NORTON, Mass., Sept. 7 -- With the breath-taking, press-stopping, this-just-in news flash that U.S. Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin chose Tiger Woods to be on his team, somewhere Jim Gray is giving himself a fist bump.
Remember back in August, when Pavin and ESPN/Golf Channel reporter Gray nearly got into fisticuffs over whether the former told the latter that Woods was a captain’s pick? Certainly since then, if not before, it’s been only a matter of how Pavin would break the “news” that he had called Woods over to his side.
Told ya so! Gray could even high-five himself for his part in the LeBron James “The Decision” spoof (oh, wait; you mean that was the real thing?). Because ESPN’s shameful extravaganza was riveting theater compared with Pavin, Mr. Excitement himself, sucking any drama and intrigue about the Ryder Cup out of the ether with his snooze-a-thon from the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday morning. (Nothing like suits on a dais at the NYSE to get the competitive juices flowing, eh? Woods, on a conference call, sounded as if he had barely gotten out of bed. USA! USA!)
So, now that Pavin has made known what everyone expected in the first place (Woods, Cink, Fowler, and Zach Johnson are captain’s picks), maybe we can get back to what really matters: Will Phil Mickelson ever wrest golf’s No. 1 ranking from the grasp of Tiger Woods?
Wait’ll next year. It says here the answer is, absolutely! Right after the Boston Red Sox win the 2010 World Series. You see, while Mickelson said all the right things about Boston sports fans (“This is a town that just loves sports and there’s no better feel than going to Fenway Park when those Red Sox are in the playoff hunt”), the fact is that Lefty has about as much chance to strut his stuff with one of those oversized styrofoam “We’re No. 1” fingers as do fans of the injury-riddled and fading-fast Olde Towne Team.
The big lefty just can’t get it done when he has the chance. And he’s had several during this season of Tiger Woods’ precipitous fall from, and continuing rise again to, grace. Labor Day weekend’s Deutsche Bank Championship was just the latest example.
Mickelson entered the final round at TPC Boston four shots off the lead at 12-under. All he needed to do to dethrone the king was to finish in fourth place as long as Woods could do no better than 24th.
He started out with a so-so front nine, carding a birdie on the par-5 second hole, a bogey on the par-3 third, and then five pars. His back nine, however, was a microcosm of how Mickelson seems to cough it up when it’s all on the line.
Fore! Woods was plodding along ahead of Mickelson until he put a charge on down the stretch, posting three birdies on his final four holes to finish at 68 and close out the weekend in a tie for 11th place. Instead of stepping his game up to meet Woods’ challenge, Mickelson made the turn with probably his worst tee shot of the tourney when his ball landed in a right hazard and he had to take a one-shot penalty.
He lost his next shot into the hazard, adding another penalty stroke to his card. He finished the hole with a triple-bogey seven and ended the day with a five-over 76, a 7-under for the contest, and a tie for 25th.
Gotta give it to Mickelson, though. He refused to be discouraged and smiled through a brief press conference during which he politely declined to discuss his seemingly futile race for top billing.
“I’m just trying to get my game right now and today I took some positives, not from the day but from the week,’’ he said.
Crashing the party. Who was that “radio reporter” who “burst in” on Woods and his private confab with “a couple of trusted golf reporters,” as the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy noted in his Tuesday column? That would be Liza Churchill, host of Goldie Bounce Golf, a New England golf radio show on WATD 95.9 FM.
OK, “burst in” was a bit over the top. After finishing his formal presser, Woods conferred with his cronies toward the back of the interview area. They’d been talking for some time when Churchill asked if she could lob a question at the golf ace, who said, “Sure.”
Churchill asked Woods when he would make official his already public partnership with swing coach Sean Foley (a perfectly reasonable question, which this Golf Examiner suggested). Must have been the wrong query, since Woods responded, "That's all for today," walked off, and the world apparently spun off its axis.
Best seats in the house. You know that seven-foot, eight-inch putt Woods jarred for birdie on the 15th? Laura and Brent Parrish had a bird's-eye view of that putt as well as every golfer's long shot or tap-in from their vantage point high above the 15th green and 16th tee. Yearly volunteers at TPC Boston, the Parrishes, who golf at Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua, N.H., staffed the Shotlink system that measures the distance from golfers’ approach shots to the pin on the 15th putting surface. On a brilliant summer day in New England, there was no better place to be.
It’s on to Chicago for the next stage of the FedEx Cup playoff race. First, though, read how Charley Hoffman lapped the field with his five-stroke victory at the Deutsche Bank Championship.
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