Mike Weir’s victory at the Masters 10 years later: Its enormity then was reflected, fittingly, at a hockey game

It's a funny thing, maybe even a suitably Canadian thing, that the most vivid memory I have of Mike Weir's 2003 win at The Masters is that of a hockey game.

His par saving putt on the 72nd hole is remembered with clarity, yes. His short tap-in on the first playoff hole to best Len Mattiace is easy to recall as well, as is the moment immediately after, when Weir raised his arms in the air in triumph and celebrated in short-lived solitude.

Back home, a nation of sports fans would puff out its collective chest. A Canadian had just accomplished something no other ever had and for that, millions of sports fans north of the 49th parallel felt an immense amount of pride. If you couldn't get the full sense of it on that day, you would on the next.

Which brings me to that hockey game.

When the last decade closed, I was asked to compile a list of the most stirring live events I'd attended in the previous ten years. At the top of the list, Mike Weir's Masters championship. No, I wasn't at Augusta that day. I was at Toronto's Air Canada Centre the following night, settling in to watch the Maple Leafs and Philadelphia Flyers go at it in a Stanley Cup playoff game.

Can't tell you much about that game, but I can recount specific details from the pre-game skate and an ovation that seemed to shake the foundations of the ACC.

From a perch in a massive hospitality suite, high above the ice, I can recall first hearing that Mike Weir would indeed be performing the ceremonial face off, one day after claiming one of the most sought after individual titles on the planet.

What kind of reception will he get, I kept wondering. People were excited about his win, but were they as captivated and pumped up about it as I was?

I remember seeing the small figure in a green jacket appear rink side as the Flyers and Leafs continued their warm up, zipping around the ice and peppering the netminders with shot after shot. I kept my eyes fixed on Weir, leaning over the boards. At first, no players seemed to notice him and they kept on with the business of game prep.

Then, the caravan began. Every few seconds, another player would break from formation, sometimes in white, sometimes in black, but always, removing a glove as they neared the boards to offer congratulations. Again and again. NHL stars who wanted their moment with Canada's top sports celebrity.

Minutes later, when the carpet was rolled out and Weir was about to be introduced, I said to someone: "I hope this isn't a typical polite Toronto crowd. Be nice if it was loud."

It was loud. Incredibly so. Indelibly so. I came away from that night knowing I'd never witnessed a Toronto crowd react so energetically. The loudest, most prolonged ovation I'd ever heard in a Toronto stadium. One of those 'rattle your molars' ovations.

Honestly, as the years have gone by, I'd begun to wonder if I had remembered that night accurately. Was it really that loud? Was it really that moving? Had I built it up over time into something more than it really was?

Turns out, no, I hadn't. Confirmation came in an advance copy of TSN's documentary about Weir's triumph, "4 Days In April," airing Wednesday night.

Near the end, there is footage of Weir at the ACC. There is a taste of the energy in the building that night. And then there is Jim Weir, Mike's brother, remembering that someone behind him had said it was the loudest they'd ever heard that building. "And it was Dougie... Gilmour," Jim Weir says in the documentary. "I went 'wow' that guy's heard a couple of ovations."

"That was maybe a memory that sticks out as much as, you know, the putt I made on eighteen to get into the playoff," said Weir of the ovation.

The sports thrills this country has gotten from hockey triumphs is legendary. However exciting those have been and will be, they are expected and usually demanded by fans.

A triumph like Weir's stood out so much more than that in some ways because winning perhaps the planet's most revered golf tournament was not expected, never mind demanded. Hoped for? Yes, in a wildest dreams kind of scenario.

That is what made the 2003 Masters one of the proudest memories a sports fan can have. A Canadian achieving something unusual, something extraordinary. Think Donovan Bailey winning the Olympic hundred metres. Fergie Jenkins winning the Cy Young Award for the first time. Steve Nash being named MVP of the NBA. Larry Walker being named National League MVP. Jacques Villeneuve winning the Formula One World Championship. Heck, even Northern Dancer winning the 1964 Kentucky Derby.

It's nice, of course, to be good at things you've always been good at. Continuing to win when you should builds a legacy. Winning at something that is far from usual can make a country feel a fresh kind of pride and that novelty is what energized Canadian sports fans back in 2003.

Golf fans saluted Mike Weir at Augusta on a Sunday. What that victory meant to Canadians can be found in the story of Mike Weir dropping a puck at a hockey game, the following Monday.

That's as fitting as a tailored green jacket.