Mickelson, Bradley go AWOL

    Round 3 Notebook

    Writing from Cherry Hills Village, Colorado
    Saturday, September 6, 2014

    Before Morgan Hoffman came along and carpet-bombed Cherry Hills Country Club with birdies for a course-record 62, the morning talk at the BMW Championship was the surprising leave-taking of Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley. The duo, a likely Ryder Cup pairing, withdrew for totally different reasons before play began.
    Mickelson, 6-over and 14 strokes off the pace, said he needed rest. He cleaned out his locker on Friday night, but his departure wasn’t revealed until the morning.
    The bigger shocker came at about 9 a.m., when the WD sign went up next to Bradley’s name on the scoreboard. And the reason behind it is amazing.
    Bradley, 3-over after 36 holes, decided a favorable ruling he received from the PGA Tour on an embedded ball near the 18th green on Thursday, and one confirmed by PGA Tour rules chief Slugger White on Friday, was incorrect, and pulled out of the tournament.
    In doing so, he probably lost any shot at advancing to next week’s Tour Championship, which takes the top 30 in the season point standings. Bradley was 28th entering this week and will probably fall out of the eligibles.
    “I just feel withdrawing is the right thing to do to protect the field in the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship next week,” Bradley said. “It’s eating me alive.”
    It was the chain of events, more than the ruling, that nagged at Bradley. His 233-yard 4-iron third shot embedded in the steep grass face above the left bunker fronting the green. Under Rule 25-2, Bradley took relief for a ball embedded in its pitch mark. He chipped on and two-putted for a double-bogey 6.
    However, he didn’t ask Stuart Appleby or Justin Rose, the other players in his group, to look as the ball, which is customary. He did call for a roving rules official after making the drop, who said he was in the clear.
    He was in the scoring room for a longer-than-usual amount of time on Thursday. At some point Thursday, a fan told he he saw the ball bounce before coming to rest. Bradley then went to White before play on Friday. They went back to the spot, and White confirmed that Bradley didn’t violate a rule.
    That still wasn’t enough for the 2012 PGA Champion.
    “I didn’t call my fellow competitors for help in the first place and that bothers me,” Bradley said in a statement released by his agent. “I know the official approved the drop but I just can’t be absolutely sure it was the right spot.”
    That decision cost Bradley whatever prize money he was going to earn this week, and, presuming he’s out of the top 30, a shot at the $10 million bonus for the FedEx Cup champion and the slice of the regular purse money in Atlanta.
    In other words, a decision that could cost Bradley over $11 million.
    But his pillow will be soft tonight.
    Mickelson’s presumably will be as well, though his departure was more self-serving. With little chance to win and without a berth in the Tour Championship, Mickelson said he was going home to rest up for the Ryder Cup. Similar to how the Baltimore Colts left for Indianapolis, Mickelson left under cover of darkness. This was released by his PR people after midnight:
    “My primary goal is to rest and prepare for the Ryder Cup. Without a chance to contend at the Tour Championship, the most important thing for me now is to prepare for the Ryder Cup.”
    Never mind that there were probably more than a few people in Saturday’s big crowd who traipsed out to Cherry Hills, parked in a muddy lot, rode a shuttle, walked through 150 yards of cattle pen-style fencing and a showroom-sized display of BMW cars and motorcycles before seeing the golf course, who fully expected to see Phil Mickelson.
    Bradley had a crisis of conscience. Mickelson was selfish. Two more days of golf weren’t going to kill him. The Ryder Cup is three weekends away. He would have been well-rested.

