Friday's Winners And Losers
Matt Rudy analyzes Friday's golf and tells you who came out a winner and who ended up a loser
WINNERS
JB Holmes
Holmes obviously watched the Angel Cabrera highlights from Oakmont last year: "What The Hell, I'll Just Bust Driver." Swinging away, Holmes averaged 337 yards off the tee, hit 14 greens and birdied the par-5 second hitting pitching wedge for his second shot. Holmes also drove the 305-yard sixth hole, but he actually had to finesse that one in.
Charlie Wi and David Toms
Wi is the only player in the field to shoot two rounds of par or better, with matching 70s. He's a shot behind Holmes, but walking a much thinner line. Wi is 117th in driving distance, and you're not going to thrive forever hitting 4-irons into these burned out greens. If the 5-foot-10 Wi (and it's pronounced "whee," like Michelle) is looking for a good template, he's got one in David Toms, who is generously listed in the media guide at 5-10 and 160 pounds. Toms played his best major championship round since the final round at the 2001 PGA -- when he laid up on the par-4 18th at Atlanta AC and beat Phil Mickelson by a shot. Toms' little-ball 69 Friday at Oakland Hills was one of only six sub-par rounds of the day.
Ben Curtis
Despite tempting fate by wearing gear from an NFL team that hasn't won a playoff game since 1992 (the Detroit Lions), Curtis shot the best round of the tournament so far, a one-bogey 67 that's going to look like a 63 by Sunday, when tankers are oiling the greens to keep the dust down. Curtis and Wi were the only two players in the top 6 to play the last two holes in even par. Which leads us to:
The 17th and 18th holes
Anybody interested in making a late charge Sunday afternoon might want to plan to start a little earlier. The 238-yard par-3 17th and its nasty back-right pin position gave up no birdies Friday and provided a host of entertaining putting "experiences" like Sergio Garcia's four-jack from 60 feet. The 498-yard par-4 18th was the hardest hole on the course for the second day in a row, and nobody made birdie there either. Keeping the ball near that front-left pin was like trying to stop a ball on a closing garage door.
LOSERS
Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia
Ah, what could have been. Responsible for carrying the marquee-player storyline in Tiger's absence, Mickelson and Garcia mostly just hockeyed the ball around from 20 yards and in. The ninth hole was a perfect Mickelson more-complicated-than-it-has-to-be microcosm: He had a perfect, flat lie in the greenside bunker and asked his caddie, Jim Mackay, to take out the flag. He intended to use the mound behind the hole as a backstop, but hit the shot too far and left it on top of the ledge. A 90-degree turning putt later, he made a silly bogey-4. Bogeys on 14, 15 and 17 dropped him to three-over 143 -- not out of it, but not exactly brimming with confidence. Garcia had his own short-game adventures, failing to get up and down for bogey on 10 and for par on 11, then taking his aforementioned four-putt tour of the 17th green. Still, he's just three behind, at 142, and maybe drafting behind the leaders for another day will be better for his psyche.
Robert Karlsson and Anthony Kim
In the span of an hour, Karlsson fell completely off the leader board with bogies on his first four holes. By the end of the day, he was only co-No. 3 Swedish player with Carl Pettersson, behind Henrik Stenson and Peter Hanson. (I'm sure he'll be teased about that.) Kim wilted in his marquee pairing with Garcia, three-putting three times on his way to a 75. By the end, he was visibly frustrated by some bad hops on tee shots that finished in the semi-rough.
Colin Montgomerie
Not the best of days for the always good-natured Monty. His second-round 84 -- his worst career round in a major championship -- happened at a slow trickle. He made 10 bogeys and two doubles.
