This was a week with a lot of golf events the happened. There was the Byron Nelson Championship on the PGA Tour, the BMW PGA Championship on the European Tour, and the Senior PGA Championship on the Senior Tour. As usual, there are always a lot of surprising / interesting / significant golfer performances. Here is a countdown of the Top 10.
10. BMW PGA Championship: Alvaro Quiros. After two rounds, Quiros tied for the lead. And at one point in the third round he had a 2-shot lead, but some very big and costly mistakes were what prevented him from winning. He made 2 triple bogeys in the third round -- one on the 9th and one on the 17th -- that dropped him well out of contention. He was unable to rebound in the final round and finished the tournament with a T18.
9. Byron Nelson Championship: Sergio Garcia. After two good rounds of 66s that gave him a share of the lead, Sergio shot 74-77 over the weekend. He dropped like a bullet in the final round, dropping all the way to 20th place. This has been Sergio's M.O. all year in 2011. He plays very well for the first 2 rounds, and then drops well out of contention the last 2 rounds. This exact same trend also happened earlier this year at the Dubai Desert Classic, Transitions Championship, The Masters, Volvo China Open, and Quail Hollow Championship. He is becoming such a predictable player, because in 2011 you almost know exactly how he is going to perform on a week-to-week basis - 2 good rounds followed by 2 bad rounds.
8. BMW PGA Championship: Scott Jamieson. This relatively unknown golfer was in contention after 2 rounds. After 36 holes, he was just 5 back, with a tie for 8th. However, he had a very disappointing weekend, shooting 85-78 over the weekend, and dropped from 8th all the way to 65th (second last place). That 85 included a quintuple bogey on the 8th hole when he hit it into the water twice. Tough weekend for him that's for sure.
7. Byron Nelson Championship: Steven Bowditch / Rory Sabbatini. The windy second round really provided dramatic changes by players up and down the leaderboard. After a first round 75 that left Steven Bowditch well below the cut line, Bowditch rebounded with a nice 65 under very tough conditions with helped him jump up 111 spots up the leaderboard. Meanwhile, after a 69 that got Rory Sabbatini in the hunt on Thursday, Sabbatini followed up that round with a scintillating 82 that made him not even close to making the cut. He dropped 111 spots down the leaderboard. What a change.
6. BMW PGA Championship: Lee Westwood. Lee Westwood yet again proved to the world why he was NOT the #1 player in the world. Having a one-shot lead with 3 holes to play, all he needed to do was to play the last 3 holes even par and he would win the title. Instead, Westwood three-putted the 16th hole for a bogey. Then failed to birdie 17 when his 2nd shot on the par 5 landed in a very difficult chipping area. And he missed a 7-foot birdie putt on the last hole which would have given him an outright win. Then Westwood lost the playoff with Luke Donald in dramatic fashion. He hit a good approach shot during the playoff hole, but it had too much sidespin and spun into the water, resulting in the loss. So, after arguable undeservedly holding the #1 ranking since Halloween of 2010, all except for Kaymer's 8 week reign in between, about time Westwood finally lost the #1 ranking to Luke Donald this week.
5. BMW PGA Championship: Luke Donald. It was not a surprise that Donald won, but rather, the WAY Donald won was the surprising thing about this win. After shooting an opening round 64, Donald looked like he was in cruise control. But then after an indifferent second round 72 he left the door open for lots of competitors. And then he REALLY let the door open in the third round, when he shot 5 over after 6 holes that round, and after these 6 holes he had dropped all the way to 9th place. For a while looked like Donald won't win the tournament anymore, but then he made 4 VERY excellent birdies on the back nine to retain the share of the lead. Then in the final round, Luke Donald trailed Lee Westwood for the majority of the round but he managed to come through and win the tournament and took over the #1 ranking from Westwood.
4. Byron Nelson Championship: Jordan Spieth. This guy's so amazingly talented it's incredible how well he plays despite being only the age of 17 and being an amateur golfer. After a nice T16 finish in 2010, he looked to be on the way to have another good encore in 2011. And he did play very well, being in contention for the majority of his week. But the reason why he didn't have a finish as high as last year was the fact that his game was spotty and inconsistent, which is expectant from an amateur like him. Believe it or not, he made 20 birdies. However, those birdies were offset by 14 bogeys and 6 double bogeys. He showed a lot of short game brilliance but also showed a lot of amateur inexperience. And he had quite a tough finish, playing his last 4 holes 6 over par. Surely this was a great learning experience for him.
3. Byron Nelson Championship: Ryan Palmer. What made Ryan Palmer's week so surprising was the fact that he played this event ever year since 2004, yet he MISSED THE CUT all but one time. And that one time he finished 73rd place. So his high finish this week came COMPLETELY out of the blue. It should be noted that he had a very interesting strategy this week, letting his caddie tell him to hit every single shot. He listened to the caddie every shot and stayed committed to his shots that way. He played very solidly for the first 2 days, but missed a few opportunities the last 2 days. He was 1 shot back of the lead when he got to the last hole of the final round. He hit a perfect drive, and stuffed a perfect approach shot to 4 feet and made a birdie in grand style (on the toughest hole of that day, I may add) to force a playoff with Keegan Bradley. However, Bradley won when Palmer hit his second shot in the water on the playoff hole.
2. Byron Nelson Championship: Ryuji Imada / Joe Ogilvie. It's quite a surprise to see Imada and Ogilvie be in contention for this tournament. The reason being was the fact that Imada and Ogilvie have almost been completely unheard of since 2008. So this week of high finishes by these two golfers were almost completely out of the blue after not contending for three years! Ogilvie at one point had a share of the lead but fell back at the back nine. And Imada actually had a 2 shot lead with 4 holes to play. Then he bogeyed 3 of his last 4 holes to lose by 1 stroke. He bogeyed 15 when he hit his drive in the rough, had to punch out, and then airmailed his third shot. He bogeyed the 17th when he pulled his 3 foot par putt. And another poor tee shot on 18 led to another bogey.
1. Senior PGA Championship: Kiroshi Mirota. Although there were a lot of surprising storylines over at the PGA and European Tours, I still think the MOST surprising story of the week happened at the Senior Tour, at the Senior PGA Championship at Valhalla. The huge surprise was Japanese golfer Kiroshi Mirota, whom, despite being unknown just about everywhere but in Japan, was actually leading a Senior Tour major for the first three rounds! A lot of people had no idea who Mirota was. He surprised everybody with his brilliant play, even himself. He actually had a four-shot lead after 36 holes! But he fell back in the final two rounds and finished the tournament 1 stroke behind the winner.
No comments:
Post a Comment