One down, two to go -- at least that's how it seemed for some gallery members after Tiger won the Buick Open on Sunday.
Aug. 10, 2009
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What are our writers thinking about after the Buick Open? Well, besides Tiger, of course, there's Phil Mickelson's return to competitive golf and a nice week by Roland Thatcher.
TIGER TALES: Reports of Tiger Woods' demise as the best player on the planet apparently have been greatly exaggerated. Really, though, was there ever any doubt? Even Jack Nicklaus missed a cut at the British Open, even if it wasn't until 1985 when he was past his prime.
The point is, when Woods doesn't win a tournament, the world wants to know if hell has frozen over. He misses a cut and they start wondering how long it will be before Hank Haney's head is on the chopping block. Both are merely meaningless fodder to the fire. Lest we forget that in 10 stroke-play events on the PGA TOUR this year, Woods has won four of them and finished in the top 9 in the five others.
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If there is a concern, it's that Woods won mostly without his best game at Warwick Hills. He can get away with that at the Buick Open. While Woods puts it all in perspective by saying you almost never play four rounds of flawless golf, how much un-flawless golf can he get away with? We're about to find out over the next couple of weeks. -- Brian Wacker
THE GOLFING MENTALITY: Tiger Woods said he just did what golfers do. It wouldn't have mattered if he had won his 15th major at Turnberry two weeks ago instead of making that shocking early exit at the 138th Open Championship.
You don't look back. You just look ahead. "You gotta put it behind you because it doesn't do a damn bit of good the next week," Woods said. "It's a whole new tournament."
Of course, it helps when you have won that tournament before -- as Woods had done twice at the Buick Open, and then did again on Sunday at Warwick Hills. Next up is the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational and Firestone Country Club, where Woods has an even bigger comfort zone with six titles to his credit.
In Akron this week, Woods will face a field that features 29 of the top 30 players in the Official World Golf Ranking -- including No. 2 Phil Mickelson, playing for the first time since tying for second at the U.S. Open. All three major winners -- Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink -- are among that formidable group, too.
On to the next challenge. That's what golfers do -- Tiger included. -- Helen Ross
WELCOME BACK, PHIL: Having Phil Mickelson in the field this week is a good thing for the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, since it will showcase the best players at one of the PGA TOUR's legendary courses.
It's also a good thing for the Mickelson family, since it's an indication that Amy Mickelson's battle with breast cancer must be going well. Amy had surgery just a month ago and it's doubtful Phil would return to the TOUR if there were complications. But not only is he playing this week, he'll also be at next week's PGA Championship.
While Mickelson's presence will make it tougher for Tiger Woods to win for a seventh time at Firestone, Tiger is glad to see his long-time rival back at work. "If things were not doing well, then I don't think he'd play," Woods said. "So it's a positive sign to see him out here playing."
Indeed. -- Mike McAllister
A SATISFYING SUNDAY: A carpenter has his tools. A gambler has his bankroll. And a golfer has muscle memory honed over decades of swinging a golf club, something that nearly disappeared on Roland Thatcher.
When Thatcher faced wrist surgery in 2008, he faced losing the only job he'd ever known -- his right wrist so bad that not even powerful cortisone shots made a dent in the pain. "It didn't take, so the only other option was surgery," Thatcher said. "That's a pretty scary thing when you look at it and realize I'm not really qualified to do anything else."
Thatcher has a degree in Political Science from Auburn, but like a lot of guys, he majored in golf. That is what made his second-place finish Sunday so satisfying. Thatcher had gone eight months without touching a club. The money he earned at the Buick Open more than doubled his 2009 earnings, putting him close to re-securing the PGA TOUR card he earned after tearing through the Nationwide Tour in 2007.
Thatcher briefly held a share of the lead Sunday but had no illusions about joining Woods for a playoff.
