Poulter trying to avoid unsweet sixteenth

Writing from Lemont, Illinois
Thursday, September 9, 2010

Ian Poulter understands the importance of making every shot count. He bogeyed the final hole of last year’s Western Open, and missed advancing to the Tour Championship as a result.

“One-sixteenth of a point,” Poulter said Thursday after opening with a 5-under-par 66.

“I finished on the same score with John Senden, but they had to take it down to a decimal point. I don’t want decimal points this year. I’m going to win this golf tournament, and I want to win at East Lake and I want to go and enjoy myself at the Ryder Cup. That’s my goal.”

With all that in mind, he went out and started his round on the 10th hole with a double-bogey.

“Not a very nice first hole, mind you,” Poulter said.

His recovery began with a birdie at the 12th, but really got rolling with a 70-foot birdie putt at the 14th, the other par-3 on the back nine. An eagle at the par-5 15th and chip-in birdie on the 18th followed, and Poulter was on his way.

Now, all he needs to do is climb from 44th in the playoff standings to 30th or better to move on to the Tour Championship. The PGA Tour’s number-crunchers say he needs to finish no worse than 10th to do so.

“The way I look at it is, I’ve either got a week off before the Ryder Cup, or two,” Poulter said. “You can play great all season, you can play poor for two weeks, and you’ll be sitting at home with your feet up having a beer watching the rest of the golf.”

The playoff numbers game

Tiger Woods is 51st in the playoff standings, and must be 30th or better in said standings to advance to the Tour Championship and have a shot at the $10 million pot o’ cash that is the winner’s bonus.

To do that, if the projections are correct, Woods has to finish no worse than fifth this week at Cog Hill.

And to do that, he has to get his act in gear. Woods opened Thursday with a double-bogey, the blackest mark in his 2-over 73. It ended with a bogey, and there were two others along the way, plus three birdies.

Woods, who called the greens “spotty” on Wednesday, took only 29 putts, but that’s because he had to scramble to save par when he wasn’t making bogeys. He hit only five fairways and 10 greens, and saved par from greenside bunkers but once in four attempts.

It may not be the end of the world, however. Harken back to 2005, when the Western was still played in late June and early July. Woods opened with a 73, and, like this time, stood nine strokes in arrears of the leaders, in that case Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis and Todd Fischer. By Sunday night, following rounds of 66-67-66, Woods nearly caught Furyk, who won by two strokes.

Second place this week would all but lock him into the field at East Lake.

The course numbers game

The complaints of bumpy greens may be borne out by the scoring average. On a cool and nearly windless day, the field of the PGA Tour’s best 70 players averaged 71.629 strokes, slightly over the 71.449 from last year.

The pushover hole, as is typical, was the par-5 15th, which played 527 yards long on Thursday and averaged 4.400 strokes. For golf sadists, that’s one more argument to move up one tee and make the hole a par 4, as was done to the fifth hole in 2004. The fifth, incidentally, averaged 4.314, and tied as the third most difficult hole.

The toughest? The par 3 second, at 3.414 strokes. The cup was back right, just where the green starts to fall off toward the back.

Around Dubsdread

The biggest galleries of the day followed Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson on opposite nines during the afternoon. The morning crowd wasn’t as big, but healthy enough to keep the marshals busy. Overall, perhaps 18,000 were on hand. Last year’s first round gallery was estimated at 18,500. ... Scott Verplank, playing despite a sore wrist, toughed out a 5-over 76. Andre Romero was high man with a 9-over 80, the first opening round score above 79 since the Western was converted to a playoff tournament in 2007. Billy Rosinia, the head pro at Flagg Creek in Indian Head Park, opened with an 83 in 2006.

– Tim Cronin

Kuchar posts sick 64, leads morning wave

Writing from Lemont, Illinois
Thursday, September 9, 2010

Beware the ill athlete.

That’s something of a canard, though it applied when Michael Jordan had the flu.

