As an aside, was Ricky Barnes' meltdown one of the most horrible things you have ever seen or what?!?! Wasn't he 11-under at one point late in the 3rd round?
-Jason
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As an aside, was Ricky Barnes' meltdown one of the most horrible things you have ever seen or what?!?! Wasn't he 11-under at one point late in the 3rd round?
-Jason
Barnes' implosion was absolutely astounding. The guy sets a 36 hole scoring record and has only one bogey in the first two rounds. After 42 holes he's at 11 under and then the wheels come off. He makes bogey on almost half (12) of his remaining 30 holes!
Now I just recently started following golf but that's got to be up there on the list of biggest meltdowns in history. Any golf history buffs out there who would care to give their opinion on where Barnes' performance would rank?
He hugged his wife for about 10 seconds and then hugged his dad for maybe 15 seconds. But despite the lack of theatrics at winning the biggest tournament of his life, CONGRATS to a Clemson dude. (Maybe he was acting like he had been there before and decided not to rush the floor, cut down the nets, or pour champagne over his head!)
, ifI was at Bethpage yesterday. Got there early and sat in the stands at the 18th hole for the entire time. It was awesome. We were all cheering when they were posting Phil's birdies and eagle on 13, and moaning when they posted his bogeys on 16 and 17. THe stands got their feet the moment after his drive on 18 and continued until he was about to hit his second shot.
When Phil finished and the crowd gave him a standing ovation, his playing partner Hunter Mahan joined the crowd in applauding Phil.
At the end if Phil couldn't it outright, we were all hoping for a Mikkleson-Duval playoff.
Yesterday, Phil was more popular than Tiger. I read somewhere that after Sunday's play, Phil stayed outside his rented home and signed autographs for 40-50 youngsters
Not a golfer myself, but I found discussion of Barnes' swing by Johnny Miller and the other commentators to be interesting. They said basically it was not a sound swing, that he did at least two things wrong which often would compensate for each other so that at the point of impact the clubface was where it should have been.
However, under pressure, the swing was likely to get erratic. It did.
This one post per day is for the birds.
Greetings from HHI. :cool:
I'll make it two. Today is the last day of school for the kids. We usually go play miniature golf but it's raining so, I think I'll take them to the movies tonight.
Also: Gil Morgan ('92 Open); Arnold Palmer ('66 Open); Ed Sneed ('79 Masters); Tom Watson ('78 PGA); TC Chen ('85 Open); Jean van de Velde ('99 Open Championship). This happens every few years, even in the era before Tiger Woods invented golf at the 1997 Masters. Speaking of which, I'm sure Tom Weiskopf blew a Masters somewhere in there too. Weiskopf was to the Masters what Mickelson is to the Open. Arnie's collapse was probably the worst.
Last night I dreamed that I moved to California - with no notice. Just left work on Monday and was sharing an apartment with 2 people I didn't really know in CA on Tuesday. Didn't move for a job change - just walked away and would need to find work. Did dream about thinking how the old office could call with questions on how to do some of the things I did so I could walk them through it.
The mind is a strange thing.
Wow, what a list - I'd forgotten about TC Chen and his double chili dip. Absolutely true - I wonder some old head sportswriter hasn't written up an in-depth Weiskopf - Mickleson comparison; IIRC there might be a lot more parallels than second place...
Mrs Turk: "Mickelson is wearing STRIPED PANTS!?! Who dresses that guy?!?"
Me: "They probably pay him a lot of money to wear that."
Her: "However much it is, it's not enough. Maybe if he wore better looking clothes he wouldn't finish in 2nd all the time."
I wanted to rip on Barnes' goofy sawed-off ballcap but couldn't come up with anything good...
Barnes falling off was hardly even noteworthy in my mind, much less a collapse of epic proportions, for two reasons: one, it's the U.S. Open - big scores in Round 4 are the design, and by the end of Round 3 he didn't have much margin to work with. And more importantly, two, it was (unfortunately) rather predictable. He won the U.S. Am, so he knows how to win, but that was 7 years ago and Barnes hasn't found a home on the PGA Tour since. He's not ready to be winning the toughest tournament out there, especially not with a funky swing with a ton of lateral movement to it. He hung on about 9 holes longer than the unknown guy who goes out and blitzes Augusta for two days every year and falls apart on Saturday. Tons of credit to Barnes (he actually played one under on the back yesterday to finish strong and give himself a chance at the end), and I hope this performance springboards him to longterm success and a better cap sponsor. But I have to say that, even when he was at -11, I never really thought he was going to win.
