GOLF:THE OLD adage isn't lost on those who know these things: If you keep knocking on the door, sometime – and somewhere – it will be opened. And, as the second round of the 93rd edition of the US PGA Championship, one marketed as 'Glory's Last Shot' but seen as a potential first taste of glory for so many wannabes, went about its business here at Atlanta Athletic Club, there was much jockeying for position before the final chase.
What became abundantly clear, however, from the second round was that Tiger Woods – playing his first Major since the Masters in April – has a long road ahead of him if he is to regain his former glories. As a crowded leaderboard developed, Woods’s name was conspicuous by its absence.
Woods failed to make the cut after a second round that saw him go from the sublime (with back-to-back birdies on the eighth and ninth) to the ridiculous and then some. Two holes epitomised Woods’s woes, as he ran up a double-bogey six on the 11th hole – where he played a shot from a greenside bunker over the green and into the pond – and, then, on the 12th, he twice carved shots into the trees down the left as any hopes of surviving into the weeked evaporated in the Atlanta heat, of ‘Hotlanta’ as the bags of the various TaylorMade players put it.
As Steve Stricker – the first round leader – brought his own title aspirations back onto a course revamped and given extra muscle by golf architect Rees Jones, a number of others – most notably a gentleman by the name of DA Points who has laboured through much of his professional tour life on the secondary Nationwide Tour here in the USA – threw down pretensions of their own in attempting to join the exclusive club of Major champions.
Points, who secured his first win on the PGA Tour earlier this season when winning the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, shot a second round 67 – for a midway total of 136, four-under-par – to claim the early clubhouse lead, while Denmark’s Anders Hansen did his own quest for glory no harm at all with a 69 that left him a stroke behind Darren Andrew Points on the 137 mark.
On a day which again brought high temperatures – reaching into the high-90 degreess – and just the gentlest of winds, the course took its share of notable victims among them recent Major champions Darren Clarke, Louis Oosthuizen and Graeme McDowell, none of whom mustered any kind of challenge, while Woods – with his current game very much at odds with the one that made him the sport’s once dominant player – laboured for a second day running which left his Major ambitions and his FedEx Cup hopes up in smoke.
Not everyone, though, had such a hard time. And Lee Westwood – a player who has achieved all there is to be achieved in the sport, with the notable exception of a Major title – did a lot of things right in re-energising his bid for a breakthrough in these championships that define a player’s career.
Yesterday, the Englishman signed for a second round 68 that enabled him to make giant leaps through the field and into a position of contention heading into the weekend. In the run-up to this championship, Westwood – the world number two – had talked of how he had turned to sports psychologist Dr Bob Rotella and to putting guru Dave Stockton in his attempt to find a way to win one of golf’s most prized titles.
However, it seems that has all changed already. Westwood has decided not to use Stockton’s more technical approach in favour of what Rotella calls “total unconsciousness” over the ball.
Westwood – who had six birdies and four bogeys in yesterday’s round – kept his composure, despite a poor start where he put his approach on the 11th, his second hole of the day, into the water. His response? Well, he birdied the next two holes and, so, he was up and running and getting himself into the mix in a Major again.
Of his new “relaxed” demeanour on the course, Westwood said: “It’s hard (to maintain). It’s difficult to try your hardest and not care about the results. They contradict one another. But I’m breezing around out there and trying to smile whenever I can and not really worry about what’s going on too much.”
Indeed, an indication of Westwood’s current mindset – and how experience has helped him – came when asked what he thought of Rory McIlroy taking on his recovery shot at the third hole in Thursday’s first round. “A 22-year-old Lee Westwood probably would have taken it on, yeah. A 38-year-old Lee Westwood probably wouldn’t. I guess that’s why people turn up to watch him, don’t they.” Touche.
While McIlroy followed up his opening 70 with a 73 for 143, to at least ensure he would be around for the weekend, his fellow-Ulstermen Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke were on early planes out of Atlanta. But three-time Major champion Pádraig Harrington, playing alongside Davis Love and Woods, showed battling qualities of his own in being level for his round (three over for the championship) through 14 holes in his attempt to survive the cut.
