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Five to watch at the Farmers Insurance Open
Torrey Pines (both of ‘em) is the site for this week’s Tigerless, almost sponsorless Buick Invitational Farmers Insurance Open.
Given the title, we’re not taking the bait – we refuse top put country bumpkin Boo Weekley as one to watch. Just too easy.
We are, however, running with these five as players to keep an eye on starting Thursday:
GRAHAM DELAET
OK, so slap that big ol’ “homer” label right on our forehead. We’re going with the long bomber from Saskatchewan just to keep people interested. Well, that and the fact no one else is taking him in their previews because, quite frankly, most have no idea who he is. We do. Torrey Pines demands a lot of length off the tee – which DeLaet, ranked inside the top ten in early-season PGA Tour driving distance, certainly has. The rook has held his own early on, racking up top-25 showings in both his starts. No doubt DeLaet is an obvious darkhorse pick here, but once in a while Cinderella finds her way to the ball, right?
BUBBA WATSON
Another long bomber, Watson could go either way after yet another close call Monday in the final round of the Bob Hope. For those keeping count, that is four runner-up showings for the Bub, who just seems to have a tough time closing one of these things out. Watson has top-ten finishes at this event in two of the past three years, when it was known as the Buick Invitational (T4, T7). We’re betting he is ready to make a push at getting rid of the bridesmaid’s tag once and for all this week.
ERNIE ELS
Sixteen PGA Tour wins, but just one since 2004. So why is The Big Easy one to watch at Torrey Pines? Well, he’s played the Buick Invitational just once in his life, finishing T6 five years ago. Seeing how he’ll stay on this side of the pond until at least May, this could be a week he turns it up a notch. Now’s the time to leave little doubt he can keep pace with the best on the planet.
NICK WATNEY
Watney is the defending champion, but he has been a bit of an enigma here. Dating back to ’05, here is his docket at this event: MC, T49, T9, MC, Won. Just one start in 2010 (T16 at the SBS Championship) so Watney will be well-rested as he looks to go back-to-back – and we’re not doubting the defending champ this week.
PHIL MICKELSON
Gee, here’s a shocker, huh? Lefty makes his season debut and for the foreseeable future will be out of Tiger’s shadow. In fact, all eyes are now on Phil, beginning this week. Mickelson’s won three times in 20 starts at Torrey Pines and, for those who need a refresher, he did win the TOUR Championship a few months back. When it comes to players to watch lists this week, this is about as close to a no-brainer as you’ll get.
DeLaet, Baryla ready to take the torch
For the second time in the past few years, thanks to the Canadian and Nationwide Tours, there will once again be a Canadian youth movement on the PGA Tour.
And like Jon Mills and David Hearn before them, the 2010 rookie season will likely be a long, at times painful learning curve for Graham DeLaet and Chris Baryla.
Nothing like raining on the parade before Baryla and DeLaet have marched their first steps to the PGA Tour beat, huh?
That said, it would be wise to bet against either of them.
There’s no doubt both have the game to stick around the PGA Tour. If you’ve ever seen either hit a golf ball, that much is obvious. But now, the stakes are raised.
Mills, who has been to the dance twice, and Hearn couldn’t keep their PGA Tour cards and are working to get back. That is the challenge facing both Baryla and DeLaet: to make this stay more than a one-and-out.
It will be easier said than done. Whoever said getting there is half the battle hasn’t checked out the starting field at a PGA Tour event.
Eventually, a player or two is going to have to take the torch from Mike Weir and Stephen Ames. So, to the two newest members of the PGA Tour, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Coo, coo, ca-choo.
No one should be expecting a Masters championship from either Baryla or DeLaet in the near future, but managing to hold on to playing status following their freshman seasons would have to be seen as a major accomplishment. Don’t forget, this is unfamiliar territory for both. Sure, there have been RBC Canadian Open exemptions – in fact, Baryla was eighth, DeLaet 46th, at Canada’s national championship this past summer – but they will be playing courses they’ve never seen before, at the same time contending with the best players on the planet.
