2009 Open Championship Clippings, 36-hole Edition

The ledes sum up a wild and wacky day at Turnberry.

Mark Reason in the Telegraph:

Tom Watson was supposed to be a one-day wonder, an old vaudeville act with a limited run, but here he was on the 18th green high-kicking his way to a share of the lead of the Open Championship.

Lawrence Donegan in The Guardian:

The dream continues for Tom Watson but not for Tiger Woods – two giants of the game whose paths diverged on a dramatic day at Turnberry that saw the wind rise, the scores soar and the Ailsa course take revenge on her tormentors.

Doug Ferguson for the AP:

Tom Watson leading the British Open heading to the weekend?

Tiger Woods gassing up the plane and heading for home?

Treacherous Turnberry delivered a pair of shockers Friday.

Mark Lamport-Stokes filing for Reuters:

The British Open's renowned unpredictability with its vagaries of weather was sharply highlighted on Friday when Tom Watson, 59, tied for the lead and world number one Tiger Woods missed the cut.

Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail:

For two days this 138th Open Championship has resembled a reality television show, in which the two most famous men in the field who happen to share the same initials have agreed to swap roles.

James Corrigan in the Independent

It was the day Turnberry turned into a monster and did the unthinkable – it swallowed a Tiger.

Larry Dorman in the New York Times:

Time-worn themes and conventional wisdom about how to succeed in the 138th Open Championship shifted faster than the weather on the Ayrshire coast Friday, and the names on the leader board did the same.

Watson!

Graham Spiers on Watson's mid-round resurgence.

“Gaun yersel’, Tom!” a Scottish voice shouted as he strode briskly down a fairway. Watson, who thinks of himself as something of a mimic, often attempts a Scottish accent that comes out sounding Polish and he may not have understood that “gaun yersel’” is an Ayrshire cry of encouragement. But he smiled and accepted the acclaim in a way he has come to perfect over the past 35 years.

Bob Harig on Watson's round and his 18th hole celebratory leg kick:

Watson birdied the ninth and 11th holes, then added two long putts at the 16th and 18th holes that he estimated were each 60 feet in length, the last one getting a huge reaction from the chilled fans in the jammed bleachers and a celebratory hop and leg kick from Watson.

"That was my Scottish jig," he said.

Jay Coffin on the pep talk Sergio gave Watson mid-round. Yes, you read that right.

Marino!

Tim Rosaforte helps us get to know the man who had 22 putts, almost won at Colonial and will probably be off the radar by the end of Sunday's round. He also talks to Steve Sr. about how Steve Jr. got to this point.

Calc!

Cameron Morfit on the 1989 Champion:

Calcavacchia, whose wife, Brenda, is his caddie this week, has talked a lot about beer since he landed. After his first-round 67, when he hit 17 greens in regulation, he mentioned how much fun he's been having getting to know other players like Lucas Glover, Matt Kuchar and Boo Weekley in the Duel in the Sun Pub.

"The beer is very tasty," he said.

That's not something you hear much from today's robopros, but there's nothing like the almighty pint to ingratiate yourself with the locals. After his round Friday, Calcavecchia was asked if it's true he's been allowing himself the odd post-round libation. And how many is he allowing himself?

"Four seems to be a nice round figure," he said, eliciting laughter. "It's just enough, but it's not too many."

Tiger!

Bill Elliott in The Guardian:

Although he said later that he played "pretty bad at Winged Foot", the US Open of 2006, few who have marvelled at his play over the last decade and beyond could recall such a disastrous sortie across such an important arena.

Seven shots were dropped during this time, Woods's ball control suddenly absent in action, his usual focus also off somewhere. He looked alarmed during this dreary spell and no wonder for this was not just a big hiccup but may turn out to have been something more sinister.

What seems certain, given the perverse nature of this game, is that this run of bogey, bogey, double bogey, par, bogey, double bogey will have sown a small seed of doubt in even this player's mind.Wild swings, lost balls, fluffed pitches, disappointing putts are not this guy's usual ammunition but he showered this links with all this sort of stuff.

Gene Wojciechowski at ESPN.com:

Obligatory dumb post-round question: "What's next for you?"

Woods: "Well, go home, get something to eat. I'm really hungry right now."

