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Sunday, November 6, 2005
Bryant breaks through against PGA elite
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
For three days the headlines have made reference to a guy named Bryant, with an underlying yearning for Tiger Woods to rise up and take charge of the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club. It was almost a plaintive thing. Tiger is supposed to be making birdies, not bogeys. What right has some guy named Bart Bryant to horn in on Tiger’s territory?
Well, let me be honest here. I’m always pulling for the dark horse, the long shot. There has hardly ever been a darker horse, or a longer shot than Bart Bryant, a preacher’s son who came from New Mexico. Golf stars don’t come from New Mexico. Rodeo riders and calf ropers come from New Mexico.
At the start of the year, Bart Bryant ranked 139th in world golf. At the end of the Tour Championship on Sunday, at this course where Bobby Jones learned the game, Bryant ranked ninth on the PGA Tour, and a lot of tears were shed around the 18th green while he and his wife, Cathy, and their two daughters shared hugs and squeezes.
It was over, four days of sitting out there as the target of the day while 28 other guys fired away. Here was a guy 42 years old — in 12 days, he’ll be 43 — who had lived on the brink for the past 14 years, who had never won a PGA Tour tournament until a year ago, who had no credentials for this sort of caper.
I’d said earlier that if he held on it would be amazing. It was more than that. It was remarkable. He had led by three strokes Friday, four Saturday, and by the time the field passed the ninth green Sunday, his lead was six. That’s the way it ended. Remarkable it was, and this time the ABC network decided to stay with it until the last shot had dropped.
Bryant said he had lain in bed the night before, picturing himself getting off to a fast start. He did, birdies on three of the first four holes. Then his picturization struck its first blur. He hit just three really bad shots all day, his drive in the rough on the fifth hole, which led to a bogey; his tee shot on the peninsula sixth hole, which found the water and led to another bogey, then a wildly errant second shot on the par-5 15th, which led to his third bogey. It all added up to four days and four rounds in 263 strokes, and that’s a Tour Championship record by six.
Woods was a gracious loser, as he always is, but it was somewhat surprising when he said that it was the “best I drove it all year.� Yet, I don’t recall him hitting as many shots off the mark as he did in this round. But, face it, no one knows his game as well as he, and if he’s happy, let’s all be happy with him. And he did manage to share credit with his new partner.
“I have a foundation now with my marriage to Elin,� he said, “and that’s huge for me to have that type of support.�
As for Bryant, he’s looking at life through rose-colored glasses, from an angle he has never known.
“Things got so bad in the middle ’90s that I never even bothered going to qualifying school. As long as I was able to feed my family on what I was making on the mini-tour, I was OK.�
It was then, it seems, that his alter-conscience and coach, Brian Mogg, told him, “You are a good player. You deserve to go out and play well. You can do it.�
Doggone, if he hasn’t done it. I don’t know that I’ve covered a golf tournament with a more surprising finish. They don’t come from much farther back than did Barton Bryant, and I’ll have to say, nobody in the maudlin mob that followed him enjoyed it more than this old veteran of a lot of wars.
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Vick proves his point on passing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Miami — There’s nothing wrong with Michael Vick’s arm, and there’s definitely nothing wrong with his ears. For 12 days after his halting performance on Monday night, he heard the latest volley of that old standard, “He’s Not Really A Quarterback.” On Sunday he proved he’s really a quarterback, an absolute marvel of one, and afterward he showed that, contrary to what he’d have us think, he really cares what people say about him.
“I’m trying, man,” he said. “I just get no credit, and I’m tired of it. I know what I can do, and I don’t care what people say. I’m going to get me a ring.”
As serendipitous coincidence would have it, the greatest pure passer in NFL history was handed a ring at halftime. “A Super Bowl ring?” said Vick, knowing the answer.
Uh, no. Dan Marino, never a Super Bowl winner, was presented with his Pro Football Hall of Fame ring. Said Vick: “That’s not the one I want.”
If he plays for the next 10 years the way he did against the Dolphins, Vick will wind up with both. He was superb Sunday, which isn’t to suggest he hasn’t been superb on other given Sundays. He made every throw, and his maligned receivers made nearly every catch. The Falcons won a huge road game and Michael Vick went a long way toward shutting everybody up, at least until he throws his next incompletion. And still the day didn’t leave him exactly buoyant. Forty minutes after he left the field, Vick was in the mood to vent.
“I’m not just one thing,” he said. “I can throw, and I can also run. I’ve got another way of beating you — is that my fault? … People forget I passed for almost 3,000 yards in ‘02 — I was 60 yards short [66, to be precise]. I’ve got in it me, man. But sometimes I come out and I’m not accurate, and that’s on me.”
The hot-button issue of accuracy was rendered a damp squib Sunday. Vick completed 22-of-31 passes for 220 yards, his first big passing game of 2005. (Reading the stat sheet, Jim Mora was prompted to exclaim: “We threw for 200 yards — hot dang!â€? And then the coach did a little dance.) Vick put the ball where only his receivers could grab it, and they grabbed like mad. Brian Finneran caught eight balls, Alge Crumpler six, Roddy White three.
“People say I can’t throw the ball from the pocket,â€? Vick said. “I’m not trying to prove anything to the world because I know what I can do… I feel like I answered [the question] today, and I don’t ever want to hear it again.”
If this is how Vick responds to criticism, shouldn’t he pay us media types to criticize him weekly? “Heck, no!” he said. “I don’t ever want to be criticized! I just want people to praise me. They can say something [negative] if I’m doing things wrong and we’re not winning.”
But Vick, as his many defenders correctly note, tends to win. Said Crumpler: “He’s the leader of our team, and we rally around him. We don’t think [the criticism] is fair.”
It was Crumpler who hooked Vick’s best pass of the day, maybe the best of his young and distinguished life. On the Falcons’ first series, Vick rolled left and, ducking full-bore pressure, loosed a laser to the tight end near the end-zone pylon. “The guy [Miami safety Lance Schulters] was all over me,� Crumpler said. “[Vick] put in a great spot. It was the only place I could make the catch. It was a beautiful, beautiful throw.�
Afterward, someone suggested that the great Marino couldn’t have flung it any better. “Oh, Dan might have,” said Vick, rather graciously. “He’s got a cannon.”
And so, we were reminded Sunday, does the famous No. 7. His passing might not always recall the precision of Dan Marino, but he’s not Bobby (One-Hop) Douglass, either. Michael Vick didn’t flash into the public consciousness — or make two Pro Bowls — by never completing a forward pass. He’s a real quarterback, all right, and deep down he wishes we’d notice.
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