But this is the chance both have waited for. And don’t be mistaken: both could have extended stays on the PGA Tour. Like Mills and Hearn, these two are studs, and have been since their amateur days.
Now they’re where many thought they would be. The trick is to make it a lengthy stay.
Canadians, for the most part, have wondered when the youngsters were going to break through and get to the PGA Tour.
Now, at least for the time being, we have our answer.
And don’t be surprised if both DeLaet and Baryla stick around for awhile.
PGA Tour bubble boys down to their last chance
So the big boys are done with the PGA Tour until the New Year and about the only intriguing storyline heading into this week’s season-ender is who may be looking for a place to play come Sunday night.
Golf’s bubble boys arrive in Florida with fingers crossed, hoping to earn enough cash this week that they won’t have to beg for sponsor’s exemptions or, worse yet, return to Q-School to play their way back on tour. Sitting in 126th spot on the money list is Chris Riley with just over $613,000 in earnings.
Hey, six hundred grand doesn’t buy what it used to.
Here are five bubble boys you may want to keep an eye on this week:
RICH BEEM
Pop quiz: who held off Tiger at the 2002 PGA Championship, one of those rare times someone did anything but bow down to Tiger on the final day of a major. If you answered Rich Beem, here’s your cookie. Beemer is inside the number needed to retain his card for 2010 – by one, sitting in 124th spot. He needs to make a cheque, preferably a rather large one, so he can sleep a little easier Sunday night.
ROCCO MEDIATE
Who can forget the ear-to-ear smile from The Rock during that colossal playoff at the U.S. Open with Tiger playing on one leg? How the almost-mighty have fallen. Mediate hasn’t had a horrible season, missing playing on the weekend in just three of 21 starts, but he just can’t seem to find his mojo with just a lone top ten. Way, way back on the money list -141st to be exact – so he’ll need to put together another memorable week if he wants a free pass on tour for 2010.
RICKY BARNES
The former U.S. amateur king seemed to be The Next One after a runner-up showing at Bethpage back in June. Since then, it’s been a downward spiral: three cuts in nine starts and a best showing of 39th. If Barnes is in danger of missing the cut late Friday, those within a few hundred yards of him may want to cover their kids’ ears. Trust us.
DAVID DUVAL
Bet you thought Duval was on his way back after that inspiring performance at Bethpage this summer, didn’t you? You may want to re-think that. Since tying for second at the U.S. Open, Duval has made just over $10,000 in seven starts. He’s the bubbliest of bubble boys, sitting right on the 125th perch heading into Thursday. Make the cut, he probably keeps his card; miss playing on the weekend, all bets are off.
CHRIS DIMARCO
Perplexing, indeed. If you’ve been asleep at the switch, you might be wondering what happened to a guy who was near the top of the food chain not all that long ago. DiMarco hasn’t cracked the top 25 since The Memorial in June and has been in a free fall to 138th on the money list. Remember that classic duel with Tiger at Augusta back in ’05? Yeah, it was only four years ago. Watching the ex-Canadian Tour Order of Merit winner these days, it sure seems a lot longer than that.
Payne remains a decade later
Ten years. Hard to believe, isn’t it, that it was a decade ago when the final moments of Payne Stewart’s life played out right before our eyes on national television like some twisted reality show that could never have a happy ending.
Oct. 25, 1999. If you’re a fan of the game, chances are you remember exactly where you were when you heard the news.
And no, ten years later, it doesn’t make any more sense, just as it didn’t as we watched as that LearJet flew across the miles, destination unknown, before dropping from the South Dakota sky, a pair of F-16s keeping watch over a scene that no one could really comprehend.
Long before that plane hit the ground, Payne Stewart and five others were gone.
Four months earlier, Stewart had knocked off young hotshot Phil Mickelson with a 15-foot putt on the final hole at the U.S. Open, displaying that now-famous leg kick and fist-pump, now forever etched in time.