"I am going to sit around here for another hour or two and watch him go out and make about five or six more birdies before I head to the airport to go on home," Thatcher said. -- Ryan Smithson
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| Stock up |
Y.E. Yang: In just his third year on TOUR, Yang is quietly putting together a very good year. Since winning The Honda Classic, he has five top-25s, including a pair of top-10s that also include his fifth-place finish at the Buick Open. Dont be surprised if he wins again this season.
FedExCup rank: 20 (28 last week) |
Justin Leonard: Somewhere in the back of Justin Leonards mind is the Presidents Cup. Sunday, he did a good job of holding onto the 10th spot in the standings by rattling off five straight birdies on the back nine on his way to a 67 and a tie for 14th after starting the day in a tie for 42nd.
FedExCup rank: 35 (39 last week) |
Greg Chalmers: If Warwick Hills is so easy, how come Chalmers was the only player to shoot in the 60s all four days there? Thats what the Aussie did with rounds of 66-68-69-68. As a result, he was rewarded with his best finish of the season (T2) and seventh top-25 of the year.
FedExCup rank: 77 (122 last week) |
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| Stock down |
Matt Bettencourt: How do you go from being in a tie for fourth at the start of the final round to a tie for 46th at the end of it? Easy, you make a 10 on a par 5. Then you make four more bogeys. Despite it all, he's still in the playoff picture.
FedExCup rank: 91 (94 last week) |
Scott Piercy: After a promising start to his year with three top-15s in the first three months of the season, Piercy has started to fade with four missed cuts. But perhaps he turned it around with a tie for 28th (64-74 on the weekend) at the Buick Open.
FedExCup rank: 71 (78 last week) |
Danny Lee: Words like "great" and "phenom" get tossed around way too often and while there is nothing but upside to Danny Lee's future, his present is stuck in the reality of four missed cuts in his last five events after he shot back-to-back 74s in Michigan last week.
FedExCup rank: N/A |
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| A Quick 18 |
| Front Nine | Back Nine |
| You have to put the 17th at Warwick Hills right up there with No. 16 at TPC Scottsdale in terms of fan enthusiasm. The atmosphere was purely electric, especially when Tiger Woods bombed in a 33-footer Saturday and when he tossed his ball into the crowd Sunday. One of the more memorable scenes in golf this year. | Tiger Woods and Brian Vranesh had two pretty amazing stretches, each one going 6 under over five holes at one point. Woods did it in the second round on his way to a 63 when he opened the back nine birdie, birdie, eagle, birdie, birdie. Vranesh went birdie, par, birdie, eagle, eagle Sunday before finishing T6. |
| A close second in terms of memorable scenes was the decision to allow fans to gather in the fairway behind Woods as he made his way up No. 18 on Sunday. It was straight out of a British Open and Woods rewarded them again by chucking his ball into the masses after getting the win. | Jason Day joined Vranesh in recording back-to-back eagles on the same two holes and the two were the first to do so since the 2006 Booz Allen Classic. The last time two players had two eagles in the same tournament? The 2007 Bob Hope Classic when Bernhard Langer and Kirk Triplett did it. |
| Call it whatever you want, but making a 10 on a hole is about as bad as it gets and that's exactly what John Daly did on Friday, hitting two balls out of bounds on the par-5 first before eventually hacking his way in with a quintuple bogey en route to a 51 on the front nine. | FedExCup Mover of the Week: With the playoffs bearing down on us, we'll identify a guy each week that made a key/big jump in the standings. This week, it's Roland Thatcher, who went from No. 174 to 108 on the shoulders of his final-round 64. Now can he stay there? |
| Shockingly, Daly wasn't alone in that pursuit. As noted in Stock Down, Matt Bettencourt joined him in that dubious honor by hitting his tee shot out of bounds, too, before slashing his way down the fairway and onto the green. That cost Bettencourt nearly 80 FedExCup points. | Tweet of the Week I: "Just downloading every episode of Entourage for the flight to Akron, I hear it's awesome. I should get through quite a few on the plane." -- @ianjamespoulter (better known as just Ian Poulter) talking about how he'd spend his 10-hour flight to this week's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. |
| Speaking of Daly, an excellent point about him was brought up last week. He just looks tired. He's played three straight weeks, is filming a reality show for GOLF CHANNEL and jetted back and forth across the country for a corporate outing. You can't shed all that weight and not expect there to be some initial drawbacks. | Tweet of the Week II: "Quote of day from Sr. Open final rd: Brad Bryant's ball lodge's between fan's seat and her backside. Bryant: "Hand me the butt-wedge." -- @gvansick (better known as Sports Illustrated golf writer Gary VanSickle, who is the latest to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. |
| As for that reality show, it will air sometime early next year on GOLF CHANNEL and Daly promises it will provide a glimpse into his new, "boring" life. A crew was on hand last week to film Daly, including his recording of a song at Kid Rock's studio the day before the Buick Open. | Quote of the Week: "I see Tiger off in the corner he's talking to Chris, young Chris, and he says, "Who's he?" He had no idea who I was. (Laughs). He was 25 at the time, 25, 26." Bob Seger, who played with Tiger Woods in the Buick Open pro-am, on the first time he met Woods at the 2004 Ryder Cup.