Thursday, it applied to Matt Kuchar. The always-smiling winner of the 1997 U.S. Amateur on Cog Hill Golf & Country Club’s Dubsdread course was fighting a sore throat in temperatures that didn’t get out of the 60s while he played.

Kuchar didn’t get out of the 60s either. He fired a 7-under-par 64 and holds the lead in the 107th Western Open – the persnickety carmaker would prefer you to know it as the BMW Championship – with the morning groups finished.

The keys to Kuchar’s round were an eagle 3 at the par-5 15th, which led him to a 5-under 31 on the back nine, his opening nine, and a birdie at the par-5 ninth, his last hole, following a bogey on the par-4 eighth, his only miscue of the day. Kuchar sank a 17-footer for the birdie on the ninth, but as impressive was his 246 yard approach shot to 10 feet on the 15th to set up the eagle.

“I was driving it well; I was actually doing everything well,” Kuchar said. “It felt very good.”

Better than his throat, because that was about all he said.

Kuchar has a one-stroke lead on Ryan Moore, whose 6-under 65 was as flashy as the red-striped tie he wore during his round. Moore, who birdied seven of the last eight holes to play the back nine in 6-under 29, set a record for the back nine of any Western, to say nothing of Dubsdread.

“I certainly wasn’t expecting to do that,” Moore said, explaining that holing out for birdie from a greenside bunker on the par-5 11th brought him back to even par. Moore had meandered between level par and 1-over on the front nine.

Then he went crazy, holing everything he looked at on the greens.

“I had no idea,” Moore said. “I wasn’t paying attention at all. I was playing with Marc Leishman, and we were just chatting along.”

Moore decided to wear the cravat, which he bought earlier this week, because the weather was cool. As was he.

As the afternoon wave got going, those behind Kuchar and Moore included Retief Goosen at 4-under 67, and a quartet of players in at 3-under 68: Justin Rose, Luke Donald, Dustin Johnson and Brian Gay. Justin Leonard was 3-under through three holes on the back nine.

With only a handful of difficult pin placements, and the tees set at 7,463 yards, the course was playing easy. At 1:49 p.m., it was averaging 71.131 strokes, just a hair over par. That included the 9-over 80 of Andre Romero and the double-bogey posted by Tiger Woods on his first hole of the afternoon.

Updates as warranted, with a complete report following the round.

– Tim Cronin

Rose in early lead; birdie binge expected

Writing from Lemont, Illinois
Thursday, September 9, 2010

With nary a breath of wind and barely a cloud in the sky, but with more than a few people on the premises, Vijay Singh opened the 107th Western Open, a.k.a. the BMW Championship, by swinging hard from the 10th tee and hammering his drive into the right rough to the right of the fairway.

Singh salvaged par, and with that, the 70-player field – ailing Scott Verplank included – began its four-day jaunt around Cog Hill Golf & Country Club’s Dubsdread course.

Before Justin Rose took the early lead with three birdies in his first six holes, the early excitement was provided by Chicago resident Luke Donald, whose eight-foot birdie bid on the 10th tumbled into the cup after a four-second wait on the edge, by Kevin Streelman, whose long bunker shot on the par-3 second bounced once and ticked off the flagstick to the delight of the 75 people following him, and by Matt Jones and Tom Gillis, two of the lesser-known – perhaps completely unknown – players in the elite field.

Jones went to 2-under with birdies on the 14th and 16th holes. Then Gillis, whose rise from obscurity to Tour title contention was detailed yesterday, also moved to 2-under. Within minutes, Rickie Fowler, bedecked in Carolina blue and white this day, Vaughn Taylor and Rose also joined the 2-under crowd. Rose, in fact, opened with birdies on the 10th, 11th and 15th, and took the lead at 3-under at 9:42 a.m.

They, too, noticed the lack of wind, a condition that should continue most of the day, laying Dubsdread open to a surplus of red numbers.

Updates will be posted as warranted, with a full report at the conclusion of the first round.

– Tim Cronin

Woods improving as 107th Western / BMW nears

Writing from Lemont, Illinois
Wednesday, September 8, 2010

There was a time when Tiger Woods was the favorite in any tournament he entered.

