With Mercedes' low round, Calcavecchia proves he's still a player
By Dave Shedloski, PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent
KAPALUA, Hawaii -- Forget that he's 47, and he's barely acknowledged the fitness era, and he admits that he could work harder on his game. Mark Calcavecchia is a player. He has passion and he has talent, and so far in 2008 he has the lowest round on the PGA TOUR.
So what if there are only 62 rounds in the books this year.
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Calcavecchia, the second-oldest player in the field at the winners-only Mercedes-Benz Championship, birdied half the holes on the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort Friday afternoon and improved nine strokes from his opening round on the way to a 7-under-par 66 and spot on the leaderboard. The former British Open champion is tied for sixth place at with a 5-under 141 aggregate score, three behind leader Mike Weir.
None of the 31 players competing this week could be considered a surprise, given the depth of talent on the PGA TOUR, but Calcavecchia wouldn't argue if you thought his presence was a bit of an eyebrow raiser.
He played miserably in 2006 and needed a late burst to finish 120th on the money list. He entered 2007 a higher performance level only because he figured he couldn't play much worse. The season was starting to take on the some of the same dimensions, though he showed some glimmers of his old self. Then he bought a putter off the rack in a pro shop and blitzed the field with his flat stick in winning the PODS Championship.
"I'm not really surprised I'm here," says Calcavecchia, who finished eighth in the FedExCup standings and won nearly $3 million last year, a career high. "I know even if you go a year or two or three or four -- between 2001 and 2005 I hadn't won -- and after two, three years goes by you kind of wonder have you won your last tournament, and then I won the [2005 Bell] Canadian [Open] and won last year, so I know it's still in there."
Perhaps the key is that his ball striking skills have not deteriorated appreciably. On Friday, amid calmer winds and dryer air, Calcavecchia hit all 18 greens in regulation. He hit 14 on Thursday in the wet gale.
As players get older, they retain much of their skill level except the one most crucial -- ability to score. But Calcavecchia, who fired a 62 on his way to his 13th TOUR title at the PODS Championship, isn't prone to throwing away strokes. Last year he ranked a respectable 47th in scoring with a 70.58 average, more than one shot better than in '06.
"I do make a lot of birdies, I always have," he says. "I'm always in the top 10 in birdie average per round, fifth or sixth or something last year. I guess my aggressiveness has something to do with it. I don't lag too many putts and I go at a lot of pins. And when I'm swinging well, that's going to lead to a lot of birdies.
"Even though I do get nervous and I do get tense and things like that, I don't always show it, but it's there. But yet I'm still kind of able to stay aggressive, and I really try to keep the hammer down. Sometimes it obviously doesn't always work, but other times I can just keep going and hit good shots and keep making birdies."
Calcavecchia, who has benched his winning putter from last year and is sticking with a belly putter, birdied the first three holes Friday, but then suffered a three-putt bogey at the fourth when his 40-footer ended up 45 feet away.
"Lost ground on my first putt. That's never a good thing," he deadpanned.
But his swing is a thing of beauty right now. He was swinging well at the two off-season events he played, the Merrill Lynch Shootout -- which he won with Woody Austin -- and the Target World Challenge, and then put the clubs away for two weeks. He's come right back out pin-seeking. Six of his birdies were from no more than 10 feet.
With 26 runner-up finishes in his career, Calcavecchia can think of plenty of events that he might have won to add to his collection. He carries a few what-ifs in his memory banks. But few TOUR players are spared the feeling. Winning percentages are negligible in golf for anyone not named Tiger Woods.
"I should have won more," Calcavecchia says with little emotion. "I wish I would have won more tournaments. Everyone wishes that except for a few of us. I can look back on my career and say I've slightly underachieved because I didn't win as much as I think I should have, and I could have practiced harder and I could have stayed in better shape.
"But on the other hand," he adds, "I've had an unbelievable amount of fun in my life. You know, I've got two great kids. I've got a great wife now who I just have a blast with. I have a lot of fun with what I do. You know, I really don't regret anything."
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