    McIlroy pulls a Seve

    Once upon a four-putt, Seve Ballesteros explained his gaffe thusly: “I mees, I mees, I mees, I make.”
    Rory McIlroy could have said as much on Saturday, when he missed the green at the par-3 12th hole, chipped to 4 feet 9 inches, and four-putted for a triple-bogey 6.
    What? The world No. 1 suddenly looking like the world No. 1,000,000?
    “The 12th hole just really derailed me,” McIlroy said. “The first two putts I didn’t lose any concentration. I took my time over them. I just completely misread the first one. Then just hit a bad putt the second, and then the third one I was just going for a tap-in and just lost concentration.”
    He finished with a 2-over 72 for 4-under 206 and is nine back of leader Billy Horschel with a round to play. Arnold Palmer was seven back and won the 1960 U.S. Open on the same course.
    “I just need to go out tomorrow and try to post a low one and finish as high as possible (to) give myself the best possible chance going into Atlanta next week,” McIlroy said.

    Around Cherry Hills

    Looking for a lurker going into the final round? Check those tied for seventh, eight strokes back to 5-under 205: Jim Furyk (a former winner and author of a 59 at Conway Farms last year), Jordan Spieth (winless since last year’s John Deere Classic), and Graham DeLeat. ... Hunter Mahan is 19 strokes off the pace, but he’s a lock to advance to the Tour Championship, and the only player on the circuit who will have played in all 32 playoff tournaments since the format began in 2007. Mickelson and Steve Stricker’s streaks of making the Tour Championship each year of the playoff era have ended ... Bubba Watson and Patrick Reed drove the first green on Saturday, each making birdie. ... With Mickelson and Bradley off the premises, there are 16 Ryder Cup players left in the field, 10 U.S. and six Europeans. Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson, at 8-under 202, lead that group.
    – Tim Cronin

Garcia moves to the top

    Writing from Cherry Hills Village, Colorado
    Friday, September 5, 2014

    There was a time when the slightest disturbance could get Sergio Garcia off his game. He was the walking realization of P.G. Wodehouse’s character flummoxed by the flapping of butterfly wings in the adjacent meadow.
    Garcia is that person no longer. Because he is not, he’s in the lead after two rounds of the BMW Championship – ye olde Western Open, if you will – at Cherry Hills Country Club.
    The proof of Garcia’s shedding of the rabbit ears came on the 18th green. Garcia had scrambled to save par on the par-5 17th after dunking his second, and, after a solid drive and approach, stood on the edge of the 18th green with an opportunity to wrest the lead from Ryan Palmer. He was over the ball, giving the line on his 22-foot putt a first look, when someone on the balcony of the BMW luxury suite behind the green dropped a glass.
    Garcia backed off and looked up. Once upon a time, he would also have imitated a volcano.
    Instead, with Mount Sergio dormant, he got back to business, lined up again, and rolled the birdie putt home for a 6-under-par 64 and a two-day aggregate of 8-under-par 132, a stroke ahead of Palmer, who posted a 64 a few minutes earlier.
    Need more evidence? How about an eardrum popping when he was on the sixth green, elevation 5,360 feet?
    “It obviously helped, because I made a 2 on the next (the par-4 seventh),” Garcia kidded. “It was uncomfortable for five or six holes. First I heard a popping sound. It’s happened before, but it didn’t feel quite the same as before and still doesn’t. I was uncomfortable for five or six hole.”
    One ear banging away, Garcia holed a full lob wedge from 128 yards for his deuce eagle on the seventh, and after a bogey on the eighth, birdied the 12th and 13th to move to 6-under. Birds at the 16th and 18th, the latter after the balcony clatter, set his final score.
    But a 132, a stroke higher than the halfway-point total for the last three Western / BMWs, doesn’t satisfy Garcia, a tough judge.
    “I need to feel like I played better,” Garcia said. “I didn’t play bad, don’t get me wrong. But I played better at the British Open and at Bridgestone.”
    Not because he doesn’t stand a chance to win the tournament, or win the playoff pot o’gold next week at East Lake. But because the Big One in his eyes, the Ryder Cup, is less than a month distant.
    “The $10 million (for winning the FedEx Cup), that’s obviously a bonus,” Garcia said. “At the PGA and the Barclays, I hit some great shots. I want to build momentum and be where I need to be for the Ryder Cup. That’s the most important thing to me.”
    The cast in pursuit of Garcia, who has two top nines in this affair, is a blue-riband group. Palmer, his 64 highlighted by a second eagle in as many days, is the aforementioned stroke back. Rory McIlroy is two back at 6-under 134 after a second straight 67, highlighted by three birdies in the last four holes. Billy Horschel, the Cinderella runner-up last week in Boston, joins him there.
    And look who’s in a tie for fifth: That old belter himself, Bubba Watson, whose 4-under 66 puts him at 4-under 136 at the halfway point. Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson are in a gaggle at 3-under 137.
    Palmer hit only three fairways – Garcia only hit five – en route to his 64. That’s where the softer conditions paid off.
    “You could play from the rough a lot,” Palmer said. “I had a lot of wedges out of the rough. Balls were even stopping and spinning back out of the rough. I drew a lot of good lies.”
    Palmer’s eagle at No. 7, a 396-yard test, came via a 30-yard pitch. He holed birdie putts of 13 and 7 feet on the last two holes to finish with a flourish.
    Thanks to the tightly bunched field after the first round – 49 players were within five strokes – the top of the scoreboard featured more changes than a Broadway star’s wardrobe. That Garcia is the man standing at the top when the dinner bell rang is impressive. Now, he has to break his bad run of surrendering 36-hole leads. He’s 1-for-9 converting that into victory, with only the 2001 Buick Classic a success.
    “You could be a little more aggressive today,” Garcia said, noting the softer greens courtesy of the half-inch overnight rain made the putting surfaces more receptive. “It played longer and the breeze made it more challenging.”
    The cool temperatures – it never got higher than 64 degrees – negated the distance advantage heat gives a well-struck shot, but the altitude edge was still there. That made for some educated guesses on approaches, not all of them good.
    “You don’t really look at the yardage ... (you) take off 10 percent,” Watson said. “It’s roughly 7,000 yards if you do that. If you look at it that way, it’s a lot shorter than a normal course we play.”
    Watson said he was trying to hit different shots off the tees, then backtracked and said he was hitting drivers “as hard as I can so it gets way down there.”
    Some things never change.
    – Tim Cronin

