McIlroy masters Crooked Stick

    Sunday, September 9, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    The best golf courses produce the best champions, those who have a complete game that can stand up in the heat of a final round.
    Crooked Stick Golf Club did that on Sunday, when a rollicking festival of eagles and birdies called the BMW Championship – the 109th edition of the Western Open of yore – brought forth Rory McIlroy as the champion golfer of 2012.
    He’s not bad, this McIlroy. The 23-year-old product of Northern Ireland won three times in his last four starts, including an eight-stroke victory at the PGA Championship last month. He’s the top-ranked player in the world. He’s the future of the game, and the present as well.
    He beat the rest of the best players in the world by scoring 5-under-par 67 in the final round for an aggregate score of 20-under-par 268. The margin was two strokes over Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood, three over Tiger Woods and Robert Garrigus, and four over Dustin Johnson and Adam Scott.
    McIlroy won by hitting 51 greens, 41 of 56 fairways, needing only 108 putts – three-putting only twice – and never stepping into a bunker all week. That likely hasn’t been accomplished by a winner in any event of significance since Tiger Woods did so at the Old Course in annexing the 2000 British Open, the second victory in his Grand Slam.
    McIlroy made six birdies in the final round befor a harmless bogey at the last, and never made a putt of significant length among those birdies.
    “I didn’t need to,” he agreed. “The ball-striking was good. It was a big turnaround from yesterday, which was very nice.”
    It’s fair to say he had his A game from tee to green and a B-minus game on the greens, and the combination was good enough to hold off the fastest field seen in this venerable championship in the six years the Western has been played as the BMW, and as the third round of the playoffs for the FedEx Cup.
    “The difference is the ability to save par,” McIlroy said of his late-summer surge. “A few up-and-downs yesterday gave me the ability to win this tournament.”
    That, and a slight adjustment in his swing after Saturday’s 3-under 69, when he scrambled while hitting only 8-of-14 fairways and only half the greens. He discovered his body was spinning too fast, and made a change. The result: 13-of-14 fairways hit on Sunday.
    “The club was late catching up and I was hitting everything to the right,” McIlroy said of Saturday’s adventure. “Just a little bit of timing, waiting on it at the top of the backswing and releasing it, that straightened up the driver a lot today.
    “The thing about the last two weeks, I’ve just played with complete trust and complete confidence in my ability.”
    McIlroy started the day a stroke behind Mickelson and Vijay Singh. He took the lead with a 4-foot, 8-inch birdie putt on the par-4 10th hole, getting to 19-under. A par save on 14 kept his momentum going, and birdies on the 15th and 16th got him to 21-under sealed the victory. While many threatened, only Westwood and Mickelson took it as deep at 19-under, and for only one hole each. McIlroy was in another world, much like Woods used to be.
    “The more you put yourself in this position and the more you win and the more you pick up trophies, it becomes normal, and it feels like this is what you’re supposed to do,” McIlroy said. “I don’t I’m quite there (to Woods’ previous level) yet, but I’m getting to that stage where I’m thinking, this is what I should be doing. I should be lifting a trophy at the end of the week.”
    This trophy is the J.K. Wadley Trophy, one of the more iconic in the game. In a fortnight, McIlroy may be lifting the FedEx Cup, one of the more garish in the game.
    “I’m going to keep the run going as long as possible,” McIlroy said.
    His peers had nothing but praise for him.
    “A lot of people stayed in neutral and Rory geared ahead,” said Mickelson, whose tie for second at 18-under 270 is his best in the BMW / Western. “He’s playing great, and he’s going to be tough at East Lake.”
    “He’s just maturing all the time,” said Westwood, who matched Mickelson at 270 while playing with McIlroy. “He’s just a very, very good player.”
    And Woods, who has praised him lavishly of late, continued in that vein.
    “He’s doing the things he needs to do,” Woods said. “He’s really playing well and he’s making a ton of putts. That’s a great combo.”
    To go with an impossibly great future.
    – Tim Cronin

