As 18th hole gets tougher, Parry's legend grows

Aussie star holed 6-iron in 2004 to beat Verplank in playoff

By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM Chief of Correspondents

DORAL, Fla. -- Even Tuesday, exactly three years and 360 days removed from that spectacular shot, the fans remembered.

Craig Parry's hole-out for eagle made a victim out of Scott Verplank (right). (Getty Images)

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Video: Parry walks through the shot that beat Verplank
Video: The original shot in 2004

As Craig Parry played a practice round on Doral's Blue Monster, people kept reminding him of the 6-iron he holed for eagle at No. 18 to win a playoff with Scott Verplank at the Ford Championship at Doral.

"Normally when a playoff happens, spectators watch the playoff and then they all sort of disappear pretty quick," said Parry, who is playing in the World Golf Championships-CA Championship this week. "But that one, a lot of them stayed around just to say 'Well done.'

"Even today in the practice round there were a lot of spectators, 'I was there when you holed your 6 iron.' There were quite a few people there today."

Parry and Verplank had just ended regulation tied at 17 under that Sunday. Verplank hit first from the right-hand rough, and he was looking at a birdie putt. Parry was in the fairway with 176 yards to the back left hole location, and the 6-iron turned out to be the perfect club.

The ball landed about 2 feet short and then tracked for the cup as if it had eyes. When the ball curled in, Parry tossed the 6-iron into the air and raised his arms in jubilation. He didn't forget, though, to fix his pitch mark and retrieve the ball from the hole.

"(Scott) was obviously very unlucky because he was in the rough, hits it on the right side of the green," Parry said. "He has an opportunity for a birdie putt, and all of a sudden he's picking his ball up and going home."

Parry has hit some other memorable shots in his career. Take that chip-in at the 18th hole at Royal Melbourne that lifted Parry and Shigeki Maruyama to a 1-up victory over Fred Couples and Tiger Woods in the 1998 Presidents Cup.

"But to hole a 6 iron in a playoff, it was amazing," he said. "Because of the way the day was, Scott Verplank and myself, and I hit a really long tee shot for me down 18, and I had 176 yards in and had a 6 iron and rolled it into the hole and the rest is history."

The 18th hole played the toughest on TOUR that year, and it earned the same distinction again in 2007. The optimum tee shot carries more than 285 yards over the lake, and the second again is launched over the water to a narrow green that slopes toward the bank.

Parry, whose bulging forearms earned him the nickname "Popeye," said he normally aims down the left side and cuts it back into the fairway. On Tuesday, he hit driver and 3-wood into the wind.

"Just standing on the tee, it can get to you because you know if you pull it you're in the water and you're going to be dropping it way back and you've got no opportunity to go for the green on your third shot," Parry said.

"It's no bargain at all, even in no wind. You've only got 25 yards of fairway or something like that, and the rough on the right hand side is very thick, and you're not going to get home for two shots. If you do hit it in the rough it's an automatic lay-up. You want to have a pretty good pitching game."

The approach shot, Parry says, is "bloody difficult.

"Any time you walk off with par, you go, 'Well, that was pretty good.' And if you make a birdie, 'Well, that was outstanding.' To make an eagle, you go, 'Well, that's the best you can do, isn't it?'"

Parry lost his PGA TOUR card in 2006, and he went to Japan to take advantage of the last year of the 10-year exemption he earned for winning the 1997 Japan Open. He likes being closer to his home in Australia -- just a nine-hour flight rather than 15 to the States -- and the time change is just one hour.

"This week we left on Friday out of Australia, and I've got my family with us and we all woke up at 1:30 in the morning this morning," he said. "I'm sick of jet lag. I've just had enough of it."

Parry: "To hole a 6 iron in a playoff, it was amazing." (Getty Images)

Hopefully, Parry will be acclimated enough by Thursday that he won't have any close calls with his tee time. In 2004, he and his brother and nephew, who were sleeping in the same room, slept through the alarm.

When Parry finally woke up, his brother, who was caddying for him, was in the shower and the two needed to be on the 10th tee in 10 minutes. He grabbed some clothes and a 3-wood. He asked a TOUR official to get him some balls out of a locker.

"I hit a good 3 wood off of the 10th hole and I had 210 yards, and I didn't know what to do with the second shot, so I laid it up," Parry said, "Normally I would have gone for the green. So it was a blessing in disguise.

"The following year I set two alarms. One of the alarm clocks the battery goes flat, and the other alarm I set for p.m. instead of a.m. That was the second year, so déjà vu."

Parry qualified for the CA Championship as the winner of the Australasian Order or Merit. He won the Australian Open last year at the age of 41, and he looks forward to competing in the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, as well as the British Open at Royal Birkdale later this year.

"It's not as if I've stopped playing, I've just cut back on playing in America," he said. "You know, I'm able to live in Australia and go up and down and it's fantastic. It's really a lot of fun."

Parry isn't sure how well he'll play this week at Doral, though. He had surgery in late January to repair a torn medial meniscus, a fibrocartilaginous band that surrounds the right knee, as well as a cyst on the bone.

So while he was able to work on his short game, the doctors only allowed Parry to play two practice rounds before he left Australia, both last week. He's played 27 holes at Doral so far.

"So beware of the injured golfer," he said with a grin.