Around the wider world of golf: Lydia Ko defended at the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic; the team of Joe Durant and Billy Andrade won the Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf (Larry Nelson and Bruce Fleisher won the Legends division) on the Champions Tour; Ashun Wu won the Volvo China Open on the ET/PGA TOUR China; Lee Westwood won the CIMB Niaga Indonesian Masters on the Asian Tour; Rachel Rohanna won the Guardian Retirement Championship on the Symetra Tour; and Hikari Fujita won the Fujisankei Ladies Classic on the JLPGA (bangkokbobby has the details).
It got a bit confusing at the Zurich Classic, trying to keep track of who was really leading the tournament. I mean, is the player at -19 after 17 holes really ahead of the player at -17 after 13 holes? But that's what the threat of lightning can do to an event like this. All those suspensions of play left most players with around 30 holes to play on Sunday and there simply wasn't time to re-pair for the final 18.
Jim Herman's -19 held the clubhouse lead for a while but there were too many players still on the course to be sure it would hold up. (It didn't but it was still Herman's best-ever finish on Tour.) Then it looked like Boo Weekley might get the job done (he finally got in at -20) or maybe Cameron Tringale (who posted -21) as they neared the end of their rounds.
But somewhere between the Herman and Weekley finishes, Justin Rose snuck in a little -22 and left everybody scrambling to catch up. Jason Day, who was the unquestioned favorite when the day started, was playing in one of the day's last groupings and knew pretty early on what he would have to do. He simply couldn't do it.
Perhaps the greatest irony was that the top players all teed off on the front 9, so the final stretch became the determining factor... and only Rose managed to birdie both of the final two holes. Both Tringale and Weekley could have forced playoffs had they managed to do the same. And of the three, only Rose played the final round bogey-free. (In fact, Rose was bogey-free for all but his first 6 holes of the week!)
So, after a so-so 2015 spent battling back from a hand injury, Rose is in a good frame of mind to take his talents to Harding Park -- just a couple of miles from this week's LPGA course -- where rain and lightning are unlikely to be a problem. (California's in the midst of a long drought.) And why shouldn't he be confident? He's carrying a nice shiny new Limerick Summary with him!
Although lightning may never strike twiceThe photo came from the tournament upshot page at PGATOUR.com.
Justin Rose birdied back-to-back. Nice!
On those final two holes
Where the field couldn’t close,
Justin’s strikes proved to be quite precise.
No comments:
Post a Comment