Mickelson says he's on the verge

    Sunday, September 9, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    Phil Mickelson was right there. The co-leader entering the final round. The leader after a brilliant chip from the collar at the par-4 second. The man who made a little girl’s day by giving her a $99 tip for a $1 glass of lemonade on the ride into Crooked Stick Golf Club on Sunday morning.
    How could he not win?
    By only scoring 2-under-par 70 when Rory McIlroy was zooming past him and the rest of the field with a 5-under 67, that’s how.
    Mickelson didn’t play poorly on Sunday. He just didn’t click when he had to. And he knew it.
    “My timing was just a fraction off,” Mickelson said after finishing at 18-under 270. “I wasn’t quite getting the ball on line with my irons, and my putter was a little bit off, whether the speed or the read.”
    He had some wayward shots – a drive on the par-4 seventh went down the hill and forced a bogey from a bad lie – and in the end, those cost him victory. Both he and McIlroy had 108 putts, and Mickelson never three-putted. McIlroy did so twice.
    So is Mickelson downcast about his play? Not the man who sees even a broken glass as half-full. And he is fourth in the playoff point standings, which means if he wins the Tour Championship at East Lake, he wins the FedEx Cup and the $10 million pot o’gold at rainbow’s end.
    “I had a fourth (in Boston) last week, tied for second this week,” Mickelson said. “I feel really good about where my game is headed.”
    Mickelson has won twice at East Lake, which is another plus.
    “I look at a day like this as just a blip as opposed to a trend,” Mickelson said. “The trend is going up.”

    As the FedEx Cup turned

    Robert Garrigus and Ryan Moore played themselves into the top 30 in the seasons standings and thus punched a ticket for East Lake with finishes of T-4 and T-10, respectively, in the Western. But the numbers fluctuated like a light bulb powered by hamsters most of the day.
    It took until late in the round that Scott Piercy was a lock for 30th place, knocking out Kyle Stanley. And Vijay Singh, who started the week 49th, went until the final holes before his fate of just missing out – he finished 33rd in the season-long race – was sealed.
    Garrigus and Moore was thrilled, but the other half of the story is those who were in and now are out.
    Bill Haas gave it a go, but failed to advance to East Lake, where he won it all last year. four bogeys in the last five holes, including the last three, dropped him from 28th to 32nd.
    “When nerves are an issue and I’m under the gun, I’ve got to be better,” Haas said. “Right now I’m far from competitive.”
    Haas didn’t know it, but if he made a 59-footer for par on the 18th hole, he would have finished 30th.
    “I didn’t think I was even close,” Haas said. “That’s even more frustrating. That said, I hit a nice putt. I’m not mad at the putt, I just didn’t deserve it.”
    Stanley helped decide his fate at the par-3 sixth, where he double-bogeyed. He also bogeyed the 18th.
    “I don’t really know what I feel right now,” Stanley said. “I’ve felt pretty stale for quite some time here.”
    Rickie Fowler advanced to the Tour Championship for the first time, while John Huh was the only player from this year’s crop of rookies to advance.

    Roar of the crowd

    Officials of the Western Golf Association didn’t crow about attendance this week, but should have. A gallery of at least 35,000 was on hand Sunday, as it was Saturday, to go with crowds of around 30,000 on Thursday and Friday.
    The WGA had privately estimated 111,000 for the first six days at Crooked Stick, and that included the rained-out pro-am on Monday, when the Deutsche Bank Classic was wrapping up in Boston. An NBC Sports source familiar with the numbers said the WGA counted only 49,000 for the seven days of the 2011 tournament at Cog Hill.
    “The corporate support has been great in Chicago, great for a long time, but we’ve had a lot more people show up here than we’ve had in recent years in Chicago,” WGA tournament VP Vince Pellegrino told the Associated Press. “The locals into golf here said this would be big, but till you see it in person, you're not really sure.”
    Now he’s sure, and inclined to come back to Crooked Stick, a big supporter of the WGA’s Evans Scholars Foundation, sooner rather than later. A club source said they’d want the BMW back, but not right away. The club has hosted a large run of tournaments in recent years, including the 2009 U.S. Senior Open and 2005 Solheim Cup, and wants a break of a few years.
    The WGA is taking the old Western Open out of Chicago in even-numbered years now. The 2014 playing is set for Cherry Hills Country Club, near Denver. The 2016 edition will probably go to Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco, as part of the PGA Tour’s deal to play a playoff tournament there. That would make 2018 the next non-Chicago open date.
    Next year’s tournament will be at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, which will probably host the 2015 edition as well. This week, Conway Farms is hosting the U.S. Mid-Amateur.

    Around Crooked Stick

    Pete Dye, the man who made Crooked Stick, both club and course, was at the 18th green to shake winner Rory McIlroy’s hand when he finished play. Dye watched most of the tournament from his modest house adjacent to the 18th fairway, because each time he ventured onto the grounds, he was mobbed by fans seeking his autograph. ... Hunter Mahan finished dead last, carding a 77 for an even 300 this week. He still made $16,000. ... Arnold Palmer, a two-time Western Open winner, turns 83 tomorrow.
    – Tim Cronin

It's a madhouse at Crooked Stick: 4-way tie!