He'll have plenty of time to chow down this weekend. Maybe even mow the yard. Play with the kids. Watch somebody else win the Open Championship, the same championship for which oddsmakers made him a 2-1 favorite.

There's no nice way of describing his first missed cut since the 2006 U.S. Open and only his sixth MC as a pro. Woods played semi-awful. Jimmy Fallon could have beaten him.

Nick Hoult in the Telegraph:

Having faltered in benign conditions on the Thursday, when his drives spilt left and right, Woods was conservative as he started his second round. It all felt rather flat as Woods played within himself on the first six holes. He didn't even lose his temper with the phalanx of photographers training their lenses on Woods' playing partner Ryo Ishikawa. Instead it was left to the spectators to vent their spleen on the snappers.

PGATour.com documents his missed cuts in PGA Tour events. It's not a long list.

Rex Hoggard imagines what kind of text Tiger will receive from Roger Federer and talks to a swing coach who chalks up the MC to the vagaries of links golf.

Matt Dickinson in The Times:

Another six followed at the 13th when Woods hit his approach over the back of the green. His chip bounded up the bank, but then rolled back down the slope. His next three shots were played with the resignation of a man who knew that, whatever he did in the next hour, he would not be adding to his tally of major titles.

He barely looked to see if his putts would roll left or right. For all he cared, they could trundle downhill all the way to the sea.

James Lawton following a similar theme in his Independent column:

The bewilderment re-doubled at the 12th when he bogeyed after finding a bunker from the tee and then there was another disaster at the 14th when he double-bogeyed again – this time after watching a chip from the right of the green slide back down the slope and then skitter further away from the hole.

It was at this point that a rare expression crossed the face of Tiger Woods. It wasn't anger, it wasn't concern, it wasn't even apprehension. It was disbelief. It was the sense that his world, all the certainties upon which he has built his fabulous reputation, were sliding away before his eyes.

And Steve Elling notes this:

With the breeze blowing, Woods put his 5-wood back in the bag before the round and ditched the 2-iron he used Thursday, but regardless of the ammo, he seemed to have trouble all week keeping the ball under the wind and hit several parachuting shots that sailed far afield. There were few, if any, trademark stingers, other than the slap in the face of going home early.

Others!

Oliver Brown on lurking Lee Westwood and Andy Farrell on Ross Fisher's chances along with the possibility of an early departure to be with his wife.

Thomas Bonk conducts a Q&A with Boo Weekley about life in Scotland.

Q: So it sounds like you're liking Scotland?

Boo: "Oh, yeah, Scotland's a pretty place. I mean, as long as it ain't raining."

Turnberry!

John Hopkins analyzes Friday's setup while defending the difficulty and he also quotes several players who felt there was an over reaction to Thursday's low scoring.

In that case, the aim was achieved yesterday. One player after another commented on the difficult positions in which the flagsticks were placed and suggested that perhaps the Royal and Ancient had determined that the low scoring of the first day would not be repeated.

“Every flag is in the toughest possible position,” Retief Goosen said. Padraig Harrington added: “No 14 was the first pin I thought was accessible. Every other one was pretty tough.”

John Daly said it was “brutal”, adding: “Pin placements were extremely tough. The way the wind was blowing, it was impossible to get at them.”

Justin Rose went farther. “Flag placements were bordering on the ridiculous,” he said. “I think they were trying to protect the golf course. The flags were opposite to where the wind was wanting to take the ball. I was fighting it all day. When the wind was from the left, the pins were cut on the left. When it was downwind, the pins were cut on the front, and when it was into the wind, the flags were at the back of the green.”

Sandy/Monty!

If you can't believe that Sandy rambled on about Monty even more as we noted here, I give you the video evidence courtesy of reader Lloyd.

In my favorite piece of the day, Brian Viner's effort is headlined: Monty overdoes the death stare as his game deserts him.

There is, in fact, more chance of Prince Charles designing a futuristic chrome office block with its plumbing on the outside. Photographers are a reviled species to Monty, who on the ninth tee took exception to a snapper lying prostrate and motionless in the official vantage point. Nobody else over the course of the first two days here had been troubled, as was intrepidly pointed out by a woman holding a "Quiet Please" sign. "It was all right for Tiger Woods yesterday," she dared to tell Monty. A scowl was her reward.

