Only In Golf: Fatigue Impacts Playoffs, And Not In Good Way
/The athletes are worn down in every sport come playoff time, though something tells me that Lebron after 100 or so games running up and down a court won't have much sympathy for the golf lads who were stumbling down the stretch and sounding burned out after a third straight playoff event.
It's a shame too that the "product" wasn't firing on all cylinders. Cherry Hills looked superb in every respect. Via television the restored Flynn architecture, the excellent maintenance, the course staff setup and the tournament build-out featuring BMW's sleak white, minimalist aesthetic, all translated beautifully. Throw in hugely supportive crowds and the event looked like a home run for the Western Golf Association's rota (which is heading back to Crooked Stick in 2016, reports Adam Schupak). But the infrastructure is only as good as the players and it was pretty clear in watching and in reading comments that golf's stars are ready for a vacation.
Instead, they get four rounds at East Lake after a points reset and a format that in year eight, no one can explain nor do they care a lick about with so many other sports viewing options that can be described in a sentence. But this is Tim Finchem's vision, widely lauded for years and for reasons that are beyond my pay grade.
So after Phil Mickelson quit mid-tournament, Keegan Bradley DQ'd himself out of the event (and playoffs) and Jason Day WD'd with a back clearly out of whack, the weekend was left to Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia to lend star power to the proceedings. They clearly gave too much energy to laughing at Caroline's hair/racket plight, as evidenced by Rory's four-putt propensity at No. 12 and Sergio's rather epic meltdown at the 17th hole following a front nine 29.
Garcia blamed fatigue for a chip that really did look like the work of a burn out, even if he took last week off to play golf in the Hamptons. Randall Mell reports.
“If I was mentally sharp, if I was rested, the way I was at the beginning and middle of the year, I would have talked myself into going for the green,” Garcia said. “But, for some reason, I couldn't. Then, just a mistake after another mistake.”
John Strege noted Johnny Miller's comments on Sergio, which weren't kind for even a choking conoisseur like Johnny.
“That is a just a flat choke,” NBC’s Johnny Miller said, summoning the word for which he is best known. “Hate to say it, but two shots in a row.”
The first, from 83 yards, flew the green, leaving him with what Miller called an “easy little chip” that Garcia blew past the hole, off the front of the green and into the water.
“There’s some little missing link with Sergio in his finishes,” Miller said from his psychologist perch about the 18th hole. “I don’t know what goes on up there, but he misses something.”
This is not to take away from Billy Horschel, who played beautifully less than a week after a rough finish at the TPC Boston and now is second in the ResetCup to fellow non-Ryder Cupper Chris Kirk on the eve of the big reset. The BMW winner was motivated in part by the social media reaction to his finish last week.
Bob Harig reports:
"It was nice to get that victory and stick it to some of these people who had those negative comments for me," he said. "I don't mind it. You want to keep saying negative things to me, that just adds fuel to my fire."
Did Horschel really shrug it off with a chuckle a week ago? Either way, he got the last laugh at Cherry Hills.