That time may be close to occurring again.

Woods’ play last week at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Norton, Mass., showed that the sullied superstar is on the way back. He finished with three rounds in the 60s. He climbed to 51 in the PGA Tour’s point standings.

A similar performance this week at Cog Hill, where the 107th Open Championship of the Western Golf Association commences Thursday morning with Marc Leishman’s tee shot at 8 sharp, and Woods should assure himself a position in the standings’ top 30, and thus a berth in the Tour Championship, a fortnight hence, in Atlanta.

Woods, in qualifying to defend the title he won last year – and to seek a record sixth Western, which these days is played under the sobriquet of the BMW Championship – is only now beginning to emerge from the mess he brought unto himself last fall. The discovery of serial adultery broke up his marriage, cost him sponsors, brought him public excoriation, and finally resulted in a nationally televised apology two months before he took to the links again.

That was at The Masters, which remains his most successful tournament of the year. Since then, Woods has struggled. However, since connecting with teacher Sean Foley, Woods’ game has perked up. He’s finding more fairways, more greens, and the cup more quickly.

Wednesday, Woods admitted for the first time that he didn’t search for another teacher after Hank Haney dropped him because too much of his life was in disorder.

“Let’s just say I’ve been through a lot lately, and I didn’t want to have any more information,” Woods said. “I was trying to get adjusted to my new life and what that entailed, and it was enough as it was. I didn’t have time to work on my game. I was dealing with a lot of other things.”

Woods is not the favorite to win this week, though if he did, it would break the five-title tie he has with Walter Hagen. Instead, there are a group of players who might find themselves battling each other when the final nine holes rolls around on Sunday afternoon.

Steve Stricker, the winner of the 1996 Western, is in that group. The Wisconsin native and Illinois graduate has four top-9 finishes in his last six tournaments, including a repeat win at the John Deere Classic. That was his second win of the year, and as summer is about to be pushed aside by fall, Stricker is still humming along, sitting third in the playoff standings and on the money list.

“My game kind of turned (for the better) the same time the FedEx system came around, and it’s been good,” Stricker said, noting he won the first playoff tournament in 1997. “We’ve gone to courses I’ve had some success on, so it’s always nice to come here. The course is a lot different now, but obviously still pretty much the same surroundings.”

Except, Stricker said in the wake of Rees Jones’ renovation, the greens.

“I think Rees Jones did a great job visually,” Stricker said. “The greens, on the other hand, are somewhat different, to put it nicely. He’s got a characteristic about them that I don’t really care for. But that’s just my personal feeling.

“The green complexes are pretty difficult. Other than that, he did a great job with the way it looks. Playability is pretty tough, particularly when we get the greens firm and fast.”

Stricker didn’t elaborate, but the two-tier nature of several greens, particularly the par-5 15th, has come in for criticism.

What Stricker doesn’t believe has changed at Cog Hill is the atmosphere.

“It still feels like a Western Open to me,” Stricker said. “The same Western Golf Association guys are running it, guys I’ve gotten to know over the years. Winning here, being a past champion here, coming back here, it still feels like a Western Open to me even though it’s the BMW Championship. So it really doesn’t have a different feel to me except when you look around, you see a lot more white tents and BMW signs around.”

Rickie Fowler, who has already won in Chicago’s south suburbs, also comes in primed. The Ryder Cup selectee is on a high since Corey Pavin called him and said he’d be on the U.S. PGA team.

“It’s a ball-striker’s course,” Fowler said of Cog Hill. “I liked the layout. You’ve got to drive it well to look at a lot of these pins. The greens are going to be tough – they’re already a little bit firm. If I play well, it’s a lot easier than missing fairways and trying to get up-and-down all day.”

Fowler, who won at Olympia Fields Country Club in the Illinois Invitational while at Oklahoma State, will be easy to find on Sunday. He’ll be the guy dressed in head-to-toe orange, an ode to his days as a Cowboy.