It remains one of the mysteries of golf that a man capable of such beguiling charm off the course can be so spectacularly charmless on it. Monty smashed his tee shot on the ninth into deep rough, so deep that at first neither he, his caddie, nor the marshals, could find it. The spectators watched the search sympathetically from the other side of the ropes.

Monty glared at them. "You can help if you'd like to," he said, the implication being that they didn't have to stand there being quite so useless. A few minutes later he galumphed off the green with a six on his card, and as he made his way to the next tee, a man called out, plainly in a spirit of encouragement rather than provocation, "Well done, Colin". Rather like a juggernaut, Montgomerie came to a juddering halt. His eyes bored into the hapless spectator. "I've just double-bogeyed the hole, mate," he snapped back. Rarely did anyone feel less like Monty's mate.

Attendance!

The poor attendance is festering into a story as a second day of empty stands caught Ewan Murray's eye. Ticket prices combined with Turnberry's location seem to be the issue.

There are, of course, a host of explanations for this year's poor turnout. The economic climate is widely blamed. Given an adult couple attending the Open for a day can expect little change out of £200 this will be a luxury many will simply choose to do without. Turnberry is also notoriously difficult to get to; even with new traffic measures in operation there were tales this morning of cars crawling 30 miles short of the course.

And based on these Forecaddie Tweets, it doesn't sound like the situation will be any better next year.

Notes!

Mark Soltau compiles the best quotes of the day while Sam Weinman and E. Michael Johnson tabulate the Birdies and Bogeys of the day, starting with a beauty involving bookie William Hill and Ian Poulter.

The Golfweek gang talks to Calc, James Driscoll, Padraig, Poulter and Josh Geary about their Open play.

Alan Shipnuck files random thoughts, including an announcement that he's off the Geoff Ogilvy bandwagon.

Doug Ferguson's AP notes include a look at the small crowds...outside the ropes and Aussie Daniel Gaunt (a Watson practice round playing partner).

Rich Lerner delivers Hooks and Cuts:

Watson was born in 1949. For context, other athletes born in 1949 include Mike Schmidt, Bill Buckner, Dusty Baker, hockey great Bobby Clarke, Joe Theisman, Ahmad Rashad and Dan Dierdorf. Imagine for a moment those guys still playing. And winning!

For two days this 138th Open Championship has resembled a reality television show, in which the two most famous men in the field who happen to share the same initials have agreed to swap roles.

And finally, I couldn't pick one of the Dan Jenkin's Tweets. It's a five-way tie in my view!

"Tiger Woods's nasty push into the burn on 16 is one of the worst shots I've seen him hit in a major. Ever."

Alan Shipnuck says that shot and his opening 71 add up to a "pretty ominous sign."

More importantly, Shipnuck notes this about his playing partner:

Round of the day might have been Ryo Ishikawa's 68, accomplished playing in front of his hero Tiger Woods and his nemeses--the hundred or so Japanese reporters that obsessively chronicle his every twitch. For his first spin around a true links course, to say nothing of the holy Open, the kid displayed admirable imagination and tremendous poise. Take that, Rory!

Bob Harig runs though the round highs and lows and the link also features video of Tiger's post round press conference.

For the day, he hit just 8 of 14 fairways, despite using mostly irons off tees. He did hit 12 of 18 greens and needed 30 putts.

Ian Chadband in the Telegraph offers a, uh, more detailed account of the round's saltier moments.

His confidence with the driver seemed so low that he used it just three times and found himself in the rough each time. Yet even his long irons from the tee let him down.

At the third, when he hoiked his drive left, he cried "Godammit!". On the 13th, when he ploughed one into a bank on the right of the fairway, the expletive was shorter and sharper.

Update on 2009-07-16 18:36 by Geoff

Jim McCabe on Lee Westwood and the circus surrounding the pairing:

“I can say a couple of times I stood off,” Westwood said, and for sure there were two moments when he shot an icy stare at the photographers. “But I didn’t play a shot where I wasn’t concentrating and wasn’t ready to play that shot.”

