By John Hawkins
Photos By Darren Carroll
August 29, 2008
As if to convince everyone that last year's inaugural FedEx Cup playoff series was not a runaway success, the PGA Tour kicked off its 2008 postseason at a new venue under a heavily revised competitive format, although the man largely responsible for prompting both changes was neither here nor there. Tiger Woods' absence from this same tournament a year ago played no small role in the Barclays moving from its longtime home north of New York City to suburban Paramus, N.J., where Ridgewood CC hides in the woods like a kid who might have stolen something.
"I know the people at Westchester don't miss us," one tour pro observed, "and we sure as hell don't miss them."
So let wrong-gones be bygones. Although the Barclays is scheduled to return to its old site in what amounts to a 2011 cameo, it won't be a year too late -- Ridgewood was as big a hit as you'll find among 144 guys with $10 million on the line. "Best golf course we've played all year," said Tom Pernice Jr., not the easiest man to please. The old-school look and imaginative medley of holes make this A.W. Tillinghast design a keeper, which doesn't explain why the tour will follow its commercial nose and flee to snazzy-but-raw Liberty National for the 2009 gathering.
"If this one's a 10, that one's a 2," said a veteran who played next year's site last week. But enough on the past and the future, especially when the present packs so much relevance. If Vijay Singh's lengthy stay on the game's short list of premier players appeared over less than a month ago, someone needs to notify the Big Fijian, who outlasted Sergio Garcia on the second playoff hole for his 33rd tour victory, his second in three weeks, his fourth at this particular event and the early lead in the overhauled-but-flawed playoff race.
That skanky sudden-death loss to Steve Lowery at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am seems like ancient history, a term one might use to describe Singh, who turned 45 less than two weeks after the Pebble debacle. Twenty-one of those 33 titles have come after his 40th birthday, an all-time record and four more than Sam Snead, who probably had a couple of Ws left in him when he passed away six years ago. After winning nine times himself in 2004, Singh's putting stroke has come and gone. His ball-striking numbers have fallen off since that career season, but he still has enough moxie to win big tournaments on tough courses, so long as it doesn't become a four-day contest to see who can make the most 15-footers.
Not that Singh has convinced himself of that. "For weeks and months and years, with people talking about my [poor] putting and the media writing about it, I've gotten hundreds of letters and phone calls from people saying they can fix it," he said. "At the end of the day, it gets into your head that you're not a good putter, so I made a point last week that I was going to change my attitude. If I keep doing this, I'm going to win a lot more golf tournaments."
It's one of those solutions where the theory might be easier than the application, although it's hard to remember Singh making a bigger clutch putt than the 26-footer he holed to top Garcia's birdie on the first playoff hole. Both men have long suffered through their woes on the greens -- Sergio more from shorter distances, Singh in the eight- to 20-foot zone where many tournaments are decided. To see both guys knock in putts of almost identical length with a trophy on the line was darn near spine-tingling.
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