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Sunday, April 8, 2007
Mild-mannered man masters field
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Zach Johnson behaved just as you would expect a corn-fed guy from Iowa to behave. He didn’t exult. He didn’t whoop and throw his cap and mug his caddie. He went to his wife, who held their baby in her arms, and he gave them both a good old family embrace. He had won the Masters Tournament, but, of course, it wasn’t official yet. Four players had to finish their round, including Tiger Woods, whose CBS Network cheering section had virtually awarded him the green jacket after he eagled the 13th hole. That was as close as he would get.
Now, if you’re like most of us, you don’t know a lot about Zachary Harris Johnson. He’s a little better known around the boroughs of Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett, for three years ago he won the BellSouth Classic at Sugarloaf. That hardly made him nationally famous. Mild, modest, just like some kid out of “The Music Man,” the story of Mason City.
He’s not some hot-rock who had all the golf industry chasing him with deals he couldn’t resist. He played his way through the Nationwide Tour, got his diploma and settled in Florida. Success on the PGA Tour has come slowly and without sensation, but soundly and solidly. You get the message when he was introduced to the television audience.
It was Easter Sunday. He had finished his round about 6:l0 p.m., and Chairman Billy Payne had transported him to the Butler Cabin for the interview with Jim Nantz of CBS. Zach was telling how he felt about it all and to all those he chose to give credit, beginning with “the Lord Jesus,” which was about as far as he would get along that line. He had had his chances to fold, but his inner self refused to let it happen. Played the par-5s wisely, always laying up.
Then he bogeyed the 17th hole, and would this be the beginning of the crushing collapse? No way. He parred the final hole — he did have to chip up, and did that with finesse — about a foot from the hole. Next stop, Butler Cabin, where Phil Mickelson would transfer the green jacket. That would signify an interruption of the Mickelson-to-Woods-to-Mickelson song and dance for the time.
Now, you will notice the score. Johnson didn’t even have to break par. One over did it, and that’s not the first time. Sam Snead won with the same 289 score in 1954, then beat Ben Hogan in a playoff. Jack Burke won straight up with the same score in 1956, when Ken Venturi, as an amateur, broke under the pressure. And in 1966, Jack Nicklaus won at even par, but only after he’d beaten Tommy Jacobs and Gay Brewer in a playoff.
Score makes no difference. Who’s ahead after 72 holes, and this time it was the mild- natured young dad from Iowa. You will have to say this — he didn’t have to play Woods eyeball to eyeball, feel the Tiger heat and perhaps the gamesmanship at which Tiger is so proficient. But, 289 beats 291, and there you have it.
Mild isn’t always a big seller on this moneybags golf tour. But it’s the nature of Zach Johnson’s roots. He was born within a whoop and a holler of the University of Iowa campus, in Iowa City, but wasn’t offered a scholarship and went to Drake University in Des Moines instead. Still, the press guide identifies him as “an avid Iowa Hawkeyes fan,” and that’s legal. His father is a chiropractor, and I’d guess he has seen “Field of Dreams” a few times. Ten good Iowa men invested in his future as a golfer, and they were still with him in Atlanta. And I’d guess they still are, and very proud of it. Iowa proud.
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Small-town kid hits the big time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — Sometimes, imperfect conditions lead to perfect endings.
Sometimes, one of the world’s most prestigious events is not won by the guy with the resume, or the endorsements, or the gallery.
Some athletes win and it tilts stock prices in New York. Some win and it means he won’t have to knock on doors in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, looking for backers. Or maybe a sandwich.
Hello, world: Meet the new Masters champion.
“I’m Zach Johnson. I’m from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I’m a normal guy.”
That was Phil Mickelson putting the green jacket on the 31-year-old Johnson. That was one of the former lesser members of the Drake golf team gaining a lifetime hall pass into the Masters.
This wasn’t merely the first major win of his career, it was only his second PGA Tour win — three years after winning the BellSouth on April Fools Day 2004. Maybe Johnson should move to Georgia.