Softer greens equal lower scores

    Round 2 Notebook

    Writing from Cherry Hills Village, Colorado
    Friday, September 5, 2014

    From trampolines to pin cushions.
    That’s how the condition of the greens at Cherry Hills Country Club changed from Thursday to Friday. A shot that would bound in the air like a Super Ball in the first round hugged the turf and spun back in the second round.
    Henrik Stenson was the first to find out when he watched his approach shot react on the ninth green in the storm-delayed conclusion of the first round. It hit 12 feet short of the cup. Then the adventure began.
    “I had a lovely 8-iron in,” Stenson said. “Yesterday we couldn’t stop the balls, really. Now with the rain, it spun back 35 feet to short of the green there. That was a bit of a tough start.
    “Then I whacked the first putt seven feet by and left a tricky little downhill putt. I managed to trickle it in. So I got away with it.”
    Stenson expected better overall scoring from the field, and was correct. The first round average was 71.116, over a stroke over par. The second round average, a bit more than a stroke less, was 70.059. That had much more to do with the conditioning than the slightly lesser yardage (7,301 for Round 1, compared to 7,259 for Round 2).
    He contributed to the better numbers with a 1-under 69 that leaves him five adrift of leader Sergio Garcia with two rounds to play.

    A 67 with a difference

    Top-ranked Rory McIlroy added a second 3-under 67 to his resume on Friday, but it was hardly like Thursday’s effort.
    He hit three more fairways (10 rather than seven), took as many more putts (30 rather tha 27), and still put the number up, with birdies on three of the last four holes making it happen.
    “It’s amazing what a different finish to a round can do,” McIlroy said. “I tried not to get too frustrated, even though ... I was stuck in neutral for most of the day.”
    McIlroy sank a 27-footer for a birdie 2 on the 15th, a 34-footer for a birdie 3 on the 16th, and two-putted for a birdie 4 on the island-green 17th after slashing his approach shot out of the rough from 223 yards, clearing the moat and landing 40 feet from the cup.
    “I hit a 6-iron and I was in-between a 5 and a 6,” McIlroy said. “I just went with a hard 6 and gave J.P. (caddie J.P. Fitzgerald) a look. I thought it was a little bit shorter than what it was.
    “He gets that look a lot.”