The third likely contender is Luke Donald, Chicago’s very own European Ryder Cupper. The Northwestern graduate tied for second at TPC Boston, jumping from 17th to fifth place in the point standings. If he stays fifth or improves his placing, he can win the FedEx Cup and the $10 million bonus that goes with it by winning at East Lake. That gives him two things to shoot for this week, but he said he’ll focus only on one.

“I’ll just approach this just like any other tournament, playing holes the best way I think will create as many birdie opportunities for me,” Donald said. “This week is no different than others. If I have a chance to win, I’ll be concentrated on winning the tournament. I certainly won’t be looking at where I am on the FedEx Cup. I know if I play well, hopefully I can keep that position or improve on it.”

There are 66 other players in the field, and no cut, so a bad first round doesn’t necessarily knock a player out of an opportunity to win on Sunday.

Given the quality on the tour, anyone in the field can win, even an unknown like Tom Gillis, who played in the 2005 Western, missing the cut, and couldn’t even stick on the Nationwide Tour, the PGA Tour’s version of Triple A baseball, a couple of years ago. But he went to the Gateway Tour, began to win, and made it all the way back.

“I thought I was going to make a comeback, but do you really know how far you’re going to get?” the 42-year-old Gillis said. “Are you going to get this far? I don’t know. I still feel like I’ve got farther to go. I still know for a fact and I believe in my heart I can win out here. It’s very gratifying.

“I’m humbled that I’m this far, and I still think I can go farther, but I’m excited.”

Gillis said one other thing, sounding exactly like Tiger Woods when he did.

“Why would you play if you didn’t think you could win?” Gillis said. “I thought I could, and I still think I can.”

It’s hard not to like a Tom Gillis. He’ll be on the 10th tee with Brian Davis at 8:10 a.m. Thursday.

Missing in action I

It’s been a while since only one of the reigning major champions has been in the field at Cog Hill, but that’s the case this week. Only Phil Mickelson – who wore his green jacket from winning The Masters at a Krispy Kreme drive through the morning after triumph No. 3 at Augusta National – is playing. Graeme McDowell (U.S. Open), Louis Oosthuizen (British Open) and Martin Kaymer (PGA Championship) are European Tour regulars and nowhere near Cog Hill.

Lee Westwood, the fifth-leading money winner on the PGA Tour this year, is also absent. Despite winning $3,399,954, he doesn’t get a spot because, like McDowell, Oosthuizen and Kaymer, he’s not a PGA Tour member. His earnings are listed only on the non-member page of the money list.

Missing in action II

Phil Mickelson’s absence from the 48th Chick Evans Memorial Pro-Am was announced in advance, but only Wednesday did the PGA Tour announce how Mickelson wiggled out of it. The announcement, in full:

“A top 30 player (prior year money or FEC) has the ability to elect out of the Pro-Am up to 2 times per year, which Phil Mickelson did at Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard and The Deutsche Bank Championship. In this instance, Mickelson was ‘shifted’ out at the request of the BMW Championship to perform an event in lieu of his Pro-Am participation – in both a shift and elect, it has to be mutually agreeable by both parties and approved by the TOUR.”

So this was a shift, not an elect, for whatever that’s worth. Mickelson tees off at 12:50 p.m. Thursday, starting on the 10th tee,

Around Dubsdread

It took a $9,000 donation to the Evans Scholars Foundation to play in this year’s Pro-Am. With all 156 spots filled, and assuming no giveaways, that’s $1,404,000 into the coffers of the caddies-to-college program the Western Golf Association has promoted since 1923. That could account for more than half this week’s tournament take, given the high expenses associated with putting on the elaborate show at Cog Hill. ... Corporate suite sales are up about 10 percent this year, but individual advance ticket sales are down slightly, WGA CEO John Kazckowski said. A good walkup week, which could happen with good weather forecast and the potential of a star-studded leader board, and the WGA could exceed the $1.6 million it cleared from the Western in 2009. That compares to $2.4 million at Cog Hill in 2007, the first year the renamed Western was played in September rather than July, and $3.3 million at Bellerive Country Club, near St. Louis, in 2008.

