the tee and then started animatedly bobbing his head. Freddie was the most casual and cool friend to everyone who came near him it seemed, including the reserved Secretary.

If he actually won, that’d be pretty shocking. Couples hasn’t notched a top-10 finish in a World Golf Ranking-sanctioned event since 2011, and he only appears at a couple of top-level events every year. Add that nobody older than Jack Nicklaus (at 46 years old in 1986) has ever won the Masters, and you’ve got an unlikely outcome.

But Couples notched a senior tour win in February at the Chubb Classic, where he beat out Miguel Angel Jimenez, who’s had some recent major top-10s. He’s an active player, and he’s still able to move the ball around the course just fine.

One of the universally beloved events in golf happens when some champion from long ago sticks near the top of the leaderboard at a major. Couples is going up against younger, better golfers, but the Masters will be better if he stays near the top of the leaderboard until Sunday afternoon. If he can, the galleries at Augusta will be roaring.