    Back knocks Day out

    Almost always with golfers, it’s the back, and that was the case on Friday for Jason Day. In contention in the first two weeks of the playoffs, Day arrived at Cherry Hills with a strained lower back. He scored even-par 70 on Thursday, and was just 3-over through eight holes on Friday, but pulled out after bogeys on the sixth and eighth holes.
    He underwent treatment in the PGA Tour’s scoring trailer for about an hour after pulling out, and remains hopeful to play in the Tour Championship next week at East Lake.

    Around Cherry Hills

    Rory McIlroy and Graham DeLeat drove the first green on Friday. McIlroy parred, DeLeat birdied. Two players have driven the green each day, with the quartet 4-under on those four drives. ... Phil Mickelson may have won the 1990 U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills, but you can’t tell it from this week. He fired a 76 on Friday and is at 6-over 146 at the halfway point. ... Ryan Moore rebounded from Thursday’s 80 with a 1-under 69. ... If this was a few months ago, McIlroy would have a major distraction on Sunday. Former fiancee Caroline Wozniacki advanced to the U.S. Open tennis finals on Friday. The championship match against Serena Williams is Sunday afternoon. Wozniacki is 1-8 against Williams, but has been playing her best tennis of the year since McIlroy got cold feet after the wedding invitations had been mailed. ... Thursday’s half-inch rainfall jumbled the parking situation, but it didn’t appear to dampen the enthusiasm of the gallery. Many people were bussed in from Mile High Stadium. Those lots can be used Saturday, but not Sunday, when the Broncos host Indianapolis in the evening. A pair of large church lots will also be unavailable.
    – Tim Cronin

