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America's 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses

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First established in 1966, the biennial 2013-14 ranking of America's 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses is ready for its close-up.

Tweets We'd Like To Read In 2012

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 05:00:00 GMT

2011 was full of surprises, but we'd welcome these developments in 2012.

Immelman emerges from trying few years to get another major shot

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:09:00 GMT

By Pete McDaniel

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. -- In the pre-tournament conversation dominated by the difficult Ocean Course and the players most likely to challenge for the title in the 94th PGA Championship, fading lights like Trevor Immelman were no more than an after-thought. Fifty-four holes later, the 2008 Masters champion has thrust himself firmly into the discussion.

Immelman shot a two-under 70 in the rain-delayed third round to earn a spot in the penultimate group alongside Adam Scott and Steve Stricker. If not for a missed par putt on the 18th Sunday morning, he would have been in the final pairing with leader Rory McIlroy (7 under) and Carl Pettersson (4 under).

"I actually just misread that putt,'' Immelman said. "I hit it exactly where I wanted. I was expecting it to just fall left and it went the other way. So, not ideal but all in all I came back and played pretty solid this morning.''

Solid is a word that has been missing from Immelman's vocabulary in recent years, mainly because of a stubborn wrist injury that affected both his play and mental outlook.

"There were times when I wondered if I'd ever get back to playing the way I like to play,'' admits the 31-year-old.

The dark cloud over Immelman's career began building the year after his three-stroke victory over Tiger Woods that made him only the second South African to win the coveted green jacket (Gary Player was the first). Because of the wrist injury, he played in only 13 events in '09. Although he played in six more tournaments in 2010, he finished 163rd on the money list. Last year, however, both his wrist and game began showing signs of being fully mended as he improved to 81st in earnings.

"To be honest with you, the last year the wrist has been a non-factor,'' said Immelman, "and my health is the best it's been. Like I've said during the week, I've been working my butt off trying to get back in this situation. So, it's nice to be here.''

Immelman, who still uses older brother Mark as a compass for his swing, made his reputation on consistent ball-striking and a better-than-average short game. Both have served him well this week.

"I came here this week with some fresh ideas and my confidence started growing,'' said Immelman, ranked 156th in the world. "I started hitting shots that I was familiar with. More importantly, I was familiar with the misses I was hitting. And I was kind of understanding why they (the misses) were happening. And my short game has been real good. I've made some putts and I've chipped in a couple of times.''

He believes continued good form and the experience of being in a major championship cauldron on Sunday afternoon just might make him the main topic of conversation come dinnertime. Sorry, I mean, suppertime.

"At the end of the day I look forward to these,'' he said. "I've won one of these before, so I can go out there and have a go and see what happens. I've got that in my back pocket. I know what it's going to feel like. I know what it takes. And, if things go my way, you never know what happens.''

Woods fights his way back into picture

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 15:36:00 GMT

By Dave Kindred

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. -- He's not out of it yet, Tiger Woods insisted Sunday morning. After finishing a storm-delayed third round with his best back-nine score of the week, a two-under-par 34, he stood five shots behind leader Rory McIlroy and said, "I fought my way into it."

(Photograph by Getty Images)

Though Woods has never come from behind in the last round to win any of his 14 major championships, he said, "Absolutely, I'm right there. I was at one point six back, and we had a lot of holes to play. So I was very encouraged the way I dug down deep and got this thing turned around and gave myself a chance going into this afternoon."

Woods's third-round 74 followed days of 69 and 71 that gave him a tie for the 36-hole lead. As he let slip good halfway scores at both this summer's U.S. and British Opens, Woods finds himself in need of an unprecedented comeback in Sunday's last 18 holes. He found encouragement in his strong iron play on the back side where he made three birdies on short putts and had looks at three more from 25, 20, and 18 feet.