Forget whether we ever expected this. Even Zach Johnson never expected this. Even people who know Zach Johnson never expected this.
Tiger Woods led the Masters on a Sunday. Let’s assume Woods didn’t expect this.
Tiger and Phil. Phil and Tiger.
Zach Johnson?
“Zach was the guy who, when I’d come back to the apartment, he’d be on the LazyBoy in his boxers, no shirt on, watching SportsCenter,” said his former college roommate and teammate Ben Poehling. “To see him out here now, winning arguably the most prestigious golf tournament in the world, its almost surreal.”
Poehling was among a group of family and friends who followed Johnson around one of the world’s most famous pieces of real estate. Yes, surreal would be the word.
When asked whether he ever envisioned his buddy succeeding as a pro, Poehling said: “Certainly not on the PGA Tour. When we left college in ‘98, both Zach and Ben Pettitt decided to turn pro. I think if you asked anybody who would’ve had the better chance to [succeed] they would’ve said Ben Pettitt.”
Ben Pettitt now is on the Canadian Tour.
Zach Johnson now belongs to the same club as Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Jimmy Demaret, Sam Snead, Gene Sarazen.
Yeah. But none of those other guys ever won on the Hooters Tour.
“I thought those were the best days of my life,” Johnson said. “Chicken wings and everything.”
Zach … Johnson?
When he turned pro, he needed close to a dozen financial backers. He played on mini tours. The Prairie Golf Tour. (What’s that? Par four off the barn door and through the cows’ legs?) The Hooters Tour. The Nationwide Tour.
Johnson nearly won the par-3 tournament on Wednesday. He had a chip-in to win it and missed it.
“At that time I was thinking I had a better chance to win the par-3 than the real tournament, so I figured, let’s go for it,” he said.
Yeah. Who figured? On a Sunday.
Woods breaks a golf club trying to blast out of the trees and bogeys three holes. Johnson calmly sinks a birdie on 16 to drop him to even par and increase his lead to three shots. The 16th was the same hole he bogeyed on Thursday, and Friday, and Saturday.
Which guy had been here before?
“I’m surprised how well he kept himself together,” said Johnson’s close friend and Augusta native Vaughn Taylor, who was paired with him on Sunday. “He didn’t crack at all. Even on 17 [when Johnson bogeyed], the wind kind of died on him. He hit a really good shot.”
Johnson waited for Taylor to catch up so they could walk together to the 18th green. He chipped to within a foot of the cup and tapped in for par, closed the Masters at 1-over. He hugged and kissed his wife, Kim, and their 14-week-old son Will.
Then he waited.
“I was an emotional wreck,” he said.
But nobody caught him. Woods had the last chance, but he needed a two on the final hole. Not gonna happen.
After all the buildup for Woods, for Mickelson, for anybody who could be recognized, the Masters was won by the second best player from Drake.
Perfect.
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Waddell’s long wait is over
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The last regular-season game of last season found Don Waddell in the corridor of an arena in Sunrise, Fla., gently kicking the wall as he conducted a mournful post-mortem. His Thrashers had been eliminated from playoff contention the night before, this after the general manager himself had guaranteed they’d get in.
“This has been the toughest year,” Waddell said that night. “There was so much pressure to make the playoffs. This is tough to swallow.”
The last regular-season game of this season found the same man giving how-we-did-it interviews from the press level atop Philips Arena. Downstairs vendors were selling T-shirts bearing the word “champions,” and the only GM this franchise has known was looking ahead to the sort of week this franchise has never known — a playoff week, with Games 1 and 2 to be played here.
The Thrashers clinched a playoff berth a week ago. They clinched the Southeast Division on Friday night in Raleigh.
The latter, Waddell said, was bigger. “It means our first playoff game ever is going to be here. The fans have waited seven years for this.” So, it must be said, has Waddell.
When you sign on to oversee an expansion team, there’s no guarantee you’ll be around when success arrives, assuming it ever does. (Curt Fraser, the Thrashers’ first coach, has been gone since Dec. 26, 2002.) Waddell took no small amount of heat for not building a playoff team sooner, but on this triumphant night he noted proudly: “We’re the first team of that last expansion group [which includes Nashville, Minnesota and Columbus] to win a division.”