A tale of the first tee, first green, and first golfer

    Writing from Cherry Hills Village, Colorado
    Thursday, September 4, 2014

    Rare is the golf course where the first hole is the most talked about of the 18.
    Cherry Hills Country Club is that course, thanks to Arnold Daniel Palmer and one mighty smote in the June heat of 1960.
    From his perch at 5,411 feet, Palmer drove the first green, 346 yards distant and 42 feet downhill. He two-putted for birdie, shot 65, made up seven strokes on Mike Souchak, outbattled Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus, and won the United States Open Championship.
    So, yes, the first hole gets one’s attention. That was the case Thursday morning, when wise golf fans young and old happened to gather at the green to see who, if anyone, would be able to duplicate Palmer’s feat.
    Put it this way: If it was easy, anyone could do it.
    It isn’t. And in the first round of the BMW Championship, many tried, but only a pair of players could match the King.
    One, fittingly, was named Palmer. Ryan Palmer, unrelated to the great man himself, plopped his tee shot on the 346-yard hole 28 feet from the cup, and, trumping Arnie, made the putt for an eagle 2. Charley Hoffman, in the group before, also managed to make hit drive hold on the Fiberglas-fast putting surface, but settled for par.
    Palmer and Hoffman were the only two in the field of 69 to do so.
    Top-ranked Rory McIlroy, whose sparkling start pushed him briefly to the outright lead in this 111th edition of what traditionalists call the Western Open, did not. His 3-wood landed in the right rough, and he chipped close for an easy birdie putt.
    Bubba Watson also missed the target. His wayward drive to the right hit a member of the gallery hard enough for the impact to be heard on the other side of the green. He signed a ball for the wounded fan, then lofted a delicate chip that stopped 11 feet from the cup and sank that for a birdie 3.
    This is the first time the Palmer Tee is being used regularly in a big tournament here since that 1960 Open. The USGA went farther back to a new tee for the 1978 U.S. Open, won by Andy North, and the PGA did the same for the 1985 PGA Championship, which Hubert Green captured. So full marks to the WGA and PGA Tour for both nodding to tradition and creating excitement right from the start of the round.
    The end of the round found McIlroy, from the green fields of Northern Ireland, in a trio tied for the lead at 3-under-par 67 with two fellows who hail from not far from here: Jordan Spieth of Texas and Gary Woodland of Kansas. One stroke back and sitting on the right side of the fairway on the par-4 ninth when play was called for the day because of lightning at 5:51 p.m. Mountain Time is Henrik Stenson, the smooth Swede. He’s the one player among the nine at 2-under yet to sign his scorecard. Nine players in all weren’t able to finish.
    That the scoring wasn’t lower was a surprise to some, but shouldn’t have been. This William Flynn-designed layout, recently refurbished by Tom Doak, has stout architectural defenses, as those who played for the first green discovered. Add in fast fairways, faster greens, and wiry three-inch rough, and it’s precision more than power that sets a player up for a good score.
    McIlroy’s scorecard was al but oblivious of the difficulty. He reached 5-under and was cruising until his 16th hole, the par-4 seventh, when his approach landed in a grassy depression, his third bounded over the green into a bunker, and he failed to save par. Another bogey followed on the par-3 eighth.
    “I was a bit frustrated,” McIlroy admitted. “It’s fairly tricky out there. Low scores are hard to come by; 67s a really good start.
    “The fairways are firm, so even when you hit irons and fairway woods off the tee, they’re running out of the fairway. And the greens have gotten a lot harder in the last 24 hours. You’re having to land shot a good 10-15 yards before you intended to.”
    McIlroy figured out enough to run down five birdies in his first 12 holes, including three in succession starting at his 10th, the famed first.
    “It’s playing a little bit like a U.S. Open,” McIlroy said. “Not quite as difficult as that, but thick rough and firm greens. That’s what they need to keep the scoring the way it is.”
    It was McIlroy’s first exposure to Cherry Hills, but Spieth was here two years ago, playing in the U.S. Amateur. He was bounced in the first round of match play, but loved the place, and still does after his six-birdie, three-bogey round.
    “It’s nice to stay with the same family I stayed with back then,” Spieth said. “I kind of feel I’m back at a U.S. Amateur or college event this week. This is one of the few events where I may have more experience than a lot of the guys. I’ll take that mental attitude the next few days.”
    Woodland, who averaged 343 yards off the tee, essentially made his score on the back nine, the tougher and longer of the nines, then hung on. He was 4-under through his 12th, bogeyed the par-4 fourth, then parred in.
    “The greens, they’re concrete out there,” Woodland said. “If we don’t get any rain it can be pretty interesting by the weekend.”
    A few drops fell late in the round, and there was more rain expected overnight, but not enough to make the course anything close to easy.
    “A lot of the fairways were difficult to hit,” said Sergio Garcia, in the 2-under gaggle. “It played very, very firm and you had to be really on to score well.”
    Canadian Graham DeLeat is in the group at 68 after sitting at 3-under down the stretch, and noted one more thing that might have contributed to the clustering of scores close to par.
    “It was a quick week,” DeLeat said, noting the Monday finish in Boston. “I think probably not anyone had the same preparation they normally would have, especially for such a big event. I guess we’re all kind of in the same boat.”
    When play was halted, 21 players were under par and another six, including Watson, Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson, were at even par 70. If Cherry Hill’s usual par of 72 was in effect, 44 players would have beaten the standard.
    Of the leaders, Woodland’s story is the most intriguing. He’s 29th in the point standings, and only the top 30 advance to next weekend’s jackpot in Atlanta. McIlroy is second, Spieth ninth, and sitting pretty. Woodland, along with Stenson, needs a fast finish to play on.
    “The goal is to move up as far as you can, be in the top 5 going into next week,” Woodland said.
    A high finish would make that happen.
    “I’m still trying to win this thing,” Woodland said.
    The tournament? The pot of gold at the end of next week? Yes and yes. This is professional golf, after all.
    – Tim Cronin