Woods began the morning play missing an 8-foot par putt at the 8th hole. He finished the front at four-over-par 40. He had made only one birdie in his last 23 holes and none in the previous 15. That changed at the par-5 11th when hed dropped a wedge to eight feet and made the putt. He also birdied the 13th from 12 feet and the 16th when he left a 20-foot eagle putt a foot short.

Related: Tiger's stalled comeback

His plan for the afternoon: "Just give myself chances, give myself looks. This golf course, you can take a double and a triple in a heartbeat without hitting bad shots. Just keep myself there where I'm right in it with a few holes to go because, as we saw at the last major championship we played, anything can happen."

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It takes just seven holes for Tiger to crash back to earth

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:49:00 GMT

By Dave Kindred

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. -- Tiger is done.

Sing a soft song, killing him gently.

We loved Tiger 1.0. We've been waiting for Tiger 2.0.

Not happening. Not now, not next month, not ever.

Oh, he can play. He can play brilliantly. So can a couple dozen other men.
On his A game, he can win. But there's a difference between now and back in the day. Now he can lose with his A game. Just another guy who can win.
Saturday afternoon, before clouds suggestive of Armageddon gathered over Kiawah Island and stopped play in the PGA Championship, Tiger began the day tied for the tournament lead. For two days, he had played well, showing grit and guile and a sure putting stroke. He had teased us at this summer's U.S. Open, tied for the lead after 36, only to come undone in the third round. This time, at Kiawah, he seemed ready to finish the job.

Related: The Tiger Woods timeline

But no. On a day when the leader boards ran red with birdies -- three 67s already in, six guys with 32s on the front -- Tiger didn't make a birdie in his seven holes. He nearly came out of shoes slashing at a shot in the rough. Another time, the ball below his feet in a waste area, he stood on a berm, half-crouched to reach the ball, and tottered off-balance after an awkward swing. Once the most elegant of movers, Tiger this day resembled nothing more than a wire-walker in a high wind.

He last won a major in 2008. He's oh for 17 since -- since the hydrant and Elin and the bimbo eruptions and the bad Achilles and Hank's book and sex rehab and knee rehab and firing Stevie and not getting any damned younger and seeing lesser mortals -- Rory, Graeme, Keegan, Bubba -- win majors while he tried every kind of swing but Jim Furyk's and wondered if he'd ever make another putt when he needed it most.

I remember Tom Watson, early on in Tiger's distress, saying, "Tiger used to have his head empty," meaning it was empty of all things other than golf. "Now," Watson said, "he's got a lot going on." It takes no great imagination to conceive of Tiger's mind as a Rube Goldberg contraption with pulleys and levers and slides and gears all working at the direction of little men shouting over each other: "Hit the stinger. No, a high fade. Wait, wind's up. What's Stevie think? McIlroy'd be OK if he ever got a haircut. You think we can sell the boat? Ah, hell, let's bag it and go to Perkins."

Maybe all that chatter gets louder during majors. A suggestion of that came on Tuesday of this week at a pre-tournament press conference. Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press asked Tiger, "Is it harder for you to win a major than it was 10 years ago?"

"Is it harder?" Tiger said. "Well, I haven't won one, so probably."

Certainly, he had won a major in the last 10 years -- he'd won eight. But the 0-for-17 streak must have been in the front of his mind.

Ferguson said, "I don't know if you heard it clearly. Is it harder than it was 10 years ago?"

"Oh, 10 years ago?" Woods said. "Yeah ..." And he said there were more players with a chance to win, greater depth, yadda yadda.

I came into Saturday afternoon thinking Tiger could win this time. It would be his 15th major, it would jump-start his chase of Jack Nicklaus's 18. He would be all over the teevee Sunday, every shot, every scowl, and, perhaps (cover the dog's ears), every oath uttered in protest of fate's unkindness.

For whatever you think of Tiger -- you may hope he commits a Calc Shank at the 17th and throws himself in the lake after it . . . you may wish him the triumphant creation of Tiger 2.0 -- whatever your antipathy or devotion, I reckoned Tiger would be the Sunday story.

