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Nothing like a bit of sunshine
By Jim McCabe
Covered for three days by a ferocious dark sky, pounded with relentless rain, and advertised by many in the press as potentially the worst Major championship in 25 years, the 94th US PGA Championship had a stunning metamorphosis in yesterday’s opening round.
Ridiculed by many, it was anything but the calamity it was predicted to be.Quite the opposite, it was tremendous theatre and the thanks goes to those two flavourful forces that need to come to fruition — brilliant weather at a seaside course and notable names at every turn of the head.
Put ’em together and what more can a tournament official want?
Certainly, players got all they asked for in their battle with the Ocean Course here at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort — a break in the weather from three days of thunderstorms.
“We knew when we woke up this morning that today was going to be a day you had to go out and get one,” said Gary Woodland, who in this day and age of everyone hitting it long is one of the few who goes beyond long. How long? Consider that he hit an 8-iron into the 579-yard, par-five seventh hole.
That’s for his second shot, folks.
“When I drive it like that, I’m playing a game that most guys can’t play out here,” Woodland said.
On a day of suffocating heat, bright sunshine, and manageable wind, there was no reason to spread anything but truisms and joy. Red numbers were there for the taking and the fact that so many five-star attractions seized them had PGA of America folks absolutely giddy.
Honestly, had you given them the wherewithal to hand place some names on the leaderboard, officials would have taken Rory McIlroy, Keegan Bradley, and, of course, Tiger Woods without hesitation. So what happened? When a morning of calm conditions was over, McIlroy had authored a five-under 67 to sit one off of Carl Pettersson’s clubhouse lead, Bradley was at 68, and Woods managed a brilliant par-save at his 18th hole, the par-four ninth, to shoot 69.
A trio of popular names, for sure, each of them quite capable of bringing interest to a tournament that is competing for media attention with the Olympics, professional football, and baseball. But in some ways, the names who tossed spice into this first-day leaderboard were of the eclectic variety — John Daly (68), a massive blast from the past; Ryo Ishikawa (69), who merely carries a nation’s hopes on his young shoulders; and Joost Luiten (68), the pride of Bleiswijk, which as we all know is in the hotbed of pro golf, the western part of The Netherlands.
You can just see it now, the Nascar crowd will do a U-turn and head to this corner of America to follow Long John, no one in Japan will sleep a wink in anticipation of ‘The Bashful Prince’ and his long-awaited arrival into golf royalty, and The Netherlands will become the golf capital of the world.
Okay, scratch that about The Netherlands, but you get the drift.
Sizzle there was but something was missing.
“On the windiest course in the world, you’d expect a little more wind than this,” Pat Perez said.
Now for the sake of accuracy, by the time Perez was headed to lunch, the afternoon wave was taking on heavier wind. Not that it was the Firth of Forth, mind you, but as an indication of what the second half of the day might be like, Luiten closed with four consecutive bogeys in the wind.
So we have the old “luck of the draw” element very much alive here, an aspect of the British Open that nearly drove McIlroy to pull his curly locks out at St Andrews in 2010.
The only thing is, they’re using a two-tee start, “so it gives you a better chance,” McIlroy said.
A better chance? PGA of America officials don’t mind providing to the players. And it’s all they asked for their tournament after such a horrendous lead-up of weather.