Back to Crooked Stick in 2016

    Writing from Cherry Hills Village, Colorado
    Thursday, September 4, 2014

    Presuming the club’s membership votes approval, the WGA will take the BMW Championship back to Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., in 2016.
    Multiple sources say only the formality of the vote, expected soon, is preventing an announcement by the club, the WGA and BMW.
    Rory McIlroy won the 2012 edition there, one played across three days of rain, an evening downpour, and four days of “lift, clean and place,” But the sour weather did not deter Indianapolis golf fans from turning out in big numbers, with about 146,000 turning out over seven days, about three times the full-week turnout of 49,000 for the 2001 finals at Cog Hill.
    Even as that tournament was winding down, plans were being drawn to return to Crooked Stick eventually. At that time, a source with the club indicated that after a long string of championship golf, including the 2005 Solheim Cup and 2009 U.S. Senior Open, the membership wanted a few years off from the grind of hosting a tournament, which includes construction and deconstruction of everything from merchandise pavilions to TV towers.
    That break will apparently be only four years.
    The original plan was for the old Western Open to go even farther west than Colorado in 2016. The PGA Tour’s contract with San Francisco called for a playoff tournament at Harding Park Golf Course by 2016. The BMW was to have been that tournament, but the Tour recently signed a new deal with the city that changed the terms, placing the Presidents Cup and other baubles in San Francisco. That allows the WGA, which last visited San Francisco for the 1956 Western Open at the Presidio, to stay closer to home.
    Until that deal was struck, the notion was that the WGA and Crooked Stick would pair up for 2018. Now that date is in play. Given the massive outpouring of support at Cherry Hills both in terms of corporate support and regular fans – ticket sales were held to about 28,000 a day, with weekly badges and individual tickets for Sunday a sellout – it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to see if the club would want to host again four years from now. Evans Scholar alum George Solich sitting on the club’s board gives the WGA an in, one would think.
    The BMW is in Chicagoland in odd-numbered years, and that means Conway Farms Golf Club for 2015 and the foreseeable future. It’s not the test that either Crooked Stick or Cherry Hills is, but, like those two clubs, it’s located in a tony area filled with rich people who might be induced into buying a BMW. Conway is signed only for 2015, but, in the process of completing a tweak to several greens and rebuilding its range, it’s the logical place among clubs on the north shore.
    Speaking of Conway, tickets for the 2015 BMW, slated for Sept. 17-20, go on sale Monday at the www.bmwchampionshipusa.com website.

    Bubba being Bubba

    As long as it’s not a long-driving contest at the PGA Championship, Gerry Watson Jr. – or do you call him Bubba? – loves to swing the driver. Hard.
    That was the case on Thursday. Aided by the mile-high-plus location, Watson hammered five drives of over 350 yards, the longest a 371-yard flight on the 526-yard par-4 fifth hole. He had 155 yards left, and bogeyed.
    He bombed his drive on the par-5 17th 360 yards and had 182 yards in. He birdied.
    Overall, Watson hit half the 14 fairways and 11 greens en route to his even-par 70. But nobody, except maybe the person belted by his green-high drive on the first hole, went away unhappy.

    Around Cherry Hills

    It was a tough day for Winfield native Kevin Streelman, the only Illinois native in the field. He fired a 5-over-par 75 punctuated by a double-bogey at the par-4 13th, part of a four-hole stretch where he lost five strokes to par. That shoved him into a tie for 64th, with only Patrick Reed (77) and Ryan Moore (a birdie-free 80) behind him. ... The purse of $8 million awards $1.44 million to the winner, the same as the last two years. Actually, with only 69 players, the last (70th) place money of $16,000 is not on offer. ... Members of the Cherry Hills tournament committee wear bright blue blazers with logo patches worthy of a bowl game. Maybe it’s because John Elway is a prominent member. ... Friday’s tee times are unchanged. The nine players remaining to finish because of the lightning will start at 11 a.m.
    – Tim Cronin