Perry and the Case of the Futile Chase
COLUMBUS, Ohio - What it came down to was Mike Weir, the last guy with a chance, had to eagle Muirfield Village's 18th to tie Kenny Perry. This is not like climbing Everest. You climb Everest because you want to. The problem is doing it. But making eagle at a 444-yard uphill dogleg-right that likes to feed you back down into the fairway is pure luck, as are all eagles at par-4s.Not that it's impossible. There have been six eagles at the 18th since the first Memorial Tournament in 1976. The sixth was Ian Poulter's in the second round, which probably burned out Lady Luck for this Memorial and a bunch more in the future.
Anyway, the chase was a waste of everything but good TV time. The fates had already put the fix in. The other contenders had already exhausted their chances of catching Perry, who had come in with a 69, one of only eight rounds in the 60s Sunday, and he was sitting most pretty at 8-under 280 and leading by two shots when he left the 18th green and signed his card.
Weir, who has made a career coming from behind to win, had only parred the 17th. Mathew Goggin, playing with Weir, blew what little chance he had left by bogeying the 17th. Goggin would birdie the 18th, but all that did was lock up a share of second. Weir hurt himself off the tee, putting his drive in the primary rough a mere 246 yards out. How could he eagle from there? He couldn't. He put his second into a greenside bunker, then nearly holed that for solo second, and tapped in from 2 feet for a 71 and a share of second with Goggin, Jerry Kelly and Justin Rose. But the 18th was merely epilogue. They had been hurt much earlier by Muirfield's body punches and sucker punches.
“Three shots killed me,” said Goggin. “The second at No. 1 …”
He'd started with a three-stroke lead and then got off to a lousy start. He would bogey three of his six holes, but it was No. 1 that hurt him most, a sharp sting to the pure hope of a first-timer. He hit a drive 285 yards, nicely in the fairway.
“Then a terrible 8-iron, short and in the bunker,” he said. Bogey No. 1.
At the par-5 11th, he nursed a tee shot into the fairway, and wanted only to lay up gently to go for the birdie. He hit a 4-iron into the creek on the right and bogeyed.
At the 17th, he was alive, but only. “I thought I could just smash a drive down the right said and carry the bunker, but I clipped a tree,” he said. It set up his fifth bogey of the day, and the last. “I was done,” he said. The birdie at the 18th was enriching, but that's all.
Anyway, history was dead set against Goggin. He was only the fourth player in Memorial history to lead through the first, second and third rounds. None of them held up to win.
Justin Rose, no longer the amateur boy wonder of the British Open, and now the scarred veteran of close calls, was not all that crushed by falling short. He'd just come from missing three straight cuts, so rocketing to a tie for second was worth a celebration.
But still he had to be wondering about the fates keeping him dead in their sights. Take what happened to him at the par-4 13th.
Rose was only two off the lead coming to the 13th. His approach came homing in, just to the short side of the pin. It hit hole-high. But it hit a sprinkler head, and went bounding crazily forward.
“I got a break,” said Rose, who has to be punch-drunk from the shots he's taken trying to get that first win. The break was that his ball hit a tree and dropped into the rough behind the green. And yes, it was a kind of break. It was then only 20 yards back instead of who-knows-where. He bogeyed.
“Two holes killed me,” said Jerry Kelly, another log-term sufferer. “I hit the green once at No. 8 and once at No. 9. I made three bogeys at No. 8, I made only one birdie at No. 9. And I missed the fairway consistently on No. 9, and I don't normally do that, period, much less on an easy driving hole. Good thing is, I got two of them up-and-down.”
And Mike Weir, the man who came closest, crashed coming through the turn.
“At No. 10, I hit a good drive and a perfect 5-iron,” Weir said. “Well, I thought it was perfect.”
The wind taught him better. He bogeyed.
He bogeyed again at the par-5 11th - a smart drive into the fairway, a prudent layup, and then a simple approach that, with a drop in the wind, carried over the green. Another bogey.
And there was Kenny Perry, bopping along, weathering the weather and having a merry old time - till he missed a tap-in for par at the 17th and suffered his only bogey of the day. And, coincidentally, leaving himself open to an eagle at the 18th.
Right.
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