Appleby takes big stride up rankings
Ross Fisher, eventual champion in Kerry, went close with a 61 on Friday but nobody could reach the magic number. However, Australian Stuart Appleby shot 59 in the Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia on the US PGA Tour over a 7,020 yards, par 70 course. Appleby shot 66, 68, 65 and 59 to finish 22 under par.
The weekend activity had a huge bearing on the new world rankings. Appleby made the biggest move, improving from 159th to 94th and securing a place in this week’s WGC-Bridgestone Championship in Akron, Ohio, followed by the US PGA Championship in Wisconsin.
Irish champion Fisher is up to 20th from 36th and runner-up Pádraig Harrington goes from 19th to 15th. Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Shane Lowry remain 8th, 11th and 80th respectively while Darren Clarke is 99th.
Harrington is once more within touchingdistance of one of Europe’s nine automatic Ryder Cup team places. The nine holding down automatic places are Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Ross Fisher, Martin Kaymer, Francesco Molinari and Miguel-Angel Jimenez but expect that to change significantly after two lucrative events in the next fortnight.
Harrington is anxious to play his way into the team in the next two weeks to avoid having to tee it up in the final counting event, the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles. Having to do so would rule him out of the Barclays Championship, the first of the lucrative Fed-Ex Cup tournaments in the US that week.
His bid to secure a spot in Colin Montgomerie’s team begins this week in the Bridgestone over the tree-lined Firestone layout in Akron. “It’s a tough course with probably the narrowest fairways of the year,” said Harrington. “It’s one you’ve got to pay attention to all of the time with very, very fast greens. I did well last year and have had some okay, average years before that. So I don’t know how to approach it. My short game was sharp at the Irish Open and I’m happy to see that.”
McDowell and McIlroy are the other Irish headed for Ohio. McDowell admits he is suffering from a “post-US Open hangover, not an alcohol one” and hopes a chat with three-time Major winner Harrington this week will help.
Either way, the idea of playing his first tournament in the US since his great victory at Pebble Beach excites McDowell although he admitted: “Firestone should be a great warm-up for the US PGA and Whistling Straits which is a linksy-style course.”
Thinking just a little too far ahead didn’t help McIlroy, who disappointed in Killarney. The youngster has been frustratingly inconsistent this year – shooting 62 at Quail Hollow and 63 at St Andrews, and then missing cuts or tumbling out of contention. He hopes the return to the States will re-ignite his competitive juices.
“These are two big weeks against the best fields in golf. You’ve got most of the top 50 guys there and you’ve got the top 100 in the PGA. Akron is a fantastic golf course. The greens are among the best surfaces we play and usually you don’t get a winner that’s 16 or 20 under which I quite like. I didn’t do very well last year but I was working on a few things and they took a bit of time to bed in and it eventually clicked at the PGA where I finished third.”
