Memorial Tournament opens
with scrambled leaderboard
DUBLIN, Ohio – From a guy you couldn’t tell from Sergio Garcia – until you saw him putting – to a guy who lost a Masters to Tiger Woods, another who lost a U.S. Open to Tiger Woods, to another who was too tired to play in the Ryder Cup – that was one scrambled leaderboard to open the Memorial Tournament. Oh – and you might add that Woods isn’t even here, at Muirfield Village, but the No. 1 golfer in the world is.Actually, No. 1 -- Luke Donald – is a presence, but he didn’t quite crack the 10-deep leaderboard. Even so, he’s right on the edge, at 2-under 70, thanks to playing like No. 1. He was 2 over heading into the turn (he started at No. 10) and so his streak of 21 straight rounds of par or better was in imminent danger. But he revived, birdied four in a row from his 14th (No. 5), and that got him safely home. And this after he chopped up his ninth (No. 18) for a double bogey-6.
“I thought I hit a great 8-iron right at the pin,” he said. “And it came up two yards short of being perfect, kicked back in the middle of the trap.” A cute bunker shot and a bad chip, and that’s a quick six, and he turned in 2 over with the streak hanging by a thread.
(Donald’s streak itself borders on the heroic. He shot 79 in the second round of the Northern Trust in February and missed the cut for the only time this season. The following week, he won the Accenture Match Play, going the route without trailing, and the next week, he shot a 1-over 72 in the third round of the Honda Classic, and has shot par or better ever since. The breakdown: 12 rounds in the 60s and three each of 70, 71 and 72.)
Chris Riley, whose previous claim to fame was calling in tired for an alternate-shot match in the 2004 Ryder Cup, was among the earlier finishers with a 6-under 66, and felt the threat late in the afternoon when Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy needed a birdie at his final hole to top him. But McIlroy’s 12-footer stopped just on the right edge, leaving him also at 66. Riley, perhaps the most puzzling story, set the PGA Tour record for the most withdrawals in four of the last five years.
Riley had an eight-birdie, two-bogey round. “It was very unexpected,” he said, and well it might have been for a guy who has missed six cuts in 18 starts, whose best finish was a tie for ninth in the Sony Open in January, and who a few weeks ago in the Byron Nelson Championship, started with a 66 and closed with a 78 to tie for 45th. Erratic might be the word.
Much of his success can be attributed to his old putter, which he retrieved after having snubbed it for the past two years. As to why he had brought it back? “Because,” he said, “I’ve been watching everybody else changing putters and putting cross-handed and [using the] belly putter, so I thought maybe I should change.”
McIlroy made just one bogey, and closed with a rush, with three straight birdies from his 15th (No. 6), on a 10-foot putt, two putts from 25, and a 15-footer. And he has a fresher and much more painful memory that Riley, and that was at the Masters in April, leading going into the final nine, then blowing sky-high at the 10th and therefore blowing the tournament. There were no fresh scars on the guy. He likened it to Nick Watney and Dustin Johnson, blowing majors of their own. “I think the common thing between all three of us,” he said, “we probably put ourselves under a lot of pressure on that Sunday to just get it done, and that probably worked against us.”
Johnson is on the board, too, with a 68 highlighted by four straight birdies from No. 14. Who knows what might have been? He birdied the first two holes. “I just missed a few fairways in the middle of the round, and you struggle out here if you miss the fairways,” he said. The big issue, however, was a case in alienated affections, Johnson having hired Joe LaCava to be his caddie, LaCava having lugged Freddie Couples’ bag for the past 21 years, but Freddie having slipped over age 50 and onto the Champions Tour and the lower prize money. That’s easier to figure out than a quadratic equation. Except that the luck (or whatever) of the draw, paired Johnson and Couples for the first two rounds.
“Freddie is a great guy,” Johnson said. “There’s no bad blood or anything like that.”
(Couples, with his chronic aching back, struggled to a 79. If LaCava had stayed with him, chances are he wouldn’t have had much of a payday this time.)
Chris DiMarco was pretty much last seen at the 2005 Masters, where he took Tiger Woods into overtime before losing. Then a wrist injury sent him drifting into the backwaters of the tour. He birdied four of his last six holes this time for a 67, an accomplishment for a guy who has missed seven cuts in 16 starts this year and who got into this Memorial on a sponsor’s invitation. Another Woods victim, Rocco Mediate (playoff runner-up in the 2008 U.S. Open), shot 68 with two closing birdies.
And then there’s Josh Teater, 32, a tour sophomore from Lexington, Ky., who even on a good day draws stares of people who think they just saw Sergio Garcia. “That’s very true,” said Teater, who started at No. 10 and rode a solid game home for a 67. He first got the Garcia question as an amateur, and didn’t understand what the guy meant. Finally, it sank in. You’d think that Southern drawl would be a dead giveaway. Not from southern Madrid, as it were. But not so. They still ask for autographs.
“We were once a group apart at Colonial a couple weeks ago,” Teater said, “and we were signing autographs at the same time.
“And he said, ‘Feel free to sign my name, if you’d like.’ ”
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