– Tim Cronin

Hoffman, on high, unperturbed at missing Ryder Cup

Writing from Lemont, Illinois
Tuesday, September 7, 2010

There was a school of thought late Monday afternoon that believed Charley Hoffman deserved the last spot on the U.S PGA’s Ryder Cup team, so overwhelming was the 62 he posted to win the PGA Tour playoff tournament at TPC Boston.

American captain Corey Pavin, selecting the last four spots on the team, thought not. He went with winless Rickie Fowler, along with Tiger Woods, Stewart Cink and Zach Johnson.

Hoffman also thought not.

“No disappointment,” Hoffman said Tuesday. “Really, the Ryder Cup I had all year to play my way onto the team, and when you leave it up to the captain’s pick, you can’t be disappointed, because you have your chance to earn your spot.

“If I was maybe No. 9 or 10 like Anthony Kim, something like that, I might be disappointed, but I wasn’t really even on the radar.”

Woods’ selection was because of his career, plus reasonably good showings in the first two playoff tournaments. Major championship winners Cink and Johnson have Ryder Cup experience – Cink on the last five teams, Johnson the last two. While Johnson is the only one of the four to have won this year – at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Tex. – Fowler was the surprise, at least to those thinking Kim or Lucas Glover had a shot.

“It just came down to feelings,” Pavin said at the announcement at the sandbagger’s haven, the New York Stock Exchange. “I had a gut feeling about Rickie.”

Ben Crenshaw had a feeling about the final day of play at The Country Club when he was captain, and the U.S. team came from well back to triumph. If Fowler does better than break even in his matches, Pavin will be vindicated.

Fowler is the second Tour career winless player, joining Jeff Overton, and fifth Ryder Cup rookie on the PGA of America squad. The European Tour team has six rookies. That leads to the thought that there will be plenty of players throwing up, to use an indelicate golf term, on the first tee of Celtic Manor in Wales come October 1.

One thing Fowler has in his favor is confidence in match play. He was 7-1 across two Walker Cups, the U.S. vs. Great Britain and Ireland amateur match.

“I do think I could bring some energy,” Fowler said at Cog Hill, taking a break from preparations for the 107th Western Open, a.k.a. the BMW Championship. “That’s one thing I would like to do ... keeping the guys fired up and keeping that main goal (of winning) in mind.

“Coming off two Walker Cups, I feel I can help the team. Early on (this season), I wasn’t even thinking about the Ryder Cup. I came in this year trying to get my card for next year. I played well enough early on to work my way up a little bit the points list, and played well enough to start to think about it.”

The selection of Woods, Pavin said, wasn’t locked in until the weekend, when the 17-time major winner, winless since the accident that triggered scandalous revelations of his off-course behavior and a divorce from wife Elin, closed at TPC Boston with three rounds in the 60s.

“I didn’t want to burden myself overthinking this, so I waited and waited and waited,” Pavin said. “Obviously, I was pleased to see him playing better.”

Hoffman on a high

Charley Hoffman’s big finish at the Deutsche Bank Championship moved him to No. 2 in the FedEx Cup standings, and guarantees him a place in the Tour Championship in two weeks (there’s an off week between BMW’s $7.5 million frolic at Cog Hill and the grand finale – which itself precedes not only the Ryder Cup, but five more weeks of the season).

“For me there’s much more excitement (with the playoffs) this year,” Hoffman said with a grin. “I think last year was pretty cool. Heath (Slocum) came out of nowhere last year and won (the Barclays). I think my win was a little unexpected to vault up, and I think that’s sort of what the Tour wanted with this playoff system.”

This is the first year that the points system hasn’t been tweaked. The top five in the standings, which will be reset after Sunday’s final round, will be able to win the big title, and the $10 million bonus that goes with it, if they win at East Lake. For everyone else in the field of 30, more complicated math will be involved.

Hoffman, who entered last week 59th in the standings, made his math a lot easier.

