Week in Review
Monday Qualifier
Playing Pebble's par-5 14th became a nightmare for several players, while David Duval showed more proof that he's found his game again
David Duval posted four rounds in the 60s at a 72-hole event for the first time since 2001.
Ugly invaded the prettiest place in golf on Sunday afternoon, turning an oil painting into an oil slick. The most felicitous meeting of land and sea (Robert Louis Stevenson's description) is a blight on the landscape when viewed from the back end of a quadruple-bogey 9.
Three of them were made on, the par-5 14th, the hole of shame at Pebble Beach Golf Links, in the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on Sunday, one of them by Bryce Molder, with leader Paul Goydos doing more than watching from the fairway. A CBS camera and microphone caught Goydos and Dustin Johnson discussing the potential for calamity there, even as it played out in front of them.
"I've never known two players almost tied for the lead, discussing their strategy in the middle of a fairway," CBS analyst Nick Faldo said. "Don't know if that's quite the dumb thing. Call me old-fashioned but they wouldn't hear me chatting away in the middle of the 14th."
Goydos' third shot to the green was short, putting him in an identical predicament that Molder faced moments earlier. When Goydos compounded his mistake by attempting a heroic recovery, Faldo replied, "that's not a percentage shot on the 14th on a Sunday."
Goydos then faced a problematic chip from behind the green, one that Faldo said would require "a career shot to get it within 10 feet." That would have been a low bar to hurdle, Goydos might have said himself given his penchant for self-deprecating humor. Still he was unable to clear it. He eventually tapped in for a nine and handed the trophy to Johnson.
Faldo's analysis, meanwhile, was appreciably better than Goydos' execution.
"A lot of psychologists say, start talking about making a mess of it, what are you visualizing? Making a mess," Faldo said. "You're talking about it. A perfect example. Stay out there on your own, put your blinkers on, plot your way up the hole and do your own thing. You scared yourself before you got there, discussing it with your fellow pro, that there's no shot."
CBS, for those keeping score at home, played the 14th hole expertly.
ABOUT THAT 14TH
How hard will that hole play in the U.S. Open in June, when the green is hard and fast and the USGA has to find four pin locations on a postage stamp?
It's rare that a par 5 is the toughest hole on the course, as the 14th was Sunday at Pebble Beach. The scoring average was 5.507. There were only eight birdies there, a number that was exceeded by what the PGA Tour dubs others (double-bogeys or higher). There were nine of those, including the three quadrupble-bogeys.
SWINGING IN THE RAIN
OK, so the weather cooperated (for a change) at Pebble Beach. The courses nonetheless were so waterlogged that the first three rounds were played under the preferred lies rule (lift, clean and place).
It was the third time in four weeks that preferred lies were in effect, raising what seems to be a perennial issue: Would the tour be better served by opening in Florida, moving to Arizona and finally hitting California in March?
Good question, as journeyman Jay Williamson noted on Twitter: "Definition of insanity? Playing West Coast Swing in January & February! Only 2 bad months of weather for the entire year."
Last week, Steve Stricker was lamenting Pebble Beach's typical winter weather while explaining why he was opting to skip the event and return home to warmer climes in...Wisconsin?
"I just don't care to go up there and fight with that weather too much," Stricker said. "It's sad. They've got a great venue for the tournament, and if it was in the fall, I think it would be a better date. But I'm not going."
Adam Scott also piled on a week earlier at the Northern Trust Open. "I think it will be great if we were here at a different time of year, if it could possibly happen," he said. "I think that would be a great move. It would be great to play courses like Riviera and Pebble Beach and Spyglass and Monterey in conditions that are tournament-suitable for the level of tournament we are playing, because a lot of the great design work of these courses is taken out when it's so wet and the ball just plugs where it lands."
Weather in Florida this year might not have been an improvement, but that would have been an anomaly. Still, the question is moot. One of the driest states in the union apparently is destined to continue to host PGA Tour events in its only wet months.
THE ENIGMA, CONTINUED
What is it, another aberration or another indication that David Duval is methodically (or slowly) recovering his equilibrium? Is his T2 at Pebble Beach a clone of his T2 at the U.S. Open last summer that suggested better days that failed to come, or an accurate measure of where his game stands in his bid to revisit the glory days?
Four rounds in the 60s. The last time he accomplished that in a 72-hole event was the Buick Challenge in 2001 when he was ranked No. 1 in the world. The last time he had a top 10 in a regular PGA Tour event was the Invensys Classic at Las Vegas in 2002.
Duval missed the cut 15 times in '09 and once in three trips in '10 (finishing T76 in the other tournament in which he made the cut). After falling to 882nd in the World Ranking, he has climbed back to 199th on the strength of only two tournaments.
PEBBLE BEACH'S REAL STAR
It wasn't Johnson, or even the weather, though the latter warranted consideration. Short-sleeves at the Crosby? Heresy.
The Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club received the highest accolades, for reasons other than bumping Poppy Hills from the AT&T rotation.
"The wet west coast almost over, sun coming rest of week. Monterey is a great course, better then PB," Stuart Appleby posted on Twitter.
Better than Pebble Beach? He may not have been alone in his assessment. Phil Mickelson immediately ranked it among his favorites on the PGA Tour.
Mike Strantz, the architect principally responsible for re-designing the course, died in 2004, a year after it re-opened. His widow, Heidi, told Monterey Herald correspondent Jerry Stewart this: "It's sad that Mike can't be here. He loved working on that course. He was so very, very sick. He was physically a shell, but he was so excited and happy. Mike's dream was to bring out the natural beauty and majesty of the timeless Shore Course. And to now see and read how the players are reacting ... I'm so proud that they love it. Mike built it to create a visual artistry that you could also play a game on."
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