Related: Tiger's stalled comeback

You don't have to be 85 years old to understand that. But if you are 85 and you're Bob Toski, a guy ought to ask you about Tiger. Maybe three hours before Woods teed off Saturday, I turned a corner in the Kiawah clubhouse and bumped into a little man in a Hogan cap.

"Sorry," I said, and then realized I'd bumped into Golf History Its Ownself.

"Mr. Toski! Could I talk to you about Tiger?"

Bob Toski, once a caddie and one of nine children of Polish immigrants, turned pro in 1949. He won five PGA Tour events. He was the tour's leading money winner in1954 ($65,820). He was out there with Ben Hogan and Sam Snead and the kid Arnold Palmer. He retired from the tour at age 30 to begin a teaching career that became legendary.

For all that, he said, he has never seen anything in golf to match Tiger Woods.

"He has been given a gift of talent that no man before or after ever had," Toski said. "What Michael Jordan had in basketball and Ted Williams in baseball, Tiger has that in golf. He has an intuitive and instinctive feel for the game, which, along with his mastery of the mechanics, and his athletic strengths make him unique for all time."

Yes, yes. But we haven't seen that Tiger for a while.

"Did you see the 11th yesterday?" Toski said.

At the 11th on Friday, from a downhill line 165 yards out, Woods punched a low cut shot that landed on the left half of the green and rolled to the right, stopping six feet from a flagstick only four steps from water on the green's right side.

"How many guys," Toski said, eyes alight, "even try that shot?"

Not many, maybe only Tiger.

"He's a shotmaker. Think about it. How many of his shots do we still talk about?"

The long-iron bunker shot over water in Canada. The last-roll chip at Augusta. This summer's flop shot at the Memorial.

A case can be made that the majors stand on their own, their measure fuller than any one man can provide. Keegan Bradley at the PGA, Bubba Watson at the Masters, Ernie Els the British -- Tiger was there for all of them and was rendered a bit player by those heroes. Toski, though, isn't buying that case.

"Tiger's presence changes everything," he said. "Arnold Palmer came along in my time -- the All-American boy. Now we have Tiger. He's, well, a different character, but he certainly has had the same kind of impact on the game as Arnold did. Any time Tiger's in a tournament, he's the focus. Good or bad."

I asked the wise old man -- thinking of the Watson allusion -- if it were possible for Tiger to get his head right again.

"It's terrible, what happened in his marriage, and I hope he recovers," Toski said. "He does seem to be getting better, professionally and personally. Maybe this is the week."

Or maybe not.

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In focusing on one goal, Stricker moves closer to another as well

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:16:00 GMT

By Dave Shedloski

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. Steve Stricker was almost too busy thinking about the Ryder Cup Saturday to realize he improved his chances of winning the 94th PGA Championship. Almost.

(Photograph by Getty Images)

"Yeah, it is on my mind," Stricker said of his push to earn one of the eight automatic berths on the U.S. Ryder Cup team, a two-year process that ends with the conclusion of the PGA at the Ocean Course. If he fell short on points, he could still make the team as one of four wild-card picks of U.S. captain Davis Love III.

Stricker, 45, of Madison, Wis., certainly helped his cause either way with a solid five-under-par 67 that lifted him 30 spots into T-7 before severe weather caused a delay in the championship at 4:50 p.m. EDT.

Stricker owned the low round of the day alone until fellow American Bo Van Pelt equaled it about 90 minutes later. Van Pelt was in the house at T-5 with 3-under 213 total.

"My goal was to get back to even, and I did even a little better than that," said Stricker, who is coming off a T-2 at last week's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. "It kind of gets me back in it. It all depends on what happens this afternoon."

Well, nothing happened in the afternoon, not to any conclusion with the nasty weather moving in. Stricker left the grounds knowing only that he was in the hunt for his first major title and his fourth Ryder Cup team. Guess which one was weighing on his mind more.

