National golf notes

July 9, 2009

By capturing the tournament he hosts, last week’s AT&T National, Tiger Woods has won his final tune-up before this year’s first three majors. That doesn’t necessarily bode well for his chances next week at the British Open, since Woods didn’t win the Masters or US Open. He won the Bay Hill Invitational on the strength of a final-round 67, but tied for sixth in his next start, at Augusta National. He looked like his old, dominant self at the Memorial last month, winning by one stroke with a flawless, final-round 65, then tied for sixth again in his next tournament, the US Open at Bethpage Black. You’d have to go back to 2007 to find when Woods last won a major coming off a victory. He captured the World Golf Championship event at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, then won the PGA Championship a week later at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla. In fact, of Woods’s 14 major championships, he won in his previous start just five times. Woods didn’t play at Turnberry in 1994, the last time the Scottish club hosted the British Open.

The Nationwide Tour resumes this week with the Ford Wayne Gretzky Classic at Ontario, Canada, and the tour’s money list still features some New Englanders in prominent spots. Kevin Johnson of Pembroke is second with $253,445, and has all but assured himself a PGA Tour card for next season, since the top 25 money winners at the end of the season earn the promotion. Johnson is also a win away from an immediate upgrade; three Nationwide wins in a season is an instant promotion to the PGA Tour. Patrick Sheehan of Providence has one Nationwide win this season, and finds himself 19th with $101,028. Marshfield’s Geoff Sisk, who has been inside the top 25 for much of the season, now sits at No. 30, with $69,286. He’s roughly $15,000 away from the 25th spot. Johnson and Sisk are in the field this week; Sheehan is playing in the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic.

Remember Brandt Snedeker? The red-haired, aw shucks, Alfred E. Neuman look-alike who finished third at the Masters in 2008, openly weeped after the final round because he so enjoyed the experience of being in contention there, followed it up with a ninth-place tie at the 2008 US Open, and hadn’t been heard from since? Well, Snedeker is still out there, and finally had another decent tournament to show for his efforts. A 68-67 on the weekend lifted Snedeker - who could also pass for Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days’’ - to a tie for fifth, his best finish since his ninth-place tie at Torrey Pines last year. It also earned him a starting time at Turnberry for the British Open. The highest finisher among the top five at the AT&T National not already exempt earned a spot in the British Open, and that ended up being Snedeker, who didn’t even know about the possibility. He’s had a rough go of it this year: nine cuts missed in 14 tournaments, and a rib injury that forced him to miss eight weeks. He tied for 47th two weeks ago at the Travelers Championship near Hartford, then had three rounds in the 60s at Congressional Country Club. “People gave me the sympathy vote [at the Travelers] when I made the cut - first cut I’d made in a while, and it ticked me off,’’ Snedeker said Sunday. “I don’t want sympathy. [At the AT&T] I felt like I proved to everyone and myself that I can get back to where I was.’’

Snedeker wasn’t the only one to qualify in Washington, D.C., for the British Open. Paul Goydos and Bryce Molder earned their spots by virtue of finishing first and second on a special, six-tournament money list, which concluded with the AT&T. Molder began the tournament roughly $20,000 behind Ricky Barnes for second place on the special list, but finished fourth, while Barnes tied for 66th. It will be Molder’s first appearance at the British Open. Goydos tied for 61st at the AT&T, ending a stretch that produced three top-four finishes in a four-tournament stretch and more than $1.1 million. Goydos has played in one British Open, missing the cut last year.

At the US Open, the US Golf Association protects par like it’s a matter of national security, taking multiple measures (fairway width, rough height, green speed, course length) to ensure the field won’t be littering the grounds with 64s and 65s every day. There’s a reason only four players in the 109 stagings of the tournament have ever reached double digits under par. The USGA, by its actions, has instilled the notion that par at the US Open is sacred. So the decision to reportedly change a course’s par in the middle of a US Open, perhaps as early as 2015 at Chambers Bay in Washington state, is generating some news. The USGA is looking at playing a specific hole as a par 4 some days, and the same hole as a par 5 other days. That could mean the course plays to a par 70 on the days the hole is a par 4, and par 71 when it’s a par 5. It has never been done before, but the concept is intriguing. Players shouldn’t care; whether a course plays, over the course of four rounds, to a par of 280, 282, or 284, they still give the trophy to whoever takes the fewest strokes.

If you have an hour to spare on Sunday, you could do worse than parking yourself in front of the television and watching a re-airing of a 1963 Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf match between Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead from Pebble Beach Golf Links. The stroke-play exhibition features Nicklaus, then 23 and two months from winning the first of six Masters, against Snead, who was 50 and had a record 81 PGA Tour victories. The match, which comes down to the final hole, has been digitally remastered and will air on Channel 4 at 2 p.m., right before final-round coverage of the John Deere Classic.

Compiled by Michael Whitmer