Friday, August 17, 2001
Waite leading, everyone but
Tiger right behind
By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
DULUTH, Ga. (AP) — Tiger Woods says
he's not that far off. Try telling that to the 99 players in front
of him after one round of the PGA Championship.
The list starts with Grant Waite of New
Zealand, who rolled in an 18-foot birdie putt on the final hole
for a 6-under 64 and a two-stroke lead over nine players, a group
that includes British Open champion David Duval and Phil Mickelson.
Ernie Els led a dozen others at 67. In fact,
the 55 players who broke par was the highest number in six years
at the PGA Championship.
Three of those guys were club professionals.
And then there was Woods.
His summer swoon continued Thursday on a
day when just about everyone else took advantage of the soft,
spongy greens that allowed for an incredible scoring assault in
a major championship.
Woods had two double bogeys, two three-putt
bogeys and not nearly enough solid shots to join the mix. Instead,
he signed for a 73 and wound up nine strokes back, matching his
largest first-round deficit in a major since he turned pro five
years ago.
He also was nine back at the 1997 U.S. Open.
“I'm not that far off,” said Woods,
who failed to break par for the sixth time in his last nine rounds
at a major. He previously broke par 13 straight times, a streak
that ended at the Masters with his unprecedented sweep of the
majors.
“If I play a good round tomorrow, I
should be able to get myself back in the tournament,” Woods
said. “That's the good thing about majors. If you play well,
you're going to be rewarded by moving up the leaderboard.”
He'll have to navigate more traffic than
he ever saw growing up in southern California.
If the scoring was surprising, so was the
leader.
Waite had never made the cut in four previous
PGAs. He had never even had a round in the 60s. The last time
he was in contention anywhere, Woods hit a 6-iron from 218 yards
out of a fairway bunker, over the water and right at the flag,
to birdie the last hole and beat Waite by one stroke at the Canadian
Open last September.
“I've never been close to any position
like this before,” Waite said. “This is an adventure.
I want to look back at the end of the week and say I enjoyed it.”
There's a lot of golf left, and a whole
lot of players in contention.
The most daunting prospect is Duval, who
played as if he just got off a plane from Royal Lytham & St.
Annes without losing a step from his British Open victory.
Duval started with three straight birdies,
all inside 6 feet, and hit perhaps the most impressive shot of
the day with a 5-iron from 198 yards — over the water, right
at the flag — to 4 feet on the 490-yard 18th, the longest
par 4 in PGA Championship history.
“I haven't felt this good about my
golf or as confident in my abilities in a long, long time,”
Duval said.
Mickelson is as confident as ever, despite
having never won a major. His strategy this week is not to win,
but to win by a margin he won't disclose.
“I don't want to come down the stretch
and have one shot here or there be critical,” he said. “I
want to have a comfort zone.”
Others at 66 were British Open runner-up
Niclas Fasth of Sweden; Stuart Appleby, Dudley Hart, K.J. Choi
and short-but-straight Fred Funk.
Els was in the lead at 5 under in the morning
until hitting his approach in the water on No. 18 and taking double
bogey. He slipped to 67, along with Hal Sutton, Thomas Bjorn and
even Nick Faldo.
The group at 68 includes Sergio Garcia,
and Senior tour player Larry Nelson, who won the PGA Championship
at Atlanta Athletic Club in 1981. Woods was just starting first
grade that year.
When the final group walked off the Highlands
Course, Woods was tied for 100th, in desperate need of a solid
round to avoid missing the cut for the first time in a major —
and only second time overall — since he turned pro.
The PGA Championship traditionally groups
the year's three major champions, and Woods looked like the one
who didn't belong. U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen had 69.
It was the first time Duval and Woods played
together in a major championship since the final round of last
year's British Open. After six holes, Duval already was six shots
ahead.
The directions they are going was evident
on two occasions.
On the par-5 12th, Duval badly hooked a
3-iron that rattled around the pines and then spit out right to
the front collar of the green. He bumped a chip to 3 feet for
birdie.
“Those were the breaks that in the
year-and-a-half before Lytham, it would have kicked left,”
Duval said. “Those things made a huge difference in a round
of golf. Breaks are huge, and I got a good one there.”
Then came No. 3, where Woods and Duval both
missed the green to the left in a large swale. Both managed only
to loft the pitch to the top, still in the first cut. Duval chipped
it in, the ball swirling 360 degrees around the cup, coming all
the way out and falling for par.
Woods smiled at him, then left his chip
4 feet short and missed the putt. It was his second double bogey
of the day, the first time he has done that in a major since taking
triple bogey and double bogey three holes apart in the Masters
last year.
The other double bogey came on the par-3
15th, where his 3-iron soared into the gallery, across a cart
path and into a lie so deep that Woods thought his ball was imbedded.
His next shot came out hot, landed 6 feet past the flag and trickled
into the water.
“I just didn't think this was the kind
of course where Tiger could run away,” Scott Dunlap said
after his 69. “More guys are going to have a chance.”
Some of the more likely candidates are right
there.
“You can't win the tournament on Thursday,
Friday or Saturday, but you can put yourself in position to win,
and that's the goal,” Mickelson said.
He achieved it Thursday. And he wasn't the
only one.
Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
Send the URL (Address)
of This Story to A Friend:
|