It's the surprising collapses that go down as historic. That's what makes Norman's collapse at the Masters so big (although, to be fair, a large part of it was Faldo playing brilliantly). Van de Velde at the British was the most shocking I've seen, since it was just so preposterous. Impossible. No one's yet mentioned Mickelson's double bogey on 18 at Winged Foot after hitting his drive in a garbage can, but I'd put that up there with recent collapses.
Back to the Glover notes above, I'll bring it up once more and then let it go, as it appears no one agrees with me (other than the WSJ). I know he embraced his wife and hugged his parents. I guess that marks him as clearly human, although even the players who finish second and beyond tend to do that when leaving the 18th green. I'm still a little weirded out that he barely acknowledged the gallery. He doesn't owe anyone anything, but I find it hard to share the joy with him when he barely even smiles. And isn't that the payoff for watching televised golf? To vicariously feel the thrill those guys must feel winning? I mean, golfers have been tossing putters in the air, covering their faces with their hands after sinking the final putt, staring in disbelief, and circling the green with high fives, for decades. Letting out a little emotion after finishing off a Major isn't just obnoxious Tiger-era overexuberance, IMHO.
Whatever. Maybe it was just the camera angles - a lot was from behind him, so I guess I'll just believe that he was hustling out of there to avoid collapsing in tears of joy.
Van de Velde was just one hole-- but OH WHAT A HOLE!!
Palmer's legendary loss in the 1966 Open was hardly a collapse as much as it was Billy Casper just going insane. He shot a 32 on the back nine. Palmer shot a 71 that day, which is not that bad. Then again, Arnie led by 5 strokes with 4 holes to play and managed to lose-- which is pretty bad.
Greg Norman's 78 on the last day at Augusta in 1996 was a pretty massive choke too.
And how about Scott Hoch at the 1989 Masters where he had 2 puts inside of 3 feet to win the tournament on the first playoff hole and missed both of them. His second miss was so bad he had like a 5 or 6 footer left to save his bogey and continue the playoff with Faldo. He hit that but lost to Faldo on the next hole.
-Jason "I will freely admit to recalling some of these from memory and reading about some of the others" Evans
I would say that Tiger blew it as much as anyone. How many birdie putts did he have that he missed?
Nah, Arnie collapsed. I think Olympic played to a par 71 back then, so he shot even, but he was a few under on the front nine and had a seven-shot lead at the turn. He made several bad shots, including his drive on 16 which hooked into a tree and couldn't have traveled 100 yards.
And this was Arnie! If it were Tiger with the seven-shot lead at the turn over Some Other Guy No One Wants To See Win, wouldn't we be calling it a choke of epic proportions? Wouldn't espn be running its 10 Greatest Back-Nine Chokes and stuff?
The other bizarre aspect of Van de Velde's collapse on the 18th at Carnoustie was that he actually had to make a clutch putt (7-8 feet or so, I think -- can you call it "clutch" when it's a putt to save triple bogey?) to force a three-way playoff with Justin Leonard and eventual winner Paul Lawrie.
Van de Velde's sequence of shots on that lost hole was epic:
Drive into the rough, just missing going into the burn that snakes across the fairway.
Second shot out of the rough, over the Barry Burn, clanks off the granstand, bounces off the top of the burn's stone retaining wall, ends up on dry land in tall rough short of the burn.
Chunks third shot into the burn. This time it stays there.
Thinks about playing his next shot out of the burn. Takes off his shoes and socks, climbs down into the burn, looks at his ball, thinks about it, then decides to pick it up and take a drop.
Drops ball short of the burn -- now laying four, hitting five. Clears the burn with his fifth shot, which lands in a greenside bunker.
Blasts out of the bunker, leaving himself with a tricky seven-footer for a crowd-pleasing triply bogey, which he promptly nails.
3 days? That's beyond crazie.