And as soon as his ball hit the bottom of the cup, he walked over and took Mickelson’s face in his hands and told the soon-to-be daddy:
“Good luck with the baby. There’s nothing like being a father.”
The next day, Lefty and his wife, Amy, celebrated the birth of their first child.
That was just Stewart’s way: respect for his foes but an even larger appreciation for the game, its history and what it stands for.
Payne Stewart, like any of us, was not perfect. He had a fiery temper and more than a few times displayed a short fuse with the media. But he was a throwback, with that tam o’shanter cap and those plus-fours. Ten years ago, Tiger Woods and to a lesser degree, Mickelson himself, were showing signs of their pending domination, but the torch had not yet been passed. Guys like Stewart, they were about to be bumped to the second page of the golf headlines, but back then, back in 1999, it was still their time.
That wasn’t going to change for a while.
Or so we thought.
Ten years. And we wonder where the time, like personalities such as Payne Stewart, has gone.
Hey Camilo- how ’bout just shutting up?
Life is tough for Camilo Villegas. Seriously.
Quick, someone pass him a tissue. Boo hoo.
Seems the Colombian feels we want to listen to him whine and moan – via his Twitter account, no less – about how professional golfers are so hard done by.
Here is what he had to say after getting ousted from the FedEx Cup playoffs:
Home…. Way too much golf in the last two months… I still dont get it, every sport has an offseason but i guess we dont…
Yeah, life sure is tough, huh, CV? Travelling the globe making millions, getting phone numbers and, for all we know, underwear passed to you from adoring, and extremely hot, female fans. Well, we hope most of them are female, anyway.
Lots of opportunities to make that kind of coin back home in Colombia, huh Camilo? Of course, you’re looking at twenty to thirty in the pokey if you get caught.
You and your colleagues chase a little white ball around, four days a week, and played for about a quarter of a BILLION dollars this year. And, yes, that is BILLION, with a ‘B’. Those lingering near the bottom of the PGA Tour’s food chain – in other words, those on the bubble when it comes to keeping a card for 2010 – will still pocket more than half a million bucks this season.
So, how about looking down at us working class stiffs and listening up. You may learn a thing or two.
Just shut up and play. Try, if you can, living in the real world for a few minutes. You know, the one where plenty of people are begging for a job to try to provide for their family, trying to make that last mortgage payment before foreclosure. Staying awake all night wondering just how in the world you are going to make ends meet while you sleep in your king size bed in some five-star resort.
It’s not exactly tough to see why millionaire athletes, for the most part, are seen as spoiled, pompous jerks.
It could have been worse, Camilo. Had you actually played decent, you would still be alive in these FedEx Cup playoffs, giving you something else to whine about.
As for the rest of us common folk, you are right about one thing. We too get an off-season that lasts about two or three weeks a year.
It’s called vacation.
Ken Green just can’t escape demons
His is another heartbreaking tale of fate, not unlike, in many ways, Amy Mickelson’s agonizing battle with breast cancer.
Only Ken Green will not get the same headlines, will not receive the same number of well wishes, from a golfing public that has long since swept him under the rug, as if he no longer matters. He was from an era where golf was not nearly as sexy to so many, this five-time PGA Tour champion.
Green could very well be a product of his own undoing, an abrasive, combative rogue who never bit his lip, never thought twice about who he might offend and quite simply didn’t care.
He was never shy when discussing the demons he attempted to slay long after he had vacated the PGA Tour stage, demons that he had seemingly put in the past until they reappeared on a Mississippi interstate Monday.
While heading home a day after the Champions Tour’s Triton Financial Classic, green’s RV blew a tire and ended up careening down an embankment before plowing into a tree. Killed were his girlfriend, brother and German Shepherd.
Reports suggest Green is in danger of losing his leg. Even if it can somehow be saved, it’s pretty well a given he will never play another round of competitive golf again.