"If I don't make it on points, there's still time for other guys to play well. I don't want to leave anything to chance," said Stricker, 10th in the U.S. standings. "I want to keep playing well so that Davis has a legitimate reason to pick me and not just because of what I've done in the past."

At the time he also was three off the lead.

"Well, there's that, too," Stricker said, smiling. "It's one big day playing for two things. But I really can't be thinking about that tomorrow. I just have to think about playing as well as I can and everything takes care of itself.

"I've had a great run on these teams. It's been a blast."

Seldom does Stricker, one of the game's best putters, miss enough putts to lament ones that got away, and the 26 putts he had Saturday seemed like a reasonable performance to go with hitting 12 fairways and 13 greens in regulation. But the 12-time PGA Tour winner knew he'd let a startlingly low number get away.

"I'm hitting it as good as I ever have, and now my putter is letting me down a little bit," he said. "If I can get that going ... today I had a bunch of opportunities it could have been 6-7-8 under pretty easily, that's how good I hit it."

In last year's PGA at Atlanta Athletic Club, he opened with a 63 before finishing T-12. Since turning 40, he has been one of America's best players, rising as high as No. 2 in the world rankings. With Tiger Woods faltering early Saturday -- he was three over through seven holes -- Stricker and Van Pelt were the low Americans on the leader board.

"Yeah, it's been 6 or 7 years of good, solid play. It's been a lot of fun, and I think I can keep it going," Stricker said.

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After squeaking into weekend, Dufner makes most of opportunity

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 18:52:00 GMT

By Pete McDaniel

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. -- The heartbreaking playoff loss to Keegan Bradley in last year's PGA Championship is so far in the rea-rview mirror that Jason Dufner only thinks about it when someone else mentions it. Success can bury even the most painful memories. The ability to bounce back from disappointment without changing gears or expressions also helps.

"I had a pretty good day today,'' said Dufner, after taking advantage of softer, calmer conditions at the Ocean Course with a four-under 68 on Saturday that led the morning wave. "(I made) a couple of mistakes which I wish I had back but much better today than yesterday.''

Dufner got the worst of the conditions Friday afternoon when the wind gusted up to 38 mph and golf balls were bouncing around like those in a lottery drawing. He shot 76 and made the six-over cut on the number.

"Obviously, the wind was down a little bit today and the rain we got last night made it a little bit softer,'' said Dufner, ranked eighth in the world and third in FedEx Cup points on the strength of two early-season victories. "So it was nice to get out early and kind of get off to a good start. It was good to make the cut hanging on yesterday and nice to come out and have a good round this morning.''

One of the best ball strikers on tour, Dufner said the keys to taming windy conditions are creativity and control.

"You've got to be able to shape shots,'' he said. "You don't want to be riding the wind too much out here because the ball will just go forever off line or weird numbers or weird distances. You gotta really get comfortable working the ball into the wind and trying to use it as your friend. And kind of banking shots into it so you can get a little bit better control.''

At two-over 218 through 54 holes, Dufner made up some early ground. Is it enough to trigger a final-round rally from a guy used to the underdog role? Depends on the wind.

"If it stays like this (relatively calm), I think the guys will have a pretty good go of it and take the lead a little bit lower than it is now,'' he said. "But if the wind picks up it could push them back towards me a little bit, so maybe I'll have a chance going into tomorrow.''

Five questions on Saturday at the PGA

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:24:00 GMT

By Sam Weinman

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. -- We are two days into this wild, wacky ride known as the PGA Championship. What should we look forward to on Saturday at the Ocean Course? Let's start right in with our five most pressing questions of the day.

How about this time for Tiger?

There are no locks in majors anymore, and given Woods' difficulty in piecing together 72 holes at the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open, we are reluctant to say he is anything more than a promising contender heading into the weekend. But now that we've covered our you-know-whats, let's just say that there's a lot to like about the way Woods is playing. His putting has been brilliant, good enough for 23 one-putts through two days. And as a shotmaker, no player is better equipped to handle the myriad challenges the fierce Ocean Course winds present. Sure, a lot can go wrong on this golf course -- and quickly -- but given the steady progress Woods has made under Sean Foley, one has to think it's only a matter of time before Woods arrives at a 15th major title.

