Rory Sabbatini moved from 15th to eighth in the International team's Presidents Cup standings.
May. 25, 2009
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What are our writers thinking about after the HP Byron Nelson Championship? An emotional victory for Rory Sabbatini, Amy Mickelson's battle with breast cancer, Michael Allen's first win on the Champions Tour and Danny Lee's continued emergence on TOUR.
A 'ROR'ING VICTORY: Sunday was one of the best days of golf we've seen this season and it had only a little bit to do with Rory Sabbatini shooting a final-round 64 to win for the first time in two years. Or Michael Allen winning a Senior PGA Championship in his first Champions Tour start. Or Paul Casey winning for the third time this year at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
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One of the biggest things to take away from Sunday is that Sabbatini, for all his critics, is a complex guy who goes a lot deeper than the big belt buckles or has a lot more emotion than is visible from behind the shades.
Sabbatini broke down after Sunday's victory with thoughts of everything from his children, to his friend Bill Huseby's battle with Hodgkins lymphoma. Like John Daly did in Europe, Rory wore a pink shirt and a pink ribbon on Sunday to bring attention to Amy Mickelson's battle with breast cancer.
He also showed us that he's at a good place, in life and in golf, having finally settled into his TaylorMade equipment after bouncing around the last couple of years.
I'm not saying all this is suddenly going to spur Sabbatini on to some sort of 30-win career, or that his Q-rating is going to be off the charts, but he certainly took a giant step forward with his game and his gratitude this week. -- Brian Wacker
EVERYONE PULLING FOR AMY: It was a week of perspective in the locker room when the players and wives got word that Amy Mickelson was battling breast cancer and Phil Mickelson was taking a leave from the PGA TOUR to be with her.
We'll just tell you straight out that Amy has won a lot of hearts out here -- players, wives, tournament officials and media alike -- over the years and those hearts are all with her. She has strength, the heart and an unwavering faith, which doctors will tell you is more than half the battle.
A couple of Sundays ago at THE PLAYERS Championship, we talked flip-flops. She likes Havaianas; I like J. Crew. She was worried about the dust on her feet. Only you, I said. She laughed.
When son Evan was born in 2003, he wasn't breathing and she was bleeding profusely. He came around, then she fought to live. Only Amy.
And now? I think cancer won't know what hit it. -- Melanie Hauser
ALLEN'S AMAZING STORY: Michael Allen is 0 for 334 in his PGA TOUR career, but he's now 1 for 1 on the Champions Tour. And that one win is a major, the Senior PGA Championship, which he claimed Sunday at Canterbury outside Cleveland.
Because Allen has never won on the PGA TOUR, you may not know his backstory. But it's one of perseverance and determination.
No player has successfully gone through q-school more times than Allen has (seven). And he had to battle through the nasty demons of self-doubt when he quit as a full-time TOUR pro in 1996, making just four starts during the next six years while working as an assistant club pro.
Allen certainly didn't take the conventional path to become a major winner on the Champions Tour. But it's nice to know his path eventually became a successful one. -- Mike McAllister
LEE STILL LEARNING: For Danny Lee, this one hurt.
The 2008 U.S. Amateur champion -- who turned pro right after the Masters -- was on the verge of his first top-10 on the PGA TOUR before three-putting from 5 feet for double bogey on the 72nd hole of the HP Byron Nelson Championship.
It was the second double bogey of the week for Lee, who finished in a tie for 13th. A par on the final hole would have given him a 64 -- and a tie for eighth at 11 under.
"I'm really just so angry about the last hole," Lee said. "I got some lucky bounces, a couple of lucky bounces, and just the last hole really let me down. But that's golf."
Still, the week brought a lot of positives. Lee, who doesn't turn 19 until July, moved into a house near the TPC Four Seasons the Monday before Round 1, becoming the latest professional to make his home in the Dallas area. The ease of travel, tax benefits and good weather have made the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex the permanent home for two dozen TOUR pros, many of whom are foreign-born.
Lee will have plenty of opportunities to travel from his new base of operations -- he's already in the field for both the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial and the Memorial Tournament. -- Ryan Smithson
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| Stock up |
Dustin Johnson: Once he stops making youthful bogeys, Johnson is going to win a lot more. He wasn't going to catch Sabbatini on Sunday, but he's shown some serious game, game that will turn one or two of his five top-20s this year into Ws.
FedExCup rank: 9 (12 last week) |
Fred Couples: Though he's said wouldn't play on his own Presidents Cup team, there are plenty of people who would like to see Couples do just that. With a third top-10 on Sunday, he just might qualify and if he does, he should play.
FedExCup rank: 61 (76 last week) |
Scott McCarron: McCarron has come so far -- from elbow surgery in '06, to missing nearly all of '07, to a Sunday 62 that was simply spectacular. After two years of single-digit cuts made, it's good to see one of the TOUR's nice guys doing well.
FedExCup rank: 74 (117 last week) |
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| Stock down |
Anthony Kim: There's a lot to like about Kim, just not the way he's playing. The last time he had a week without at least one double bogey on a scorecard was at the season-opening SBS Championship. Youth kills. By the way, he finished T2 that week.
FedExCup rank: 55 (53 last week) |
Adam Scott: Another week, another missed cut. That's six in a row now for the Aussie. I don't care how good he says he feels mentally and physically, his confidence has to be at least a little shaken. That, and he may actually not be quite all there physically yet.
FedExCup rank: 75 (69 last week) |
Bill Haas: Was his T3 in San Antonio a little bit of a one-week wonder, or a sign of turning the corner on his game? It appears the former, for now anyway. Las Colinas looked like a course Haas could do well on; instead he missed his eighth cut of the season.