It was a head-scratcher when R&A officials announced the Woods-Ishikawa pairing. (Westwood was no surprise. After all, it’s the fourth time he’s been grouped with Woods in the opening two rounds of a major. Must be a “w” thing.) Woods easily commands the huge majority of camera and reporting interest no matter where he plays. Ishikawa? If he were paired with Happy Gilmore and Judge Smails the Japanese photographers would be out there three and four dozen strong.

So mixing the two media-magnets together, especially on a links golf course where so many of the pathways are narrow and demand slow, cautious travel . . . well, let’s just say that the R&A lads have made wiser decisions. (Of course, it must have thrilled the Japanese TV entity, but surely that’s a coincidence, no?)

Stevie Shedding His Bib

Sounds like a children's story, and in a sense, it is.

Bob Carney reports that Golf Digest/Golf World receives weekly letters like the two he posts about Woods bagman Steve Williams and his 18th hole bib-shedding act.

Carney says the tour doesn't really want to pick a fight with Stevie, and after this video, can you blame them?

"It seems the days of preparing by visiting Irish courses are a thing of the past"

Phillip Reid with some details about Tiger's pre-Open Championship preparation:

It seems the days of preparing by visiting Irish courses are a thing of the past, though this probably has more to do with his increased family commitments.

Instead, Woods intends to travel to the Scottish links on Saturday to get acquainted with the course. But he won’t be waiting until then before practising the type of shots he believes will be required if he is to reclaim the Claret Jug he last won in 2006.

To that end, his coach, Hank Haney, has been summoned to Woods’ home in Florida. What type of shots would they work on?

“Just making sure that you can flight your ball and making sure you can manoeuvre it both ways efficiently, because over there you don’t know what kind of weather you’re going to get,” Woods said.

“You’re going to get years like we had at St Andrews where it’s perfect, or you can get like a Muirfield day or what they had last year at Birkdale. You just don’t know, and you have to be able to be confident in controlling your golf ball and manoeuvring it all around and feel like you can do it efficiently.”

"He told me to stay positive, something like that"

I can't post much because I'm looking into two health stories related to the 2009 AT&T National final round. One involves reports of several suicide attempts after the second mesmerizingly depressing SPCA ad ran during the finale. The other involves the poor lad turning his back and bending over to avoid Anthony Kim's 18th hole drive, only to be plunked on the tush.

Meanwhile, Thomas Bonk, writing about Tiger Woods' win over rival-in-the-making Kim:

Kim dropped to third behind Mahan with a one-over 71. The way things were going, his most interesting shot of the day might have been his tee shot at the 18th, where the ball went so far off-line, it popped a fan on the derriere.

Woods and Kim shook hands before they got started and that's about as close as they got the rest of the day, unless you count the times they stood in the tee box together. Until they chatted while walking down the 18th fairway, they hadn't exchanged a word.

"He told me to stay positive, something like that," Kim said.

See how took those words to heart!

Kim chalked the whole thing up as a learning experience, sort of on-the-job training.

"I learned that if you have a birdie putt, you'd better make it, especially on the last day," Kim said. "Tiger obviously wins for a reason."

See, he doesn't miss a beat.

Two mind-boggling Tiger stats, courtesy of the PGA Tour's Mark Williams:

• Woods has now won 46 of 49 tournaments (94%) when leading/co-leading after 54-holes. The three he didn't win -- 1996 Quad City Open/T5, 2000/2004 THE TOUR Championship/2ndboth times.

• Woods has won 32 of 38 tournaments after holding the 36-hole lead/co-lead -- that's 84 percent.

Showdown With Woods Offers Kim Chance To Face His Hero And Ask How Many Majors He's Won

Doug Ferguson reports on Sunday's potentially exciting showdown between Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods, with background on Kim growing up idolizing Woods. But unlike Woods who committed every Jack Nicklaus record to memory, Anthony is still fuzzy on Tiger's history.

Actually, wouldn't it be fun if old geezer Michael Allen slipped in and won the thing?

"I want the rough up and the greens firms."

I skimmed Tiger's press conference yesterday in search of his grooves answer, but gave this passage another read today:

Q. Thick rough, no rough. What's your preference?

TIGER WOODS: I want the rough up and the greens firms. I want the build [ability?] to have the guys get the ball down there on the fairways, be aggressive off the tees if they want, get the ball down there, but also have the greens firm enough where it rewards guys for being more aggressive off the tees and getting the ball down there so they can control their spins coming in the greens.