Related: Friday's winners and losers

What's the story behind the Tiger-Vijay pairing?

Singh and Woods have a long and complicated history, and not only because they were at one point jockeying for the top spot in the world ranking (before Tiger's most recent struggles, Singh was the last player to supplant Woods atop the world ranking, in September 2004). By all accounts, they've never been close. There was the famous incident in 2000, when Singh's caddie, Paul Tesori, wore a hat that said "Tiger Who?" to the first tee of Singh's Presidents Cup singles match against Woods. Woods went on to win the match, and admitted later the gesture motivated him. If another Wood-Singh pairing at the Tour Championship a few years ago is any indication, the two probably won't chat much during waits on the tee. That day, as the story goes, Woods wished Singh luck before the pairing teed off. Singh response was brief. "Titleist 1," he said.

Will conditions be as tough as they were on Friday?

The early indications are no. Winds are down enough that a handful of players, including Luke Donald and Jason Dufner, are a couple under par (Update: Justin Rose is five under through his first 10 holes), and forecast doesn't call for it to be much worse. A bigger concern is thunderstorms. There's a 30 to 40-percent chance for most of the day, which could lead to the first delays of the week. And with a 3 p.m. start, there's the question of whether the third round is even completed on Saturday.

How's the battle for Ryder Cup spots shaping up?

If you're Hunter Mahan (ninth on points list), Rickie Fowler (12th), or Brandt Snedeker (13th) all of whom needed a big week to qualify on points and ended up missing the cut, it wasn't a good PGA. If you're Steve Stricker (10th), Jim Furyk (11th), and Dustin Johnson (14th), you're at least in a position to strengthen your case over the weekend. On the European side, European captain Jose Maria Olazabal has to like what he's seeing from Ian Poulter, whose a shot off the lead at three under. The bigger question is Padraig Harrington, who hasn't missed a Ryder Cup since 1997, and probably needs a win or something close to it to merit consideration from Olazabal. He starts Saturday six strokes back, which on this course, isn't much...

Related: America's Toughest Courses

Will we ever come back to Kiawah?

Not if it's up to the media, who have made complaining about the long shuttle bus rides from Charleston into something of a competitive sport. And if we have another repeat of Friday, when the scoring average of 78 was the highest in the PGA since the event went to stroke play, players won't be pining to get back here, either. But look beyond the logistical challenges and the high scores and the Ocean Course has plenty of upside. A leader board loaded with elite players indicates that the golf course is succedding in separating the best from merely the very good. And with 10 holes pitched against the water, it all looks great on TV. In other words, come Sunday evening, if you can get Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in contention on a breathtaking course, no one is going to care that the media lost out on an extra half hour at the hotel bar.

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Media: 'I hear Tiger is ballin'

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:49:00 GMT

By John Strege
Follow @JohnStrege

Tiger Woods' climb up the leaderboard in the second round of the PGA Championship surely boosted TNT's ratings on Friday, but its viewers did not include one prominent person: Tiger's niece, Cheyenne Woods.

"I hear Tiger is ballin," she wrote on Twitter. "I'd be watching if I had cable smh. Twitter has been my only source for updates."

SMH, for the uninitiated, stands for "Shaking My Head." Those of us who wonder why Tiger's niece, now a professional golfer who shares an agent, Mark Steinberg, with her uncle, does not have cable were also shaking our heads. So be it. Her Twitter followers kept her updated.

Still, she missed watching Tiger's front-nine putting clinic that brought to mind his glory days and helped him secure a share of the 36-hole lead. Woods had one of the few decent scoring rounds on a difficult day in which there were more rounds in the 90s than the 60s (two to one), a one-under par 71.

