Golf Capsules: The perception of Woods depends on a putter
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Tiger Woods was all over the leaderboard at the British Open.
Too bad this was on a Monday.
Locals roam the Old Course all the time on the most public of major championship properties, which King David I of Scotland granted to the people of St. Andrews way back in 1123. But some of them did more than walk their dogs in the late evening and early morning hours after Louis Oosthuizen won the British Open.
The letters and numbers on the scoreboard along the 13th hole were rearranged to show someone named Rob Rixon at 9 under. He was joined on the board with Tiger Woods, who was listed at 99 over.
Even more telling of the respect the world’s No. 1 player gets these days was the large yellow-and-blue scoreboard atop the grandstand to the left of the 18th fairway. Most of the letters were still in place for the annual message, “Well played Louis.” But instead of “See you at Sandwich in 2011” for the next Open, it read “Shaggy Woods.”
Woods was expecting a warm reception at the home of golf, where he had won the claret jug the past two times, and there were no surprises. It’s been that way for the last few months. Aside from the tentative applause when he first showed his face to fans on a golf course that Monday at Augusta National, he still gets the biggest gallery and loudest cheers.
Gone is the reverence — as a person and a player.
The biggest change might be the perception of Woods, and it goes beyond what anyone puts on a scoreboard.
Woods’ record victory at St. Andrews a decade ago is legendary for the fact he did not play out of a single bunker in 72 holes when he won at 19-under par for an eight-stroke victory. It matched the largest margin in the Open since golf’s oldest major championship went to 72 holes at the turn of last century.
But when Oosthuizen rolled in an 18-foot birdie putt on the 12th hole Sunday — and Paul Casey lost his way through the gorse — the South African was at 17-under par and had an eight-shot lead with six holes still to play, including the par-5 14th with the wind behind him and a closing hole where old men (Tom Lehman) were capable of driving the green and making eagle.
Oosthuizen smartly played it safe the rest of the way, even treating the 17th hole as a par 5. All he wanted was his name on the base of that beautiful jug, so finishing at 16-under 272 for a seven-shot win were just numbers.
As for that amazing feat of avoiding all those bunkers on the Old Course?
“Yes, I finally hit one at the back of the 14th,” Oosthuizen said Monday in mock resignation. “It was the bunker behind the green, which was a good place for me to miss.”
The day after Woods returned home, the U.S. Junior Amateur began in Michigan. Tied for the lead after the first round of qualify was Jordan Spieth, the 16-year-old from Dallas. He not only is the defending champion, the kid made a name for himself at the Byron Nelson Championship when he was on the leaderboard during the weekend and eventually finished six shots behind the winner.
Woods won an unprecedented three straight U.S. Junior Amateur titles, and his father once considered that one of his top achievements. Now you can’t help but wonder if Spieth can join Woods as the only multiple winners, or even win three in a row.
There’s still a long way to go.
And it’s easy to get caught up in the snapshot of Woods’ career instead of looking at the big picture.
He last won a major in the 2008 U.S. Open, when he had only one good leg and needed one extra day to beat Rocco Mediate at Torrey Pines. The 0-for-7 streak he is riding still doesn’t match a pair of 0-for-10s in the majors from the 1997 Masters to the 1999 PGA Championship, and from the 2002 U.S. Open to the 2005 Masters.
It’s not time to panic just yet.
Woods now has played seven tournaments without winning, the longest he has ever gone at the start of a season since turning pro. Even during his first big swing change in 1998, he won the Johnnie Walker Classic in Thailand by rallying to beat Ernie Els.
His next stop is Firestone, where last year Woods became the first player in PGA Tour history to win seven times on the same course.
Even so, there is a difference in his game.
Woods has not been a threat on the back nine of any tournament, even the Masters and U.S. Open, where he tied for fourth. There was a feeling when he opened the British Open with a 67 that it was more of an ordinary score in calm conditions — Fredrik Andersson Hed also shot a 67 that day — than the start of something special.
And that’s where he is right now. There is nothing special about him except a record from the past.
And while it sounds overly simple, it’s all a matter of putting. Whether it was a sign of desperation or that he’s thinking too much, Woods switched putters for the first time since 1999 the first three rounds of the British Open. Worse yet is that he switched back for the final round, and perhaps it’s just a coincidence that he led the field in putting Sunday with 27 putts.
Think back to that 66 he shot at Pebble Beach in the third round to give himself a chance. The 3-wood around the tree and onto the green on the 18th was his most memorable shot of the year, but what made it so was making a couple of tough birdie putts on the two holes preceding that.
“Maybe,” Woods said after his final round Sunday, “I should go back to spraying it all over the lot and making everything.”
Golf is full of players who hit the ball long, relatively straight and shoot something around 70. And that’s where Woods is right now. He is no different from anyone else.