And they wouldn’t have done it without two bold moves by Waddell, who was criticized last season for not moving boldly enough. He acquired Alexei Zhitnik and Keith Tkachuk ahead of the trading deadline, and their arrival turned a slumping team into a band of believers. “Zhitnik was big,” Waddell said, “but there’s an air about Tkachuk, just from the way he carries himself. Our guys started to think, ‘Management went out and got us this guy.’ “
This might sound like bragging, but it really isn’t. If anything, Waddell has been humbled in nine years on the job. His franchise still hasn’t ingrained itself in Atlanta’s famously fickle consciousness. (There’s a core audience for hockey locally, yes, but still only a core.) He has seen ownership change and the new owners sue one another, and even in this season of arrival the Thrashers’ public profile hasn’t approached that of the Braves in 1991 or the Falcons in 1998 or even the Hawks in 1987.
That said, a prime opportunity is at hand. “Look at this crowd tonight,” said Waddell, speaking of the sellout for what turned out to be a glorified exhibition against Tampa Bay. “We were sold out Wednesday night, and we haven’t sold out many Wednesdays. There’s a good buzz around this team for the right reasons.”
The best guess, however, is that the masses won’t really pay attention until the Thrashers take a series. “If we win a round,” Waddell said, “we’re going to catch on.”
And that would be something to see.
The Thrashers were long past due to play beyond the 82nd game, and now they believe they can play deep into May. “You feel like you’ve been in the playoffs for two years,” Waddell said, “and that could help us. We’ve played so many high-pressure games. … And we’re playing good, and we’ve got a great young goaltender [Kari Lehtonen].”
Whatever happens next, Don Waddell has done his job. He has, finally and mercifully, lifted his expansion team into the postseason. “In my mind,” he said Saturday, “it’s a big sigh of relief.” And then this: “I love this franchise.”
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Appleby recovers from ‘comedy of errors’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — The excitement of being in position to win his first Masters — despite a triple bogey in what’s become this natural disaster of majors — must have been too much for Stuart Appleby to take Saturday. Or at least, to hold.
After his tee shot at the 18th, Appleby began walking up the fairway, then made a sharp left, hopped over the rope and ducked into a public rest- room. Funny. But topping the scoreboard at Augusta National didn’t get him any advantage.
“Every time I turned around somebody else stole my spot,” he said. “All the guys in there are saying, ‘Hey, here’s a spare one,’ but then somebody would take it. There must have been 30 of them in there. Nobody would get out of my way.”
Appleby eventually found a spare urinal. Fortunately, he recovered, not merely from that experience, but from nearly flushing away the Masters on 17.
For most of the third round, Appleby was the lone red number on the leaderboard. At 1 under through 52 holes, despite wind, chill and rollercoaster greens, he qualified as a deity. He birdied holes 2, 3 and 4 and made only one bogey all day.
Then, on 17, this Masters caught up to him all at once.
“A comedy of errors,” he would say.
His tee shot traveled to the left of the fairway, left of the Eisenhower Tree, left of the county and into a bunker adjacent to the green — on No. 7. The second shot hit a pine tree. The third cleared a bank of trees but landed in another bunker (at least near the correct green, however). The fourth hit the green. Daylight. But it took three putts from there, including a blown short putt.
Going from 1 under to 2 over would shake many competitors. But Appleby has been through enough in his career, and certainly his life, that he let it go. Quickly.
“I was disappointed, but my mind-set was, get over it, spilled milk, move on,” he said.
The next tee shot was 18. Following the unscheduled intermission, his second shot landed to within 10 feet of the cup for a potential birdie. But the putt fell a foot short and he settled for par, and by the end of Saturday, he still had a one-shot lead over Tiger Woods and Justin Rose.
Appleby said a birdie on 18 “would have been some redemption after 17.” But he need justify his position to nobody. He already has endured more than most.
