Lift, clean and birdie

    Friday, September 7, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    When someone 20 years in the future looks at the scores from this year’s BMW Championship – or Western Open or whatever it’s called in 2032 – they’ll wonder how much a pushover course Crooked Stick Golf Club really was.
    It isn’t, not in real life. It’s a full-blooded test of golf with more trouble than the average member or guest can handle.
    But the best 70 players on the PGA Tour? In soft conditions? With next to no wind for the better part of 36 holes? And the potential to put the ball in their hands for cleaning on the fairway?
    That’s heaven for low scores, pally.
    There was more a case for playing “lift, clean and place” in fairways on Thursday than on Friday, but the PGA Tour did so for each round, just in case a downpour hit and the course became even more soggy.
    Thursday, said Ryan Moore after his 6-under-par 66, it was completely necessary. He couldn’t even put a number on how many strokes it saved.
    “Considering I had extremely large clumps of mud on the ball every single tee shot (Thursday), who knows?” Moore said. “In those circumstances you can hit great golf shots all day that end up 30 yards off a green.
    “It was a pretty significant difference. Today, not so much. It was the right decision, but it definitely would have played fine today without ball in hand.”
    Moore recalled only two mud balls in the course of the second round.
    Even with slightly more difficult pin placements, the conditions guaranteed low scores, and they were crazy low again. The par-72 course, which was set up for 7,415 yards, played to an average of 69.814, more than two strokes under par, and not too much more than Thursday’s 69.471. There have been 621 birdies in two rounds, along with 21 eagles, which includes Steve Stricker’s ace of the sixth hole.

    As for the ace...

    Stricker didn’t do much more than make that ace on Friday. He scored 1-over 73, one of only 10 rounds over par.
    “All we could see was the reaction from the crowd up around the green,” Stricker said. “It’s nice to win some money for the Evans Scholars. It’s a good cause for a deserving kid.”
    The money, $100,000 in the form of a scholarship, is donated by BMW each time an ace is scored. It was the first ace in the Western / BMW since Sean O’Hair’s on Dubsdread’s second hole in 2010, and the 41st in tournament history.
    
    Shanks, but no thanks

    Even U.S. Open champions have their unthinkable moments. Webb Simpson had one on Friday, with a cold shank of his tee shot on the sixth hole, which Stricker had aced earlier. The ball went so far the right the search was perfunctory, and Simpson re-teed, hitting the green with his third shot. He made a triple-bogey 5, the third of four 5s in succession on a front nine of 2-over 38. He followed Thursday’s 8-under 64 with a 75.

    Around Crooked Stick

    Don’t be surprised if the Western / BMW returns to Crooked Stick in the future, perhaps in 2020. Club officials have loved the show – and the rent – never mind the low scores. ... Bob Estes is the only player in the field to have played Crooked Stick in competition before this week. He wasn’t in the 1991 PGA, but NBC/Golf Channel uncovered Estes’ participation in the 1982 U.S. Junior Amateur. ... A weather scare nearly delayed play in the noon hour. A severe thunderstorm that wasn’t part of the original stormy forecast appeared to the north of Crooked Stick, but lightning was never detected closer than 17 miles out. At 10 miles, play would have been suspended. ... Kudos to Golf Channel for juggling its lineup and adding a three-hour block of live coverage in the window immediately before the original time slot, which then was rerun. And kudos to Joliet native Terry Gannon, the host of GC’s coverage, for taking a fiver from boothmate Frank Nobilo for predicting both Woods and McIlroy would birdie the 18th during a commercial break.
    – Tim Cronin