    Sunday, September 9, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    The Shootout at the Stick is not a misnomer. Phil Mickelson and his pals, including Rory McIlroy and Ryan Moore, and warm-up act Bubba Watson, are once again making a mockery of Crooked Stick Golf Club’s par of 72.
    Watson went around in 7-under-par 65 to finish at 12-under 276. Moore played the front nine in 4-under 32. Mickelson and McIlroy were 2-under for six and seven holes, respectively, with Mickelson holing a 42-foot birdie chip on the par-4 second. But he bogeyed the seventh, falling to -17 and into a four-way tie with McIlroy, Lee Westwood and Vijay Singh. It was only momentary for Singh, who bogeyed the seventh.
    And it became a four-way tie again with Dustin Johnson’s chip-in for eagle from behind the ninth green to get to -17, the latest in a four-day fireworks display. To repeat, he joins Mickelson, McIlroy and Westwood on top as of 3:13 p.m.
    Tiger Woods? He’s 1-under for the day and four off the pace.
    But it’s not easy for everybody. Bill Haas, the defending FedEx Cup champion who is desperately trying to return to East Lake Golf Club, double-bogeyed the sixth hole, a par 3, by dumping his tee shot in a pot bunker to the left of the green. He chunked it into the rough, then flopped it on the green well short of the hole, and two-putted for a double-bogey 5.
    That dropped him to 30th in the PGA Tour point standings, and when Kyle Stanley, in the group behind, birdied the par-5 fifth hole, Haas was shoved to 31st place. But Stanley shoved his tee shot on the sixth into the water, and the standing shifted again. They likely will much of the afternoon. Haas was still 30th in the points through 13 holes.
    The scoring average was 72.068 at 3:13 p.m. Stay with us!
    – Tim Cronin

A feast of golf awaits

    Sunday, September 9, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    It couldn’t be more beautiful at Crooked Stick Golf Club for the final round of the BMW Championship, known to the history-minded, and at least privately to some WGA directors, as the 109th Western Open. There are only a few clouds in the sky, spectators are converging from all points, and the golf course looks magnificent.
    So does the leader board. The prospects for a final round festival of birdies should hardly be negated by a collection of pernicious pin placements, given the softness of the course and the quality of the participants.
    Start with co-leaders Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh. They’re 16-under-par, a total of 200 strokes, which is stout. Mickelson fired an 8-under-par 64 – the seventh 64 of the week – on Saturday. Right behind at 15-under 201 are Lee Westwood and world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, two of Europe’s brightest stars and Ryder Cup participants. McIlroy scored 64 on Thursday.
    Then we have Adam Scott, often heralded but rarely able to finish on Sunday, and designated lurker Robert Garrigus, sitting pretty at 14-under 202, along with big hitter and 2010 champion Dustin Johnson, who is paired with Tiger Woods, at 13-under 203 in the fourth-from-last group.
    Stars stud the last three hours of pairings. The fan watching Golf Channel or NBC, or on site, will be able to watch Zach Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk, defending champion Dustin Rose, defending FedEx Cup champion Bill Haas – who needs a good finish to make the top 30 in the season points race and advance to the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club, a fortnight in the future – Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Steve Stricker and Luke Donald, Chicago’s European Ryder Cupper, plus Rickie Fowler and Bubba Watson.
    It’s a veritable feast of golf. Lift, clean and place golf for the fourth straight day thanks to the series of downpours over the last week, but a feast nonetheless. Bon appetit!
    – Tim Cronin

