Ogilvy at a loss to explain summer swoon on TOUR

text size

Ehrmann/Getty Images

Geoff Ogilvy won the season-opening SBS Championship ... then fell off the map.

Geoff Ogilvy has often said golf is a mystifying sport.

RELATED

Backspin: Special edition
Maginnes: Meet Tom Gillis
FedExCup: Week 2 winners

But one of the greatest mysteries this year on the PGA TOUR is what happened to Ogilvy after he won the season-opening SBS Championship in January? He had since gone 15 consecutive events without a top-10 finish -- his longest such stretch since 2001 -- made a cut in just one of the four majors and arrived at last week's Deutsche Bank Championship having played on the weekend in one of his last five starts.

This is not exactly expected past performances for the 33-year-old Australian who counts the 2006 U.S. Open among his seven PGA TOUR career victories. What's up with that?

"Golf is not an exact science," Ogilvy said. "I don't know; golf is a mystery."

But just when it appeared Ogilvy was about to be jettisoned from the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup -- he was 52nd entering the Deutsche Bank -- he closed with rounds of 65 and 66 to get a much-needed second-place tie with Luke Donald and Jason Day.

While Ogilvy may have finished five shots behind playing partner Charles Hoffman and his sizzling 62, at least Ogilvy is not finished from the Playoffs. Suddenly, Ogilvy vaults to ninth in the standings and has a legitimate shot at winning the $10 million overall prize with two more strong showings.

"The way I had been playing, third or fourth place is a pretty good result for me, so I'm pretty happy with that," Ogilvy said. "It keeps me in there because I was out of the picture a few weeks ago."

Another mystery is how Ogilvy, long regarded as one of the game's best ball-strikers, has yet to finish better than 13th place in the three previous years of the Playoffs. But it's no surprise he played well at TPC Boston -- Monday's runner-up finish was his third top-10 in four starts there.

Maybe it's the clam chowder.

"I've always enjoyed this tournament," Ogilvy said. "I think a bit of space off the tee and bent-grass greens is more down my street than narrow and poa greens like we had last week (at The Barclays). This is more my sort of place."

Ogilvy also has earned a reputation for being one of the more pragmatic thinkers on the PGA TOUR. Ask him a question about almost any subject, and he'll usually give you a thoughtful response.

He obviously has had plenty of time since top-10 finishes -- four days shy of eight months -- to assess what's gone wrong with his game this year. And he's almost embarrassed to admit the answer is as simple as it gets.

"Scoring badly," he said. "I know it sounds simplistic, but that's really all it is. My stats aren't that bad, like recently. They're horrible for the whole year, but they're not that bad recently. It's one of those patches where if it can go wrong -- if you can get a bad lie in the rough, you do. When you're playing well you tend to get the breaks and when you're struggling a little bit you tend to not get the breaks."

Ogilvy believes it's been several events off the course that have had a more profound effect on his game. He admits he has played too much during the last two seasons -- both on the PGA Tour and European Tour -- which is not surprising for a player who won his first major four years ago. This tends to happen because more opportunities are thrown their way.

Moreover, he and his wife, Juli, had their third child in four years, in February. The latest addition to his family continued to re-shape Ogilvy's priorities and commitments, and he said sometimes he didn't do a good job of juggling his responsibilities.

Monday's runner-up finish virtually assures Ogilvy a spot in the last two events in the Playoffs. After that, he's going to shut his game down for a while.

"I'm looking forward to taking a nice break," Ogilvy said. "You have to do that in this sport once in a while."

No mystery there.

Craig Dolch is a freelance columnist for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily represent the views of the PGA TOUR.