Clarke, Bjorn, McGinley vice captains for Europe
WENTWORTH, England — Europe Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie selected Darren Clarke, Thomas Bjorn and Paul McGinley as his vice captains on Tuesday, saying they had the qualities to help the team regain the trophy from the United States.
Europe is widely regarded as the favorite heading into the event at Celtic Manor, Wales from Oct. 1-3. With three tournament veterans assisting him, Montgomerie said the team had a great chance to make it six wins in the last eight events.
“The Ryder Cup is about passion, commitment and will to win, and all three men I’ve named possess these qualities in abundance,” Montgomerie said. “They have all been part of successful European Ryder Cup teams in the past and know the players who will be part of the team. I think this is the strongest team we have ever assembled, on and off the course.”
United States captain Corey Pavin has selected four vice captains in Tom Lehman, Jeff Sluman, Davis Love and Paul Goydos.
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are the top two players in the world rankings but there is a sense that the balance of power in world golf is shifting toward Europe.
Four Europeans filled the leading five positions at the British Open at St. Andrews last week, while Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell won the U.S. Open, ahead of Frenchman Gregory Havret. Justin Rose, struggling to qualify for the European team, recently won two tournaments on the PGA Tour.
Montgomerie still has to finalize his 12-man team, which will be chosen after next month’s Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles.
The nine players currently occupying the automatic qualification places for the European team are McDowell, Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy, Francesco Molinari, Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Martin Kaymer, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Ross McGowan.
Among those who could be fighting to be picked as one of three wild card choices available to Montgomerie are Rose, Paul Casey, Henrik Stenson, Padraig Harrington, Alvaro Quiros and Sergio Garcia.
Among Montgomerie’s vice captains, Northern Irishman Clarke is a veteran of five consecutive Ryder Cups from 1997 to 2006, and was on the winning side four times. Bjorn of Denmark played in the victorious 1997 and 2002 teams and assisted Bernhard Langer at the 2004 event that Europe won at Oakland Hills, Michigan.
Irishman McGinley holed the winning putt for Europe in 2002 at the Belfry.
“The four of us will be a team. We are very much together and we will be making decisions from now on together,” said Montgomerie, a veteran of eight Ryder Cups. “All of us have huge respect from the players, and respect on the course is vital.”
Bjorn and McGinley have long been regarded as potential vice captains but Clarke is arguably the surprise addition. He is fondly remembered for his display at the K Club, Ireland, in 2006, when he won three points from three just weeks after his wife Heather died from cancer.
Europe won that year by a record-tying nine-point margin.
“In the Ryder Cups I’ve been involved in, the spirit in the team room has been fantastic and we want to generate that as much as possible,” said Clarke, who still has an outside chance of qualifying for the team as a player. “We’ve all been there and done it before.”
Montgomerie said he decided against selecting Jose Maria Olazabal as a vice captain because the popular Spanish player had been absent from the European Tour for much of the last two years because of rheumatism in his shoulder.
Under captain Nick Faldo, Europe lost the trophy in 2008 at Valhalla, Ky., having beaten the U.S. in 2002, ‘04 and ‘06.
Montgomerie said there would be no complacency in the European team, adding: “There is no overconfidence here. We know these matches are very, very close.
“You only have to look back at the (18½-9½) win Europe had in 2004 in America: 11 matches went to the last hole and we happened to win nine of them. If it was the opposite way, we would have lost the Ryder Cup — that’s how close these matches are and we are under no illusions at all about how difficult the task this will be to regain the Ryder Cup.”
-- Steve Douglas
Notah Begay says Tiger Woods needs time
VERONA, N.Y. — Notah Begay III says Tiger Woods is hitting the ball as well as ever, though he isn’t surprised that Woods is struggling to recapture his game.
Begay, who roomed with Woods at Stanford, said Tuesday that it’s difficult for anybody to address marital woes every week, especially publicly.
“It’s going to take some time for the emotions to settle and for him to sort of get 100 percent focused on golf,” Begay said at a press conference promoting the Turning Stone Resort Championship.
Woods now has played seven tournaments without winning. It’s the longest he has ever gone at the start of a season since turning pro, and he hasn’t been a threat on the back nine of any tournament. Not even at the Masters or U.S. Open, where he tied for fourth.
On Sunday, he finished tied for 23rd in the British Open at St. Andrews.
“He’s hitting it as solid as I’ve ever seen and just not able to put things together,” Begay said. “That’s just how difficult this game is, even for a guy of his talent level. When it can slip through his fingers like it has in the past few events, it’s a pretty tough game.”
Woods has been trying to rebuild his reputation after stunning reports that he cheated on his wife with numerous women. He entered rehab and took a five-month break from the PGA Tour before returning at the Masters.