His wife, Renay, then 25, was killed in 1998 when hit by taxi driver at a London train station. She had just packed for their second honeymoon. Appleby was understandably devastated.
But he has recovered emotionally, and his game followed. In 2000, he met Ashley Saleet on a blind date. The two hit it off and married two years later. They now have two young daughters.
On the course, Appleby has won five tournaments since 2003, including last year’s Shell Houston Open. His best finish in a major was tied for second in the 2002 British Open.
But this feels different. He has a lead and today will be paired with Woods, who has won four of these. Pretty heady stuff for the son of an Australian dairy farmer.
“Yeah, I guess I have a pretty full bag,” he said, laughing. When asked about being paired with Woods, Appleby joked: “He won’t even know I’m there. I’m sure I’ll know he’s there.”
Woods has won 12 majors. Appleby zero. Does that give him a slight advantage today?
“Look, Tiger always has an advantage,” he said. “It’s obscene [to what extent] he has an advantage.”
Appleby said the two have played together in non-tournament competition. But, no, despite results this week, he doesn’t believe he has any advantage.
“What would you like me to say — that I cleaned him up all the time,” Appleby said. “That I’m great on the practice range? That I can hit it past him? No, no and no.”
Then again, this Masters has been a theater of the weird. If Appleby pulls it off, maybe somebody will even let him take the next stall.
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Appleby carries banner for Aussies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Well, say this for the field of Australians, which your daring correspondent suggested might produce the winner of the Masters this week. They have given Augusta National nothing if not a touch of everything from the good to the bad to the dismal. Adam Scott was first out of the gate Saturday and first to check out of contention with a numbing round of 76. It’s further proof that winning the week before a trip to Augusta is unhealthy for your golf game.
Of the seven Aussies in town, they did make their athletic presence felt. Five of the seven made the 36-hole cut, so the percentage was promising. But after Scott, Rod Pampling was next to fade away, followed soon by Aaron Baddeley, and that’s a fellow one of the magazines predicted to win it all. They were now down to two, and these were stalwarts, Stuart Appleby and Geoff Ogilvy. One owns the Mercedes Championship, you know, the tournament for guys who win tournaments; the other holds the national championship of the United States. Strong stuff.
We’ll deal with Ogilvy first, for he was dealt with rather oddly by CBS, the television dispenser. At one point of the afternoon, Ogilvy eagled the 13th hole, that treacherous devil. The big red “3” was perched on the scoreboard until the color began to fade, then suddenly, on the screen appeared Ogilvy scoring his eagle. Then almost as swiftly, cameras switched and here was Ogilvy on the l5th fairway. He was gunning for the green on his second shot, truly indeed bold stuff. His shot found the pond in which so many Masters dreams lie buried.
What humiliation for the champion of our nation. By the time all the results were in, Ogilvy had rolled up a total of nine strokes, and he wasn’t through. He bogeyed the next three holes — 81. And see ya, mate.
Appleby, meanwhile, was carrying on. He has been a fast starter this week, birdie-birdie-birdie right out of the box Friday. Now he comes out blazing again, three birdies in the first four holes, pretty heavy stuff for a guy who has never finished better than 19th here. He had the lead. I should have pointed out that Tim Clark and Brett Wetterich, who had slept on it over night, had both taken the gas. Wetterich crashed. Bogey, triple bogey, bogey before he was out of sight of the clubhouse.
Appleby did manage to botch up the seventh hole, but that hole has been a bothersome critter all week. He took off on a roll of pars, from the eighth hole to the 17th, smooth as silk. Captain Appleby in charge here.
Oops! Turn your head if you can’t stand tragedy. By the time Appleby got the ball in the cup on the 17th hole — that’s where Tiger Woods had found trouble — he had visited a bunker on the seventh, been all over the place and taken seven strokes. That’s a triple bogey, in golfing terms. That’s also suicide.
There were no more red numbers on the board. They may run out of that vague green color they use for the bad stuff. What is this, the U.S. Open? Can’t anybody around here play this game? And I thought an Aussie never choked.
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