Third round: Romero, Funk on top at The Broadmoor
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- The Broadmoor's East Course wasn't so unbearable Saturday.
Eduardo Romero of Argentina grabbed the 54-hole lead at the U.S. Senior Open with a 5-under-par 65, conquering not only a course but also a field that one day earlier was bedeviled by perilous pin placements and a curious black bear.
"Fantastic round. I played great today," said Romero, whose three-day total of 9-under 201 is two shots ahead of Fred Funk (69), who relinquished the lead with three bogeys on the back nine, and three ahead of John Cook (66).
Tom Kite (71) is in fourth, eight shots back and the only other golfer under par for the tournament.
Thirteen golfers finished in the red one day after a black bear interrupted the second round by roaming around the vintage course carved into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where Friday only five players managed to overcome tricky winds and unfriendly pin placements to break par.
"The course is playing great. The pins were a little easier than they were yesterday and the greens were a little softer," Funk said.
"The pins were just not as crazy. I think the USGA kind of listened to some guys and they did a good job with the setup."
The fourth and eighth holes were much easier to handle than they were a day earlier, when the pin placements on the short par-3s turned the usually make-your-move front nine into a monster like the back nine, where the three toughest holes come right after the turn.
"Some of them yesterday were on the side of slopes and if you got anywhere above the wrong side of the hole, you were going to be 20 feet past no matter what," said Greg Norman (68), who is tied for fifth, nine shots back.
"Today they are a lot more accessible, but they are still tough."
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| Saturday's Best |
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The par-5, 601-yard third hole ranked the easiest with a 4.344 scoring average.
The 545-yard, par-4 17th hole was the hardest with a 4.393 scoring average.
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John Cook's putt on the 10th hole was just an 8-footer -- not so tough normally but no gimme when it's a "downhill putt, downwind, down mountain, away from the bell, all of the whistles were blowing" kind of putt, Cook said -- but the fact that it went in changed his round. He saved par with that putt and went from a 36 on the front to a 30 on the back with four birdies.
Two players left the course with 64s on their cards on Saturday. Scott Simpson earned his by shooting 32 on both the back and front nine, while Jeff Klein torched the front nine in 30 strokes but then came home in 34. Klein tied a U.S. Senior Open scoring record with his 30. To read more about both players, see below.| Quote of the Day | ||
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HURT HAAS ON THE MEND
By Lauren Deason, PGATOUR.COM Editorial Coordinator
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- It's supposed to be one of the happiest, albeit bittersweet, days in the life of a parent.
On June 28, 2008, his eldest daughter Haley's wedding day, Jay Haas and the rest of the family and family-to-be were goofing around, tossing a football and having fun. It wasn't even a pickup game -- just a friendly game of catch -- which was probably a good thing since the groom played football at Vanderbilt University.
Haas went to catch a pass and knew the second it happened. In his heart, he hoped it was just a cramp but quickly realized it was much worse.
"I was running a little harder and faster than I should have been running and pulled my right hamstring," he said. "I went down and I couldn't hardly walk. I managed to make it down the aisle OK and nobody knew, I don't think, but three days later it started turning blue. It was nasty."
So he took to the bench for five weeks, the longest he thinks he's ever sat out in his professional career. His first tournament back was this week's U.S. Senior Open, a hilly course to walk. Haas has gingerly stepped on that right leg at times and may be a little slower bending over to mark his ball or fetch it out of the cup, but he's feeling a little better each day.
"I was pretty bad for about three weeks, I couldn't have played. Now, it's been five weeks and it's better but not 100 percent. I'm a little bit discouraged about that," Haas admitted. "But at 54, I guess my healing powers aren't what they once were.
"I'm ready for it to be like it was before I did it but that might take a little longer."
The past several months have featured more highs and lows than usual for the Haas family, particularly Jay.
To read the remainder of this story, click here.
RECORD DAY FOR KLEIN
Jeff Klein had perhaps the biggest day in his golfing career on Saturday, shooting a 64 at The Broadmoor to tie Scott Simpson for the low round of the day.
For Klein, who played the Nationwide Tour off and on in the 1990s and early 2000s, almost didn't make the U.S. Senior Open field. He earned the third and last spot in the qualifier at Colorado Golf Club in Parker, Colo., which is close to his home in Scottsbluff, Neb.