“He’s like anybody else,” Begay said. “When somebody goes through a divorce, much less such a public one, it’s going to be difficult for anybody to process what’s going to happen, how they’re going to cope and deal with things.”
Woods has refused to address reports that he’s agreed to a divorce settlement with his wife, Elin.
O’Meara out of Senior British after father dies
CARNOUSTIE, Scotland — Mark O’Meara withdrew from the Senior British Open at Carnoustie on Tuesday following the death of his father Bob at the age of 81.
The 53-year-old O’Meara, a two-time major winner, cut short his two-week visit to Scotland to fly home to Florida and be with his family.
Bob O’Meara had heart surgery in April for an aortic aneurysm, but was taken to a hospital last week because of an infection.
“The last week has been a rollercoaster for me,” O’Meara said before leaving Scotland. “I found out last Saturday that my dad was in intensive care and had been in dire straits at the weekend.”
Although he knew of the illness, O’Meara played two rounds of the British Open at St. Andrews before missing the cut by one shot.
“I played the British Open last week as I know my dad would have wanted me to be at St. Andrews. We played there together 18 years ago and had a lot of fun.
“As a son who loves his father very much I am going to go back to help my sisters. It’s time to go home.”
-- Graham Otway
Thompson takes medalist honors at US Junior
ADA, Mich. — Curtis Thompson of Coral Springs, Fla., birdied his final hole Tuesday to win medalist honors by one stroke at the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship.
The 17-year-old Thompson, whose younger sister Alexis won the 2008 U.S. Girls Junior Championship, shot a 6-under 66 at Egypt Valley Country Club to finish the two rounds of qualifying at 10 under.
Thompson, who has committed to LSU, edged defending champion Jordan Spieth of Dallas and Gavin Hall of Pittsford, N.Y., by one stroke.
Hall, 15, did not break par in Monday’s opening round but Tuesday he fired a tournament record 10-under 62. The previous record was set by Joe Monte, who shot 64 in 2004 at Longmeadow (Mass.) Country Club.
With the field of 156 cut to 64, match play begins Wednesday with Thompson as the top seed.
Record-low TV ratings for British Open final round
NEW YORK — Little drama and a little-known champion sent the British Open’s television ratings plummeting to a record low.
South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen led over the last 48 holes and won by seven shots, his victory almost never in doubt during the final round. ESPN said Sunday’s coverage drew a 2.1 rating, down 45 percent from last year’s 3.8. The previous low was a 3.1 in 1996, according to Nielsen, when Tom Lehman went into the final round with a six-shot lead.
Average ratings for the first three rounds were up from 2009, increasing from 1.3 to 1.4.
This was the first year the tournament was broadcast entirely on cable. The coverage previously was split between TNT and ABC.
Ratings represent the percentage of all homes with televisions tuned into a program.
Kang earns medalist spot for US Junior girls
PINEHURST, N.C. — Danielle Kang of Thousand Oaks, Calif., shot a 74 and earned medalist honors for the U.S. Girls Junior Championship on Tuesday at The Country Club of North Carolina.
Kang finished two rounds of stroke play 3-under 141. She’ll be the top seed when match play for the top 64 qualifiers begins Wednesday.
Ginger Howard of Bradenton, Fla., shot even par in the second round to stay at 2 under and hold second place. Megan Khang, a 12-year-old from Rockland, Mass., was the only other golfer under par in stroke play as finished at 1 under.
Gyeol Park of Korea shot Tuesday’s best round at 3 under and moved to fourth place overall at even par. She was 3 under on the back side, closing with an eagle on the par-5 18th.
Ryder Cup players could be missing from PGA
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — For years, one of the perks of making the Ryder Cup team was an automatic spot in the PGA Championship, as both are run by the PGA of America.
Starting last year, the PGA changed its criteria so that Ryder Cup members of the most recent team must be within the top 100 in the world ranking. And with a change in the Ryder Cup selection process to allow for four captain’s picks, that could have ramifications this year for as many as four American players.
Boo Weekley, last seen galloping down the fairway at Valhalla in the Ryder Cup, has plunged to No. 166 in the world with only three top 10s in the last two years. He has not played a major this year.
Justin Leonard is No. 98 in the world, while Ben Curtis is No. 97 and Chad Campbell, who did not qualify for St. Andrews, is No. 93.
“As the process of the Ryder Cup team has changed — the captain now has four picks — there’s more of a chance the players picked are not highly ranked,” said Kerry Haigh, championship director of the PGA. “So those four players had no trouble getting into the PGA Championship last year.”
This year is a different story.
Leonard has yet to finish in the top 10, with his best result a tie for 14th in the U.S. Open. He lost in a playoff the last time the PGA Championship was held at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin in 2004. Curtis, a runner-up in the PGA Championship two years ago, has only one top-10 this year. Campbell started the year with a tie for eighth in the Sony Open, and didn’t have another top 10 until Hartford.