Early on, Peter Kostis on TNT indicated in this exchange with Bill Macatee that Woods might make a move on the field, given the windy conditions:

"Tiger said he really was hoping for windy conditions," Macatee said. "So what are you looking for from Tiger the rest of the day?"

"Anybody that's hoping for windy conditions, that's code for, 'I'm hitting pretty solidly. And I like the way my short game is working,'" Kostis said. "Without that, you really can't play this game. You have to be able to control your golf ball and the number one thing of controlling it is to hit it solid."

Woods hit it well enough on Friday, but his putting was responsible for his leading.

Rory and the wind

Rory McIlroy's aversion to wind was cited by Gary McCord on Friday after McIlroy missed the green at the par-3 fifth hole by a wide margin.

"The only thing I worry about Rory is he tells everybody he doesn't like to play in the wind," McCord said. "If you're a world-class player you don't want anybody to know that you really don't like that, because they see wind like this they're going to go, he's going to go bye-bye."

McCord was referring to McIlory's comments at the British Open at Royal St. George's in 2011.

"There's no point in changing your game for one week a year," McIlroy said then. "That's the Open. You either deal with the weather or just wait for a year when it's nice. I'm looking forward to getting back to America and some nice conditions. I'd rather play when it's 80 degrees and sunny and not much wind."

McIlroy shot a 75 in the second round.

The complaint department

Dan Jenkins of Golf Digest has cited this as the best lead ever written on a golf story, from Leonard Crawley of the Daily Telegraph in London: "Despite the abominable handling of the press luggage at the Zurich airport, the Swiss Open managed to get off to a rather decent start yesterday."

We bring this up because of the numerous media complaints, many via Twitter, about long bus rides from Charleston to the Ocean Course. To wit:

-- Steve DiMeglio of USA Today: "Things you can do on shuttle bus ride to Kiawah: Build Rome; read War and Peace three times; run two marathons"

-- Art Spander: "Usain Bolt could have run to Jamaica in the 1 hr 45 mins it took press bus to go from Charleston to Kiawah Island"

An LPGA operative, Mike Scanlan, weighed in (while boasting that the media receives clubhouse valet parking at the LPGA's Kraft Nabisco Championship): "Golf writers covering the PGA Championship putting on a clinic complaining about logistics. Can't overestimate the power of on-site parking."

It's all about us, of course.

Say what?

On Thursday Ian Baker-Finch called the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island "a bucket-list course." On Friday, he said, "I hope we come back here again soon. I think it's tremendous."

Jenkins might have been the voice of reason on this: "Let me make something clear. Great, photogenic course, but you can't have a major with only one road in and out for 30,000 people," he wrote on Twitter.

On Twitter

Paul Azinger: "If a players wearing white pants and white belt combo, they are one garment away from selling ice cream."

Weeks removed from heartbreak, Scott giving himself another shot

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:26:00 GMT

By Dave Kindred
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KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. -- How strong was the wind? Flags cracked like bullwhips. Rain moved sideways. Sand lifted off the beach. Above the 16th hole, 22 pelicans in formation thought to fly east toward the Atlantic only to stall before asking headquarters for a new flight plan. Even as the birds banked west, Adam Scott, from deep in a bunker, flew a wedge shot that clunked off the flagstick, easy birdie.

Scott is the Aussie charmer, 32 years old, handsome as an ocean sunrise, who gave away the British Open a month ago. He played brilliantly for all but the final four holes at Royal Lytham & St. Anne's, but in major-championship golf it's never good to hear a "but" after "brilliantly." Four successive bogeys left him a shot behind the winner, Ernie Els, and as nice as it was for the great man Els to win, even he felt a twinge of sympathy for Scott, of whom so much has been expected for so long.

Related: Unfortunate final-round flameouts

Quickly now, Scott has put himself in the hunt again for his first major. He did it with a first-round 68 in this PGA Championship followed by Friday's 75, a number that's not as bad as it sounds, for this was a day nearly gone with the wind, "a matter of survival," to quote his playing partner Hunter Mahan, whose 80 was as bad as it sounds.