He began the tournament with back-to-back 73s then opened fire on the course -- with a ball and club, of course -- on Saturday. He got it as low as 8-under par for the day and 2 under for the tournament with his eighth birdie on the 14th hole, then dropped two strokes to finish with a 64.
"I guess I can still play golf a little. Sometimes you wonder," Klein admitted. "...I haven't played very much. I've been working on my swing. My swing's been suspect. I've been trying to get better. Basically I spent three or four months working on my swing and you know, playing a few events, but kind of be ready to go when I turned 50 at the end of May."
His only full-time foray on the PGA TOUR occurred in 2003 after he tied for 21st at the PGA TOUR National Qualifying Tournament the previous year. Klein only made four cuts that season.
"I played in college (at Nebraska) and then I turned pro and played all right. I was a decent player but just kept working at it and finally it took me, like, 15 years to get my PGA TOUR card but I finally did it. Then got my lunch handed to me out there," Klein said.
But not on Saturday. He tied a U.S. Senior Open record for the lowest nine-hole score by shooting 30 on the front nine -- a record John Cook would tie later in the day with a 30 on the back -- and moved up into a tie for fifth.
"You watch the guys on the Champions Tour play and you know they have been really good at one time, way better than me," Klein said. "You kind of want to come out here and see if you can play with those guys or not and, if you can't, you can't, and, if you can, great. I think I proved I can so far this week."
Klein said he will "probably" go to the Champions Tour National Qualifying Tournament at the end of the season to play next year if he doesn't win the U.S. Senior Open.
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SIMPSON JOINS KLEIN WITH LOW ROUND
They don't call it Moving Day for nothing. Scott Simpson also shot a 64 on Saturday and jumped into a tie for ninth. He attributed his success to putting.
"I had no clue I was going to shoot 64, I struggled the first two days a lot and putted terrible," said Simpson, who shot 74 on Thursday and 73 on Friday. "I had 36 putts yesterday.
"...I worked on my putting stroke, got it smoothed out last night, and just went out there today. I think I one-putted my first five holes and just got some momentum going and played real well. Last week at the Senior British Open, I made seven birdies for the week and I made eight today, so I didn't see it coming, that's for sure."
Simpson does know how to play well at a USGA event, though. He captured the only major of his PGA TOUR career at the 1984 U.S. Open, one of his seven victories on the PGA TOUR. Simpson also has one win on the Champions Tour.
"It's a great feeling to have one of those rounds where you make a lot of putts and birdies," Simpson said. "Yeah, 64 in a USGA event, that's a heck of a round, so that's a great feeling."
SO-CALLED 'HARDER' BACK NINE NOT REALLY MORE DIFFICULT
Apologies to Fred Funk but, if you're reading this, you were wrong.
"I think it's proven -- I haven't seen or read the stroke average difference between the front and the back for the week -- but it's going to be pretty dramatic," Funk said.
"Today guys were shooting 4 and 3 (under) and one guy shot 6-under on the front. That's really good golf. I'm not saying the front side is easy, but it's a lot easier than the back.
In fact, the cumulative stroke average for the front side after 54 holes is 37.345. On the back nine, it's 37.481. That's about one-tenth of a difference between the two.
When informed of this teeny, tiny difference, Funk was astonished.
| 37.345 | The cumulative front nine scoring average after three rounds. |
| 37.481 | The culumative back nine scoring average after three rounds. |
"It's not that much difference? You're kidding? I guess that's why I haven't read anything," Funk said. "I'm really shocked, because I think (Nos.) 10 through 15 is the meat and potatoes of this whole golf course, it is really, really tough. I'm really shocked at that, especially with the scores that were out there today on the front nine."
He does kind of have a point, though. On Thursday and Friday -- the two supposedly hardest days at The Broadmoor -- the front nine and back nine averages were virtually identical. The third round had the biggest discrepancy. The front nine played to a 35.672 average on Saturday, while the players averaged 36.327 strokes after the turn.
Funk thinks the course difficulty lies in the greens.
"I think this is the hardest set of greens I've ever played. And that's throwing Augusta in and Oakmont and Winged Foot, Pinehurst; I've just never seen greens with this much movement in them, meaning they don't have any flat spots on them like an Augusta have," Funk said.
"You have all that, and then you have to factor in that mountain. That's what's crazy, it just gives you that illusion that you have a putt that looks like it's uphill and it's really downhill or the other way around, and it just keeps you guessing a little bit."
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