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| How odd is it that Michael Letzig has been paired with Tiger Woods more often in the final round this year than Phil Mickelson? Obviously Mickelson has missed significant time, but no one would have guessed that. Letzig, by the way, shot 75-73 while playing with Tiger. | Two very big names return to action this week: Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh. Mickelson hasn't played since the U.S. Open so he could be with his mother and wife as they battle breast cancer, while Singh, the defending FedExCup champion, took last week off to get his 46-year-old body ready for one last six-week run. |
| Looks like we may never get another international winner at Warwick Hills. The last and only international player to win there since 1984 is Vijay Singh (1997, 2004 and 2005). This year, Aussies Greg Chalmers and John Senden led the international contingent by finishing in a tie for second.
| Not to be a self-promotional shill, but great story by Steve DiMeglio in USA Today last week on the Nationwide Tour's "truck," an 18-wheeler that is equal parts transporter and second home for many of the Nationwide Tour's players. You get a real insight into the truck and the players who will be future stars. |
| While we're on the international topic, the U.S. Solheim Cup team captain's picks were announced over the weekend. Not surprisingly, Juli Inkster and Michelle Wie were chosen by Beth Daniel. Don't count out the International team, though. It's been a strong year for non-American players on the LPGA. | One of the coolest things about the new Tiger Woods 10 video game is the live weather courtesy of Weather Channel. Curious about this, I played TPC Sawgrass late one night wondering if it would be dark. It wasn't, but playing Torrey Pines early one morning, you did get the sun coming up over the golf course. |
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| The Forward Spin |
The Tiger train rolls on this week with the PGA TOUR headed to the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, an event Woods has won six times.
It's also an event hes provided plenty of memorable moments at, including his unforgettable approach shot in near darkness in 2001. Leading by 10, he capped his record-breaking 29-under 259 performance by sticking it to 2 feet on No. 18, where fans held lighters to illuminate the darkness and flash bulbs popped after the victory.
Also, recall that last year, Vijay Singh won at Firestone and used that momentum to claim the FedExCup. Perhaps some player this year will also slingshot to the FedExCup title (the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup starts later this month) with a good showing this week.
Along with the top players in the country, the tournament also features the legendary Firestone South course. Keep an eye on the signature hole, the par-5 16th. It's a monster at 667 yards.
For those players who didn't qualify for this week's field at Firestone, there is the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open, being played at the picturesque Montreux Golf & Country Club at the foot of Mt. Rose.
Vaughn Taylor is in the field for the first time since 2005, when he won his second consecutive title in Reno. Last year, Parker McLachlin was the winner, but he's had a downright dismal year with 12 missed cuts in 19 events. His best finish this year, one season after record three top-10s, is a tie for 17th at the FBR Open. |
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PGATOUR.COM's Brian Wacker wrote Stock Up, Stock Down, Quick 18 and Forward Spin.
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