FedExCup rank: 56 (54 last week) |
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| A Quick 18 |
| Front Nine | Back Nine |
| Forget about the bogey on No. 18, Rory Sabbatini's finish Sunday was nothing short of spectacular with five birdies over a seven-hole stretch, three of which came on Nos. 15, 16 and 17. Golf tournaments should not be won by seeing who can hang on for par. | Thanks to Casey's victory, the top of the Official World Golf Ranking is littered with Europeans. Four of the top eight are Europeans, with Sergio Garcia and Henrik Stenson ranked third and fourth and Casey and Padraig Harrington seventh and eighth. |
| The biggest reason Sabbatini won was his putter. He led the field with 26 birdies and when you're not having your best ballstriking week, that's how you rack up all those red numbers. Of course, his ballstriking looked pretty good coming down the stretch Sunday. | If there was a fourth spot in Stock Up, it would have gone to Brian Davis. The Englishman has three straight top-5 finishes after a pair of T5s at THE PLAYERS Championship and the Valero Texas Open prior to his runner-up on Sunday. |
| Despite that bogey on the 72nd hole, Sabbatini still set a tournament record at the HP Byron Nelson, finishing in 19-under 261 for four days. That breaks the previous mark of 262 set by Loren Roberts and Steve Pate at the 1999 tournament. | Davis has also posted eight consecutive rounds in the 60s and has the longest active streak of 20 consecutive rounds of par or better on the PGA TOUR, which dates back to the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Two words about his future: Ryder Cup. |
| Sabbatini's 6-under 64 to close out the victory was also the second-lowest score by a winner in HP Byron Nelson tournament history, behind only Peter Thomson's 63 when the Australian became the event's first international winner in 1956.
| Is there a better name in golf than David Horsey? How can you not like that? He's a rookie on the European Tour and had a share of the first-round lead at the BMW PGA Championship, where he eventually finished in a tie for 13th, in case you didn't know.
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| Sabbatini joined some pretty exclusive company by becoming the 14th player in history to win the HP Byron Nelson and at Colonial. The others are: Ben Crenshaw, Roberto De Vicenzo, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Bruce Devlin, Jack Nicklaus, Lanny Wadkins, Tom Watson, Bruce Lietzke, Nick Price, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Julius Boros. | Tweets of the week: Apparently Davis Love III (Twitter.com/Love3d) loves smoked meats; Anna Rawson (Twitter.com/TheAnnaRawson) thinks highly of the Dodgers' Russell Martin; and Christina Kim (Twitter.com/TheChristinaKim) was testing some new irons. |
| Give credit to Brian Davis. He could have bailed on a Monday pro-am at Colonial to play in the British Open qualifier in El Paso, but he'd given his word to the tournament director and wasn't bailing on his partner, even if it means possibly missing the Open. | Briny Baird won complimentary lettuce wraps from P.F. Chang's for everyone in America last Monday. How did he do it? By hitting eight of 10 shots from the rooftop of the Omni Hotel onto a target in Petco Park. P.F. Chang's also donated $25,000 to a local charity based on Baird's shots.
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| Danny Lee looks a whole more relaxed on the golf course than he did at the Masters and it's starting to show in the results. Lee stumbled with a double bogey on the 18th Sunday, but his final-round 66 got him a T13, his best finish as a professional. | It turns out that Pat Perez's ankle injury is worse than expected. He'll miss at least two months after tearing two ligaments while running with his German Shepherd, Duke, a couple weeks ago. On the upside, he's better having injured his right ankle than the left. |
| It seems appropriate to mention -- especially during an NBA Playoffs in which no lead seems safe -- that in 21 TOUR events this year, the 54-hole leader or co-leader has gone on to win 16 times with Sabbatini the latest to do so. Having that cushion has been critical.
| Speaking of injuries, Arron Oberholser is reportedly hitting balls again for the first time since re-injuring his left wrist at the Buick Invitaional. Oberholser was in Baltimore to see his doctor a couple of weeks ago and expects to return to playing in mid-July. |
| Paul Casey is starting to live up to his potential. His victory Sunday at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth now gives him three wins around the world this year and it came with birdies on the final two holes. That's how you win golf tournaments. |
So much for former Duke golfer and son of former New York City mayor Andrew Giuliani's lawsuit against the N.C. school. A judge dismissed his case and managed to quote Caddyshack in the process. Click here for the full story. |
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| The Forward Spin |
The third leg of the Texas Swing takes the PGA TOUR to another home of a legend (Ben Hogan) for the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial, where, interestingly enough, Rory Sabbatini had his last win (in 2007) before his most recent win.
It's hard to expect Sabbatini to go back-to-back, especially given how emotional his victory was on Sunday, and Phil Mickelson won't be there as he wages a different sort of defense with wife Amy. Speaking of which, Saturday's third round at Colonial this year will be a "pink out" day in which players and fans are being asked to wear pink, or at least a pink ribbon, in a show of support for Amy and breast cancer awareness. Something tells me we're going to see a lot of pink out there and even if you're not at the tournament, you should think pink on Saturday, or any day of the week.
As for what to look for between the ropes, it really is amazing how some players play really well some places and not well at others. With that in mind, keep an eye on the TOUR's Texans. Justin Leonard, Chad Campbell, etc., have a history of playing well in this event. |
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PGATOUR.COM's Brian Wacker wrote Stock Up, Stock Down, A Quick 18 and Forward Spin. For more news and insight from him, follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/pgatour_brianw.
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