And that, no matter what you think of Ken Green – or if you even know who he is – is tragic.
Green marched to his own beat, both on the golf course and behind the microphone. He once cracked a beer while playing a round with Arnold Palmer at The Masters. Another time, he snuck friends into Augusta National in the trunk of his car.
“For whatever reason, I never really liked people telling me what to do,” Green told Golf Digest six years ago. “I’ve always been that way. I might handle it differently now, but I’m still not going to let someone tell me how I should act.”
Things seemed to be turning for Ken Green, having made just over $120,000 in eleven starts on the Champions Tour in 2009. Not much by today’s standards, perhaps, but a hell of a lot more than he had been making.
Green had softened his stance in recent years , which tends to happen once you lose everything. Following his PGA Tour career, Green slid into depression and underwent a nasty divorce. He admits he was $300,000 in the hole, suicidal and, in his own words “went to bed every night praying I didn’t have to wake up and deal with this planet anymore. When you’d wake up in the morning, you were [angry] because you did wake up.”
That outlook had changed, especially in a 2009 season in which he was trying to make a name for himself in the same game that had apparently passed him by.
No one knows for sure if Ken Green dreads waking up right now, with his brother, his girlfriend, his dreams, taken away in the most fleeting of moments on a Mississippi highway.
But he deserves that lift out of bed, that same shoulder reserved for Amy Mickelson or Darren Clarke or anyone else floored by tragedy.
Even if you have no idea who Ken Green is – or once was.
Sergio Garcia dumped…and he isn’t taking it well
What’s next, Sergio Garcia? Tissue time at the turn? Reluctance to go to the bathroom alone during a night out? Little umbrellas and fruity drinks? Saturday night with a bottle of cheap wine and a Barry White CD?
Cowboy up, man. So you were dumped. Boo hoo. Get over it.
Sure, very few of us will get that “I still care about you but…” phone call from one with the knockout factor of Morgan-Leigh Norman, the Shark’s dazzling daughter. But draw the blinds and watch Terms of Endearment, get misty-eyed over old pictures if need be but, for God’s sake, don’t go public with it by whining it is wrecking your golf game. That’s ammunition for a petition to get your man card revoked. We know, Morg’s a looker and is probably the only person on the face of the earth with whiter teeth than you. We understand. Life sucks sometimes.
But something tells me there won’t be too many nights home alone, if you get my drift. Look at you, damnit.
“It was probably the first time I have been really in love,” said Garcia. “It took me a while to get over it.”
Quick! Someone remind Sergio he still has to go to the loo standing up, pronto! And if the mood hits him, he can still belch. Be a man.
There are truly some things you have no control over, things that can change your life and really screw up your golf game. Like, you know, breast cancer. Perspective, my man. If I can still call you that.
We empathize with your plight. Most of us have been on the receiving end of that phone call, some of us more than others. But hey, this isn’t the LPGA Tour, buddy. Sometimes there is no need for that heart-to-heart girlfriend chat – especially with a reporter.
You are a multi-millionaire. Drive a Ferrari. When you smile, clothes start hitting the floor. Looking for something to cheer you up? Take a set of twins up for a ride in your jet. I don’t shave for two days and my wife calls me a slob. You grow a five o’clock shadow, and women start passing phone numbers and hotel room keys.
Sergio, we feel your pain. Really. It sucks to be dumped but ,you’re in a heck of a lot better shape than the rest of us. Next time you feel sorry for yourself, pick up a mirror. You’ve done it before, I’m sure.
See, don’t you feel better already?
And don’t forget, there’s always a way to win a heart back. Like, say, winning a major….
Goydos’ pride, Driscoll’s ride and did Perry try to pull a fast one?
As I watched James Driscoll rally from eight shots down Sunday at the Texas Open, my thoughts wandered to what he was driving these days.