Coming Sunday: Shootout at the Stick

    Saturday, September 8, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    This 109th Open Championship of the Western Golf Association now has another name.
    One besides the BMW Championship, that is.
    Welcome to the Shootout at the Stick.
    That’s the only thing to call it after the third straight romp deep into red numbers by players of great skill who were allowed to put the ball in their hand.
    Here’s the leaderboard – gold-plated names to go with red numbers – entering Sunday’s final round at defenseless Crooked Stick Golf Club:
    Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh are co-leaders at 16-under-par 200. World No. 1 Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood are a stroke back at 15-under 201. Dustin Johnson, Robert Garrigus and Adam Scott share fourth place at 14-under 202. Tiger Woods is eighth at 13-under 203. Lurking four strokes back at 204 are Zach Johnson, Graeme McDowell and Bo Van Pelt.
    Those top 11 players have combined to win 25 professional majors, plus six Western Opens / BMWs and assorted Players Championships and FedEx Cups.
    Is that any good? Will that guarantee a walkup crowd of mammoth proportions on Sunday morning? Who wouldn’t want to come out and hang with Phil and Rory and Tiger and Bo, the local Hoosier in the hunt?
    “The cream has risen to the top, hasn’t it?” said Westwood after his 4-under 68.
    Short of the butterflies flitting in each player’s stomach during a major championship, this is as good as it gets for them and for those who watch them.
    Of those 11 low-shooting stars, only Woods and Van Pelt failed to break 70 on Saturday, and they scored 1-under 71, Woods fighting knee pain on the front nine. Mickelson, lounging in 13th place entering the day, blistered Crooked Stick with 10 birdies en route to an 8-under 64, the seventh such course record-tying score of the week. Scott and Garrigus barged into the conversation with 6-under 66s, Garrigus posting a 5-under 31 on the course’s difficult back nine.
    Of the 70 players in this third playoff tournament of the four comprising the FedEx Cup series, 17 are 10 or more under par through 54 holes. Ben Curtis made five birdies in a row and six in eight holes, shot 68, and is in an 18th-place logjam with Justin Rose, the defending champion. They’re at 9-under 207, those slackers.
    They’re seven strokes back, but might as well be 70 back, considering the depth of the talent pool ahead of them.
    This particular Saturday was as much positioning day as it was, as Ken Venturi dubbed it long ago, “Moving Day.”
    But Mickelson moved, and brought many in the gallery of approximately 35,000 with him. The stylish lefthander birdied five straight holes and seven in a stretch of nine from the fourth to the 13th, jumping from 7-under to 14-under. From that point, he and Singh swapped the lead.
    “It’s a lot of fun, fun to see putts go in, fun to hit fairways and attack pins,” Mickelson said. “It’s great to be back in the mix at the right time.”
    Mickelson was barely in the mix in 14 appearances at Cog Hill, and never at the end of four days. His best finish, a tie for 10th, came two years ago thanks to a back-door 67 on Sunday. He appeared to be in the hunt in 1994, trailing Nick Price by a stroke after 36 holes, then scored back-to-back 77s and finished in a tie for 64th.
    Now he has a shot to add this title to a glittering resume that goes back to his amateur days, when he won the Tucson Open and Western Amateur in the same year. That was 1991, when the PGA Championship was at Crooked Stick, but Mickelson wasn’t eligible to play. He somehow thought he was, even though he was an amateur, and even though the PGA was and is open to pros only.
    “I look back on that 20 years later and I’m still upset,” Mickelson said after his 64.
    Hey, whatever works as a motivator.
    Mickelson poured in a total of 31 feet of birdie putts from the sixth through nine holes, those to go with six others, including a 15-footer from the collar at the last. The roar for that one echoed off the glass-fronted corporate suites. Unaccountably, it didn’t set off the car alarms on the BMWs parked here and there across this sylvan, if muddy, landscape. But the rest of the field heard it, then played possum about it.
    “They’re just other players,” Singh said, dismissing the resumes of the other notables when considering his challengers. “I’m going to play my game, focus on my game, and see what happens. I think I’m playing good enough to win the golf tournament, and that’s how I’m going to think tomorrow.”
    Singh won the first FedEx Cup in 2007, but hasn’t won on the PGA Tour in four years. At 49, this may be his last best chance to hold a trophy in his hands by beating the kids. And, after five top 10s in the Western, the best a second to Joe Durant in 1998, maybe this is his time.
    There’s karma in golf, though. Singh has never fully escaped from the scorecard scandal that earned him a suspension from the Asian Tour in 1985 and sent him into oblivion. He came all the way back and has been a good, if generally taciturn, citizen of the game since then.
    McIlroy is the future and the present, based on his ranking, his win last Monday in Boston, and his looming presence a stroke in arrears. Hitting only eight fairways and nine greens, he scrambled to a 69 anyway, then went to the range to figure out why he was, in his words, “hitting the ball awfully from tee to green.”
    This from one of the dozen players in the field to post three rounds in the 60s so far, including an opening 64. If he figures things out, there’s no telling how low he can go.
    Meanwhile, there are all those guys chasing the leaders, including Dustin Johnson, who has hit only 26 of 42 fairways so far, but says the course sets up well for him. A Sunday 64 gets Johnson or one of his fellow chasers on television, if not the leader board. Given the firepower and the stakes, the Shootout at the Stick could make fans forget the Bears and Colts on the morrow, even in this town.
    Gentleman, start your birdies.
    – Tim Cronin