The deadline for being inside the top 100 in the world is Aug. 2, after two more PGA Tour events.
Even if those players fall out of the top 100, that doesn’t mean they will be shut out of the PGA Championship. The top 70 in PGA points automatically get in, and Leonard is 76th. The points are based on money earned on the PGA Tour since the last PGA Championship.
Plus, the PGA retains the right to invite whoever it wants.
“It depends on how they’re playing, but they’ll get all due consideration,” Haigh said. Asked if a player from the most recent Ryder Cup team would get more consideration for an invitation, he replied, “Absolutely.”
SUCCESSFUL 17th: The Royal & Ancient was criticized for adding 40 yards to the famous 17th hole at St. Andrews, although chief executive Peter Dawson said the intent was to bring the road back.
It would be hard to describe the change to the Road Hole as anything but a success.
Among the signature moments from the British Open was Miguel Angel Jimenez going across the road next to the wall, and banging his shot off the wall and back onto the green.
“I think the 17th tee has been a great success in terms of stiffening the test of that hole,” Dawson said. “I said at the beginning of the week, we were hoping that the road might come more back into play, and by gosh, it did. We had far more people on the road this year through the back of the hole than I’ve seen at previous Opens in recent times. To that degree we are very pleased with the hole.”
Only 38 percent of the players hit the 17th green in two.
And while the road got plenty of attention, there wasn’t too much trouble in the Road Hole bunker at the front of the green. There might be an explanation for that. Dawson said the front of the sodden wall was not as vertical as in previous years.
Dawson said the incline was at 67 degrees, which was about 3 or 4 degrees less severe than previous years.
“We wanted to give the players some kind of change of getting out, rather than no chance,” Dawson said.
The 18th hole has to rank among the easiest closing holes in championship golf. Perhaps it’s prudent to look at the 17th and 18th as a package finish of par 4s. The 495-yard 17th had an average score 4.665, while the 357-yard 18th had an average score of 3.629. So for a “par 8” of the two holes combined, the average score was 8.294.
EURO POWER: Justin Rose won two strong PGA Tour events in a span of three starts, putting him at No. 3 in the FedEx Cup standings. But it’s still not enough for him to qualify outright for Europe’s Ryder Cup team.
Such is the strength of European golf at the moment.
Four of the top five players on the world points list have won in America this year — Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Ian Poulter. Then there’s Paul Casey, who played in the final group at St. Andrews, yet is still not eligible. Neither is three-time major champion Padraig Harrington or Henrik Stenson, who tied for third in the British Open.
“I’ve got some headaches, but I’ve got some good headaches,” European captain Colin Montgomerie said Sunday. “I can pick two teams here that can beat each other on any given day. That’s the strength and that’s the depth of European golf, especially this year.”
SOUTH AFRICAN PRIDE: Gary Player, one of five men to have completed the career Grand Slam, looked beyond Louis Oosthuizen’s victory at St. Andrews to all of South Africa. And his plaudits went a lot farther back then the last couple of years.
Oosthuizen was the sixth South African to win a major, and the fourth in the last 10 years.
“Isn’t it incredible?” he said Sunday evening. “And one of the most amazing things is that South Africa, a small country, has won more majors than any country besides the United States post-World War II.”
Player didn’t just pull that number out of the air.
The South Africans — Player, Oosthuizen, Bobby Locke, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Trevor Immelman — have won 20 majors dating to the first of Locke’s first British Open titles in 1949.
Next on the list is Australia with 15 (Peter Thomson, Greg Norman, David Graham, Kel Nagle, Jim Ferrier, Wayne Grady, Steve Elkington, Ian Baker-Finch, Geoff Ogilvy), followed by Britain with 14 (Nick Faldo, Tony Jacklin, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam, Paul Lawrie, Henry Cotton, Max Faulkner).
Player also claims Nick Price of Zimbabwe and his three majors, giving “Southern Africa” a total of 23.
DIVOTS: Louis Oosthuizen became the first player born after 1980 to have won a major. ... Most of the 50-and-over players at St. Andrews headed up the coast to Carnoustie for the Senior British Open. Tom Pernice Jr. got on the charter to Toronto for the Canadian Open. “I’m playing the regular tour the rest of the way,” Pernice said. He has an exemption to The Greenbrier Classic, and is hopeful of making enough money the next two weeks to qualify for the PGA Championship. ... The best measure of Phil Mickelson’s struggles in the British Open? Only once in 16 tries has he finished closer than nine shots of the winner.
STAT OF THE WEEK: The last three British Opens at St. Andrews have been won by a combined 20 shots.
FINAL WORD: “The SBS Championship is going to be like a European Tour event.” — British agent Chubby Chandler, on the PGA Tour’s winners-only tournament that starts the season in Kapalua.
-- Doug Ferguson