If, for some unknown and pointless reason, there is ever a trivia book on my life, Driscoll will be an answer. As in, who was the Canadian Tour player who had his car stolen along with mine, on the same night from the same parking lot, of a Montreal hotel seven years ago?
Answer: James Driscoll.
Driscoll was a Canadian Tour rookie back in those days and was more than a little perturbed – and rightfully so- as the hotel clerk tried to explain to us, a little after the fact, the perils of the ongoing car theft problem in Quebec at that time.
Never got the car back – and, as far as I know, neither did Driscoll – but all was not lost. I caught a ride back to Toronto with a co-worker after the tournament ended. Not sure how Driscoll, who had Massachusetts plates on his vehicle, made it home.
We shared a laugh about the lack of Montreal hotel security for the rest of the summer, but Driscoll probably doesn’t have to worry about those types of things these days. Now if he could only figure out how to knock in a 20-foot birdie putt in a playoff…
***
Paul Goydos deserved a better fate Sunday at the Texas Open.
Not because he outplayed Zach Johnson or Driscoll or Bill Haas, but because, darnit, he deserves to catch a break.
By now you’ve heard the stories of Goydos taking over the upbringing of his daughters, of the struggles his ex-wife Wendy endured as she fought a painkiller addiction trying to overcome severe migraines before passing away earlier this year.
Of Goydos being prepared to walk away from golf if that is what it took to raise his daughters, just as he did in 2004. He returned, won in 2007 and lost a heartbreaking playoff to Sergio Garcia at last year’s PLAYERS Championship.
For Goydos, it is never about him.
“I can sit here and claim I made an altruistic or courageous decision not to play golf so I could be with my girls,” Goydos said in an interview after his return to golf. “But Wendy made one herself, by not fighting to have them and walking away so she could take care of herself and wind up a better mother. That’s pretty strong, too.”
How can you not cheer for a guy like that?
***
Is Kenny Perry a cheater? Discuss.
More than a few people are suggesting Perry subtly improved his lie on his way to a win earlier this year at the FBR Open. After sitting down with a few rules officials and studying the tape in recent days, Perry was cleared of any wrongdoing.
But, rightly or wrongly, golf’s court of public opinion will surely have its dissidents.
Probably the most surprising thing is that some doofus sitting on his couch at home didn’t pick up the phone and call in to the PGA Tour to blow the whistle on Perry. Then again, maybe someone did. There has, after all, been precedent.
“Kenny is a man of the utmost purity and integrity,” says Mark Russell, a senior rules official with the PGA Tour.
Of course, Russell could have been talking about Perry himself –Kentucky innocence at its finest.
Or he could have been taking about Perry’s daughter.
John Daly still kickin’ but does anyone care anymore?
Maybe John Daly still has something left to prove, after all.
Only time will tell if anyone really cares. That ship may have long since sailed.
Much to the surprise of many, Daly showed he still has some serious game left in that trimmed down frame – and you’ll have to do some research to see if that indeed is the first time “Daly” and “trimmed down” have been used in the same sentence – finishing second across the pond at the European Tour’s BMW Italian Open.
The $136,000 he pocketed should help pay off a few debts and, with a little luck, allow Daly a couple of minutes at the blackjack table. More importantly, however, at least as far as his career goes, Daly’s performance could create a little more interest as he gets set to return to the PGA Tour ranks after a six month Tim Finchem-imposed exile.
There was a time, long ago, that Daly was the crown prince of golf, the beer-guzzlin’, chain-smokin’ working man’s hero who could draw a crowd simply by launching a ball into another time zone. Remember the hoopla, just a few short years ago, when Daly attempted to clear customs by driving a few balls from Canada into the United States via Niagara Falls?
Those days are long gone.
The crown prince is now the court jester. Daly is hanging on by the proverbial thread, selling memorabilia from his trailer outside the front gates of Augusta National during The Masters and making recent headlines for his pants rather than his golf game.
Until last weekend, anyway.