I doubt that Tiger gets too involved in setting up Congressional--that would mean actually speaking to people not under his employ--but it still strikes me as odd that he's dictating setup for a tournament he's playing in. Oh I know, it's his event and Jack Nicklaus probably used to make the call on Muirfield Village's setup when he was still active. Still odd, but what's the Tour going to do, tell him to bugger off?

It's also confusing that Tiger selects high rough as a setup ideal. Especially as he's advocating reward for aggressive driving. That said, the transcript was a weird one and I probably should not read much into it.

"We've had plenty of time to make our adjustments."

Not the cleanest transcript ever, but you get the idea. Tiger Woods at Congressional, asked about the groove change going ahead in 2010:

TIGER WOODS: I think it's great. We've had plenty of time to make our adjustments. We've known for over a couple years now what this decision was going to be, when it was going to come down, and we've had plenty of time to make our adjustments.

All the companies have been testing and getting ready for this, and the guys will make the changes. Most of the guys play with big groups brought their irons. Only new groups they usually have use their sand wedges. But guys will make their changes, their adjustments.

It'll be interesting seeing guys catching flyers and not being able to spin the ball back out of the rough. Their decision is how they play par-5s whether they will they try and drive drivable par 4s now. Short-siding yourself is obviously going to pay a little more of a price, and you know, how many more 64-degree wedges you're going to see with the balls being as firm as they are. Are guys going to start going to a spinner ball.

Update on 2009-06-30 18:27 by Geoff

Stewart Cink files this longer Tweet on the grooves issue.

Shock: Woods World's Top Athlete

Forbes comes out with it's annual list. Phil Mickelson is sixth on the list.

"I've had a dream about 20 times where he comes to me and asks me for a lesson."

Michael Bamberger theorizes about how Tiger found his swing at the Memorial, prints a cute rant from Hank Haney and shares this from Johnny:

Johnny Miller, the winner of the 1973 U.S. Open and lead analyst at Bethpage for NBC, has long been Tiger's most incisive critic (and, at times among the microphone crowd, his only objective fan). Last week, before the Memorial, Miller said in an interview, "I've had a dream about 20 times where he comes to me and asks me for a lesson." In Miller's dream he instructs Woods to hit shots with a slight pause at the top of his swing, as he did from 1997 through 2000. Miller also asks Woods to soften the squat move he has been making in recent years, where his head and body come too close to the ball on the downswing and he gets in his own way.

You know Johnny, if you ever went out on the driving range I'm sure Tiger would have made time for you.

Memorial Ratings Success; LPGA Not So Hot

Tod Leonard on the weekend ratings:

Tiger Woods is back in the winner's circle, just in time for the U.S. Open and for golf's stagnant TV ratings.

With Woods winning in comeback fashion Sunday at the Memorial, the overnight numbers for CBS were a 3.8 rating and a 9 share. That is double what the Colonial received (1.8/4) the week before when Steve Stricker own a three-man playoff. Anything doubled is huge for the networks.

The golf also doubled up the French Open final, with Roger Federer winning his 14 major title.

The LPGA Tour made a rare appearance on network television on NBC, and though the finish was bunched, it didn't have big names, and the ratings were low. In-Kyung Kim's win Sunday drew an 0.6, or half of what the Prefontaine track event did for NBC, also on Sunday. Not a promising sign for women's golf

Autograph Seeker Disguised As Golf Writer Goes Unnoticed

Alex Miceli reports the first of two blows for the golf writing cause (not to mention a less humorous security breakdown). The first involves an autograph seeker slipping into Tiger's press conference and after hearing one too many banal questions, finally blurted out his request.

“Jack’s going to hate me for this. (Interloper stands up) Tiger, congratulations for winning the Memorial. I’m a normal person that snuck in here with a patron badge. I was just wondering if I could get an autograph.”

Nicklaus apparently intervened and got the man Tiger's autograph before they carted him off.

The Rally Killer of all Rally Killers? Or does this make him a Point Misser?

While the above exchange is not in the transcript, this low blow was:

Q. Tiger, not to be fishing, but wonder if I could maybe get personal on the issue of do you actually read anything that we write or watch anything that guys say on TV, or is it secondhand information?

TIGER WOODS: It's more TV.