Scott's birdie at the 16th was one of only three he managed Friday. Still, he was fine with the day's work. "I consider 75 kind of a par round of golf out there today," he said. "It's really very tough. I did a lot of good things. I hit a lot of fairways again. . . . But it is hard when you miss the greens. There are some severe spots, and I made a couple errors, but it's going to happen on a day like today. You've just to stick with it, keep grinding. . . .I'm not disappointed with 75."

The Ocean Course was angelic Thursday. It was devilish Friday. All those ledges and cliffs and slopes that didn't matter Thursday mattered a lot Friday when a ball's flight depended on both the striker's skill and the wind's caprices. Though hard by the sea, this piece of architect Pete Dye's genius is only a distant relative of British Isles links courses. Those you can play on the ground, running the ball low under the wind. This one, with elevated greens, must be played through the air. In trade, Dye provides the kindnesses of wide fairways and big greens.

The place is so subtly treacherous that each of Scott's six bogeys Friday came without a shot that a layman would consider poorly struck. The fine line between birdie and bogey, as drawn on Dye's satanic blueprints, was best illustrated Friday at the 12th hole. It's a nice, little hole, a drive and wedge -- except there's a wetlands at the right edge of the green, and the flagstick was four steps from that edge, and that pelican-paralyzing wind came whooshing across from the left.

Related: America's 20 Toughest Courses

So Scott's wedge shot, poorly struck, no doubt, by his standards, drifted offline and into the water provided there as penalty for anyone so bold as to accept the architect's dare and fail. Scott then dropped along the line of flight, put his fourth to 6 feet, and made the bogey putt -- the kind of shot-saving work that may not win majors on Friday but may help you come to Sunday's final four holes with a chance to win.

The weekend is in Scott's mind. "I'm not feeling, now, the way I felt at Lytham," he said. There he felt in absolute control. The tournament was his to take. Not that he said any such thing, but he must have imagined -- who wouldn't? -- the claret jug in his hands, against his lips, his name engraved there forever. "But," he said here Friday, and this was a "but" of hope, "the feeling might come around on the weekend."

It's 72 holes, it's four days, it's 280 shots, maybe a few less, maybe more. Winners can study how they won and find something important in every shot. Scott's bogey-making wedge at the 12th would be one of those.

Another would be the 2-iron off Jean Otter's head.

Jean Otter stood along the right side of the seventh fairway, Scott's 16th hole of the day. She's a middle-aged golf fan from Silver Spring, Md. She didn't see the Titleist headed her way. "If she'd seen it," her friend, Sue McNamara, said, "she'd have moved." Instead, Scott's shot, his second on the par 5, came down in the middle of Otter's head. It knocked her flat. For three or four minutes, Scott stopped play and crouched beside her, asking after her, apologizing, signing a golf glove for her.

A doctor there, Kenneth Thomas, told Otter, "He owes you." Had the ball followed its apparent flight plan, it would have bounced down a hill, across a walkway, and . . .

"You saved him from going in the lagoon," McNamara said.

Otter, on her back, blood on her forehead and arm, her eyes closed, said, "I told him, 'At least make a birdie.'"

Scott left his third shot short (he said Otter's blood was on the ball) and made bogey. Still, he said, "It was a good break for me, because it kicked it just in the rough." It might otherwise have come to rest in that lagoon, a dismal swamp, home to double- and triple-bogeys.

"I hope she's going to be okay," Scott said later.

Medics wrapped her head in a gauze bandage from the top of her hairdo to her chin. She walked to a cart and was taken to a first-aid station.

"I'll find out if she's all right," Scott said.

He had her name and address.

"I'll send her a bunch of flowers," he said.

And, come Sunday, if Adam Scott goes to the final four holes with a chance to win, Jean Otter might be asking him, again, for a birdie.