Thursday, September 6, 2012
Writing from Carmel, Indiana
Until Thursday, Crooked Stick Golf Club was known as a difficult course.
Now, it’s known nationwide as a pushover. Soft as a fresh Twinkie. A miniature layout, lacking only a windmill.
Where’s Pete Dye and a backhoe when you need him?
Here are the totals from the carnage known as the first round of the BMW Championship, which resembles the 109th Western Open in name only: Four players, including world No. 1 Rory McIlroy and U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson, are at 8-under-par 64, tying the course record set by 1991 Western Open champion Russ Cochran and Loren Roberts in the 2009 U.S. Senior Open.
Tiger Woods and 49-year-old Vijay Singh are joint fifth at 7-under 65, with Woods in quest of a record sixth Western / BMW title. Luke Donald, Ryan Moore and Palmer – that’s Ryan, not Arnold – stand seventh at 6-under 66. Half the world is at 5-under 67, including defending champion Justin Rose and Zach Johnson, last seen winning the John Deere Classic.
Is Crooked Stick the Indiana translation for TPC Deere Run?
The day’s scoring average was a record in relation to par: 69.471, precisely 2.529 strokes under par, and by far a new standard in that regard. (The old mark was 1.862 strokes under par, in the final round at Cog Hill in 2007.)
As Tom Carnegie used to say over the PA system at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway: “It’s a new track record!” And some Crooked Stick members might be saying it was time for a new track.
Think the PGA Tour’s lift, clean and place rule doesn’t make a difference? The pros could put their hand on the ball when it was in the fairway on Thursday, and they took advantage. That probably lowered the scoring average by a stroke. The soft conditions that prompted the ruling – almost 2.5 inches of rain since last weekend – had already made the greens receptive to shots with even the least amount of spin on them.
Thus, lawn darts replaced golf on Thursday at Crooked Stick, where John Daly once won a PGA Championship with a 72-hole score of 12-under-par 276.
At this pace, the leaders will be 12-under by the time they make the turn Friday morning – and most play will be in the morning, as severe weather is forecast for the late afternoon. Tee times have been adjusted.
There’s another reason for the low scores, one that smarty pants critics might overlook. The players are phenomenally good. The combination of pure skill, strategic smarts, magical ball and club technology and course conditioning – don’t forget that Crooked Stick’s greens are perfect – adds up to low, low, low numbers.
Take McIlroy, for instance. Possessed of a silky swing and superior smarts, McIlroy hit 11 of 14 fairways, 15 greens and needed only 26 putts to negotiate a course that measured 7,408 yards and still had more trouble lurking than most layouts.
“I felt like my iron play was some of the best it’s been all year, basically my whole life,” McIlroy said. “I was giving myself a lot of opportunities to attack the pins from the fairways.”
And he did, hole after hole. McIlroy’s only miscue was a bogey on the par-4 13th. He’d opened with a birdie on the par-4 10th after hitting his tee shot right of sideways, bounced back from the bogey with a birdie on the 14th, eagled the 15th, birdied the 18th and first, birdied the par-5 fifth, then finished with birdied on the eighth and par-5 ninth. That’s your basic 32-32–64.
All this came less than 72 hours after McIlroy won the Deutsche Bank Classic in Norton, Mass., evidence that his focus is as phenomenal as the rest of his game.
“I didn’t really have any time to celebrate or anything like that,” said McIlroy, who didn’t even see all 18 holes in Wednesday’s rain-shortened pro-am. “Just get myself focused and ready for this.”
And that, among other things, impressed Woods, who came up a stroke short of his young rival, but was gushing in his compliments.
“I scored well, but he was playing,” Woods said. “This is the next generation of guys coming out. He hits it great, putts it great, and on top of that, he’s just a really nice kid.
“The game of golf is in great hands with him, and he’s here to stay.”
The other 64s, posted by Bo Van Pelt and Graham DeLeat, were all but lost in the shuffle. But Van Pelt destroyed the front nine with a 5-under 31, was first to 7-under, and DeLeat, a Canadian who missed the cut last week, finished with a flourish with an eagle 3 on the par-5 ninth, rolling in a 38-foot putt from in front of the green. Ah, the magic of the long putter.
“I bought it in a golf store in Boise a few weeks back,” DeLeat said.
Boise?
“It still had the price tag on it.”
But of course.
Simpson, the all-but-forgotten National Open champion, was 4-under through 13 holes, then birdied the next four to charge to the front. And even as McIlroy played with Woods, Simpson played with Van Pelt. Clearly, there were some good vibrations at the Stick.
“I was watching Bo make everything on the front nine,” Simpson said. “I hadn’t made a lot of putts lately, but once they started going in, it was a good feeling.”
As was, in Simpson’s mind, the use of lift, clean and place. He said his drives picked up mud upon landing, “More than I’ve ever seen. If we didn’t play lift, clean and place, I would probably have shot 80. It would have been impossible. Half the ball was covered on every hole.”
Simpson said he expects the rule to be in effect again on Friday. The forecast, then, is not only for thunderstorms late, but low scores early.
– Tim Cronin