“At the beginning of the year, it was a bad year,” Hoffman said. “I battled a wrist injury early in the year, tried to play through it, then had to take five weeks off during Florida, didn’t touch a club. It’s been pretty good since then.”

Hoffman contended at Quail Hollow and the Players Championship until Sunday afternoon. Memories of his stumbles then have been replaced in his mind by Monday’s 62, and a trophy to go with the $1.35 million he made.

Kuchar on the march

Thirteen years ago, almost to the day, Matt Kuchar captured the 97th U.S. Amateur on Dubsdread. This course is longer now, stiffened by Rees Jones’ renovation two years ago. And Kuchar, after a long incubation as a professional, has blossomed into a consistent player. His win in the first Tour’s playoff tournament, the Barclays at Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey a fortnight ago, showed his improvement in closing the deal over the last 12 months.

“Last year I was hoping to make the top 30,” Kuchar said of his tie for 10th in last year’s Western. “I had an outside chance.”

He didn’t make it last year, but stands first in the FedEx Cup standings thanks to the win at Ridgewood, and thus is a lock for East Lake.

“There seems to be a lot more interest in my personal space than I remember,” Kuchar said.

He sees Dubsdread as “meaner” since Jones’ renovation, which cost the Jemsek family $5.2 million but still hasn’t brought a U.S. Open nod from the United States Golf Association.

“It seems more punishing and more penalizing,” Kuchar said. “It was my first year with the changes. In ’97, at the Amateur, it was tough. It was certainly no pushover. It was a hard golf course. I think it’s much harder now.”

A full day of golf

In a change from the past three years, the field will be spilt in half in the first two rounds, with the morning flight beginning at 8 a.m., and the afternoon flight at high noon. Play will also be in twosomes. That answers critics who said that packing the field of 70 players into an approximately seven-hour window left fans who couldn’t make the morning or afternoon-only play without an option. Now, there’s an option.

Thursday, for instance, Matt Kuchar and Charley Hoffman start on No. 10 at 8:50 a.m., while Tiger Woods is paired with K.J. Choi on No. 1 at 1:10 p.m. The two flights play at opposite hours on Friday.

Saturday, however, NBC’s demands mean an early finish, preferably before the Michigan-Notre Dame football game commences just after 2:30 p.m. So all hands will go off in the morning, with threesomes off No. 1 and No. 10.

Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman, the lone native Illinoisan in the field of 70, plays with Rickie Fowler, starting on No. 1 at 8:20 a.m. Thursday, while adopted Illinoisan Luke Donald is paired with Martin Laird and opens on No. 10 at 8:40 a.m. Thursday.

Previous Western Open champions Stephen Ames and Scott Verplank go off No. 1 at 9:20 a.m. Other previous winners in the field include Woods, Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker and Robert Allenby.

Around Dubsdread

Departing only slightly from form, Tiger Woods has a 7:20 a.m. date with his pro-am partners on Wednesday morning. The 48th Chick Evans Memorial Pro-Am starts at 7 a.m., with Matt Kuchar on No. 1 and Charlie Hoffman on No. 10. Woods follows Jason Day on No. 1. Conspicuous by his absence is Phil Mickelson, who for the second straight week will be entertaining a sponsor at dinner, which the PGA Tour allows in lieu of a pro-am round. Mickelson has been a harsh critic of the Tour’s disqualification of Jim Furyk from the first playoff tournament because he missed his tee time by about five minutes. Mickelson also dined with sponsors rather than play a pro-am round last week, days after the Tour revised the penalty, since the entire field doesn’t play in the pro-am. For the younger set, Rory McIlroy starts on No. 10 at 8:20 a.m., followed by Rickie Fowler 10 minutes later. ... High winds limited practice rounds on Tuesday. Matt Kuchar only played five holes, stopping since he was hitting far different clubs into holes than he normally would. “You hit a lot more specialty shots than normal shots,” Kuchar said. The winds also required a four-man crew to reinforce the windward side of the main press tent.

– Tim Cronin