Real Bling, Real Thing

Palm Sunday: Kim's big lead freed him to stay in touch with some young fans.

You could say he won it on the front nine Sunday but that's only partly true. He actually won it on the last three holes Saturday plus the front nine Sunday. He took 14 putts over that 12-hole stretch and played it five under par. It reminded me of that time in '97 when you dusted Colin Montgomerie on Saturday at Augusta. Remember what Monty said back then? "I appreciated he [meaning you] hit the ball long and straight, and I appreciated his iron shots were very accurate. I did not appreciate how well he putted." It's déjà vu all over again, bro.

On Saturday afternoon everyone is just trying to survive those last three beasties, post some kind of score. They're the hardest holes on the golf course, no doubt. After a clutch two-putt on the 15th, AK-47 makes a 10-footer for par on the 480-yard 16th, a nine-footer for par on the 217-yard 17th and a seven-footer for birdie on the 478-yard 18th. Then, on Sunday, he birdies the first when he wedges it out of the left rough to five feet; two-putts from 80 feet for birdie on the par-5 fifth; makes a 20-footer for birdie on the par-5 seventh after he drives it in jail; and pulls driver on the 343-yard eighth, hits it in the right rough, flops it to 20 feet just off the green and makes that. He even gets it up and down for par on the fourth and ninth when he can't reach the green, the first time out of the rough, the second time out of a fairway bunker when he hits the pin with his wedge.

Heath Slocum was trying to do Scratch Ankle, Fla., proud for the second time in three weeks (his high-school chum Boo Weekley is the guy who beat the kid at Harbour Town), but all he got was a front-row seat for the slaughter. "From the get-go, he put his foot on the gas and never let off," Slocum said. "That was very, very impressive."

It would have seemed like the old times to you.

Oh, and you should have seen Phil Mickelson. Man, with you running in place in the pool back home, he had this look on his face like he was a 17-year-old high school junior whose parents just told him they're going away for the weekend and he's going to have the house to himself. And, get this, Phil says he's grown an inch since he's been working out so he had to get a longer shaft for his putter. Maybe his trainer got a degree from Spanish Inquisition U.

The spinal-enhancement thing worked pretty well for him the first day, but Friday Phil did another very-Phil thing and drove it into the trees on the left on the 15th -- you know that really easy par 5 around the lake and up the hill? Well, everyone knows, you miss the fairway, you play a little D, make a 5 and get out of there because all of a sudden the lay up is no gimme. Of course, you could have cut it outta there, but Phil's not as strong as you yet. He's still a growing boy. (Ha, ha.)

Anyway, Phil tries to hook it out of the rough, hits it dead straight into more trees and makes double. Then he doubles the 18th with a wedge in his hands. So, back to the rack.

The guy who led the first day was David Toms. Yeah, D.T. hasn't been around much lately, either, has he? His back's been in active revolt. He says his grandpa and his pops had the same thing but, honestly, I think he's thinking at least as much about skiing as golf, which is a little ironic since he won here that time with a snowman on the last hole. Anyway, he was leading with a 67, but you got the feeling he was just waiting for it all to go south on him, which it did the next day with a 75.