It was the 26-year-old Villegas who was the epitome of resilience. He went out fast with birdies on the third and fourth but then gave every indication of throwing it all away. He hit a 5-iron into the water on the sixth and made double bogey and followed that with a bogey at the seventh. Even with Sergio stumbling out of the gate, the Colombian was still five behind.
Garcia, en route to a 65 Friday, could not capitalize on a three-shot lead through 54 holes.
According to Villegas, his caddie, Gary Matthews, looked at him and said, "Man, you're not going to give up on me." He birdied five of the next six holes. He made a 13-footer at the eighth; reached the par-5 ninth in two; made a 28-footer at the 10th; an 11-footer in the side door at the 12th; and the bomb at the 13th. "Man," he said, "I'm proud of myself." And well he should be.
Though Villegas stumbled when he three-putted the 15th for par and bogeyed the 16th after a horrendous tee shot, his 7-iron approach from the first cut on the 17th to 11 feet, and the subsequent birdie putt, were the shots of the tournament. Villegas described the 7-iron as "hit and beg." His two pars on the 18th, with two 3-irons and a pair of winding left-to-right two-putts from more than 40 feet, were good enough for his second straight PGA Tour victory (the last person to win his first two back-to-back: David Duval, 11 years ago), the $1.26 million first prize plus a boatload of bonus money.
Certainly, there is no shortage of ideas on how to make the FedEx Cup, this multi-headed Hydra, different. Better is another matter altogether. In fairness, it was never a horrible idea to do something besides what had always been done at the dawn of football season, but the FedEx Cup might just be a bridge too far. A limited field that has earned its place at the end of the season, playing for a lot of money on a first-rate course can be reasonably compelling, as it was Sunday afternoon. But as a philosophical construct, "playoffs" and "golf" may, in the end, go together like cows and the Kentucky Derby.
The Tour Championship -- which, in an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way, has become the championship of the "Tour" in name only -- remains a gathering of the game's elite on a course with an enviable pedigree, running from Bobby Jones to Errie Ball, the lone living participant of the first Masters (and a former assistant pro at East Lake) who struck the ceremonial first shot. While Garcia was the only player from the European Ryder Cup team in the field, 10 members of the victorious American side played, to various degrees of give-a-damn. Another third of the field could have comprised the majority of an impressive Presidents Cup International squad.
Kim, in a testament to the recuperative abilities of the 23-year-old human body, seemed to charge right off the 14th green at Valhalla and onto the first tee at East Lake. Fresh from his 5-and-4 drubbing of the 28-year-old Garcia (which, as Hunter Mahan pointed out, AK wanted to win 6-and-3 since he didn't know the match was over), Kim never missed a beat, taking a four-shot lead on the first day with an opening 64 on East Lake's hard, new Bermuda greens.
Garcia turned in the best round Friday, a five-under 65, to set up the attractive rematch of Kim and Garcia in the final twosome Saturday. Kim, whose lead had shrunk to two shots, turned in his first scratchy round of golf since the morning foursomes on the second day of the Ryder Cup. He got his tee time wrong, hit four of 14 fairways, a hospitality tent and a spectator's forehead and was fortunate to shoot the 72 that left him tied with Mickelson, three strokes behind Garcia, whose 67 would have translated into an impressive reverse drubbing had it been a true Valhalla rematch. In keeping with the general tenor of the week, so fraught was the day with tension that, when it was over and he was waiting to be interviewed by NBC's on-course announcer, Roger Maltbie, the mischievous Garcia gently rolled his golf ball off Maltbie's Falstaffian belly.
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