Many have turned a blind eye to the fall of John Daly, jumping off his once overflowing bandwagon and shrugging with indifference at his plight. In golf circles, a two-time major champion is almost an afterthought. Quite simply, very few seem to care anymore.
Sponsors won’t go near him and even Hooters has parted ways. Daly is running out of money, and flirting with bankruptcy. His loyal fans are sick of the gong show.
Daly is almost referred to in the past tense.
For a man determined to salvage his career, Daly’s timing couldn’t have been better for a strong showing. He proved he is not a write-off just yet, and you have to think a tournament sponsor or two will roll the dice and drop an exemption into his lap once he is able to return to the PGA Tour next month. A serious Daly, one desperate enough to realize he has thrown it all away, could get the public talking again. That John Daly will still sell tickets.
A few more performances like last week, and people many start once again paying attention to his game rather than his pants.
If it isn’t too late.
David Feherty should have stuck to golf jokes
Hindsight being what it is, one is left to ponder exactly what in the heck David Feherty was thinking.
If, indeed, he was thinking at all.
Golf’s village idiot, who often delivers some classic one-liners but can tend to push the boundaries of arrogance and bad taste, certainly tripped over that line this past weekend in an ill-fated attempt at humour, suggesting in the Dallas rag ‘D Magazine’ U.S. soldiers probably wouldn’t lose any sleep by offing a pair of top U.S. elected officials –Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
It all seemed harmless enough for Feherty, one of five Dallas residents who penned a column addressing President Bush’s move back to Texas.
Until he tried to get too cute.
“Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death,” Feherty wrote.
People tend to get their panties in a twist over, well, pretty much anything these days, which renders the notion of freedom of speech debatable at best. Despite having Feherty’s satirical handprint all over it, no matter how witty the line may have seemed when he proofed his piece, it was a major faux pas. Such is the problem when a sports writer or broadcaster tries to dabble in the world of political satire. All too often, it doesn’t come across as funny.
Just a few words after the controversial verbiage, Feherty put his common sense cap back on, saying of U.S. soldiers “At Walter Reed, Bethesda Naval Medical Center, and the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, I have visited dozens of patients, and I always ask of them before I leave: “What do you want to do when you get out?” No matter how broken or burned, or how many limbs they are missing, they give only one answer: “I want to go back. I want to rejoin my team, to finish our mission.” They are rightfully proud of what they have done and want nothing more than to be with their brothers and sisters in arms, because they know the consequences if their job is left unfinished.”
Touches the heart a tad, doesn’t it? But how many people are talking about those words in Feherty’s column today?
Someone forgot to tell Feherty this wasn’t Yuk Yuk’s on a Friday night. Did he actually believe, even if some found his wit quite entertaining, that there wouldn’t be some serious backlash? Politicians are fair game for the most part, but this was undoubtedly a ‘can-I-get-a-mulligan’ moment for Feherty.
And the answer, of course, is no. There may have been no malice intended, but CBS Sports is left in an awkward spot and will undoubtedly cave in under the public outcry, likely suspending Feherty, if not sticking a pink slip to his microphone altogether.
“We want to be clear that this column for a Dallas magazine is an unacceptable attempt at humor and is not in any way condoned, endorsed or approved by CBS Sports,” they said in a statement.
Feherty’s comments will, somewhat sadly, overshadow his admiration of the U.S. troops in Iraq, with whom he has visited over the past couple of years. He is also a supporter of the “Troops First Foundation” for soldiers who return to American soil wounded – many of them missing limbs.
Spending time with the troops is said to have touched him enough for Feherty, a native of Northern Ireland, to apply for U.S. citizenship.
One thing is certain. He didn’t win over many friends among his prospective countrymen with his latest attempt to get a laugh.
Fairways Web Editor Marty Henwood spent more than six years as the Media Relations Director with the Canadian Tour and has been involved in sports journalism for more than a decade, including stints in newspaper, radio, new media and media relations. He will offer his unique take on the world of golf, with nothing and no one off limits.