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Sunday, August 12, 2007
Austin and Els put the heat on Woods
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Tulsa, Okla. — It was the hottest day of the championship, miserably, energy-sapping hot, and Southern Hills all but dried up and blew away. Tiger Woods won the 89th PGA Championship, as one might have expected, but it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. All it took was a 69. Five guys outscored him on Sunday.
One of them, Woody Austin, the Mr. Jitters of the PGA Tour, said, “I went over the card and I outplayed him. Trouble is, you can’t give somebody seven shots, especially when he’s the best player in the world.”
By the end, Austin had whittled the margin to two, but there was no catching Woods, though by the time Woods teed off, Simon Dyson, a Yorkshire man, checked in with the lowest round of the day, a 64, but all that did was draw him even with par. Ernie Els joined the five with a round of 66, and two players well below and out of contention, Pat Perez and Hunter Mahan, who schooled down the road at Oklahoma State, both checked in at 68.
It was Austin the galleries had their eyes on, for though he grew up in Florida, he now lives near Wichita, a somewhat territorial figure. He came out from a bank teller’s window in Tampa and took to golf and has done right well at it, a winner three times, one just recently in Memphis. He started off five strokes back of Woods, and Tiger added to it on the front nine. Austin, though, was driven, disdainful of his treatment by the television networks.
“He hits his drive through the fairway, same line as mine,” he said, referring to an earlier round, “and he slams his driver to the ground. They call it ‘competitive fire.’ I do it, they call me a ‘loose cannon.’ I’m not competitive?”
Austin and Els were the two hounding pursuers, and at times each would creep nearer Woods, only to fall back, or see Tiger put some ground between them. Not to diminish the feat of Dyson — his 31 was the low front nine of the week — but the Englishman was never a threat to the leaders. He has played and won on both the Asian and European tours. Els, however, was of another caliber.
The South African picked up two strokes on Woods on the front nine but simply couldn’t sustain a surge. When he bogeyed the 12th and the 16th, it was clear his day was over, and it almost came earlier due to the smothering heat.
“I felt it today. Some of those holes out there, I thought I was going to go down. Today was the hottest of them all,” he said.
He was a frayed and exhausted warrior visiting with the press. When asked to go through his birdies and bogeys, he asked, “Do I need to?”
Woods, however, conformed to habit. Hot as it was, no less than 105 degrees, he still came out in his traditional red shirt, with a supply of towels. He birdied the fourth, seventh and eighth holes, but bogeyed the second and seventh on the front nine. He could feel the pressure from Austin and Els, but managed to stay clear of them down the stretch as their vigor ran low, though he managed only an even-par back nine.
“I had a good start,” he said, “and I was 2-under after eight holes. Ernie and Woody were making runs, but they were going to have to come get me for I had a two-stroke lead.”
Thus, Woods brought an end to the major-less aspect of his year. No Masters jacket, no U.S. Open trophy, no claret jug from Carnoustie to decorate his premises. But, a new face to share this joy with him, and he spoke gently of his newborn daughter, Sam Alexis.
“It’s a feeling I’ve never had before. I was so excited I just gave Elin [his wife] and Sam a kiss before I signed my scorecard,” he said, a quite proud first-time papa, to say the least.
He is now embarking on a course off the usual run of business for him. He played the British Open, then the Bridgestone Invitational at Akron, then this hard run for the Wanamaker Trophy, and after a week layoff, he’ll go into the four straight weeks of FedEx Cup pursuit, provided he progresses all the way to the Tour Championship at East Lake. None, however, will have the exhausting conditions that turned Oklahoma into an earthen oven.
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Let Hank solve Selig’s mistake
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Baseball’s all-time home run champion will stop by 755 Hank Aaron Drive this week, and that man is no longer Hank Aaron. Many among us insist that the new record is invalid and its new holder a cheat (not to mention a jerk), but sometimes denial is, to paraphrase Mark Twain, just a river in Egypt.
Barry Bonds is the new king of clout. Deal with it.
No, I don’t know exactly how Bonds has hit each of his 758 homers. Neither do you. Neither does Bud Selig, who over the last month managed to make himself seem sillier than ever. After the usual dithering, Selig showed up for No. 755 but conspicuously did not applaud the deed and later issued the least enthusiastic statement in the history of congratulations, the second sentence of which began:
“No matter what anyone thinks of the controversy surrounding this event …”
Still, in his ham-handed way, Selig hit on something. No matter what you think of the man and the allegations and the arrogance and the investigations, the fact remains: Barry Bonds has hit more home runs than any player in big-league history, and nowhere along the line has the sport found cause to prevent him from doing it.
Maybe that says more about the sport than it does about Bonds, but it wasn’t as if he hit those homers playing under an assumed name for a barnstorming team going (borrowing from the late great Lowell George here) from Tucson to Tucumcari. All 758 have been struck under the imprimatur of Major League Baseball. All 758 are legitimate in the eyes of the sanctioning body. All 758 count, and nobody else has 758, not even Bud Selig’s buddy Hank Aaron.
As Selig’s sullen tracking of Bonds unfolded, it was hard to know why the commish seemed such a sourball. Was it because he knew he’d allowed this whole steroids cloud to form by doing nothing a decade ago? Or was it because Bonds was about to break his friend’s record? (Significantly, Selig never spoke to Bonds during the long slog to No. 756 — he called him only after the fact — but admitted talking to Aaron on a regular basis.)
Aaron himself stayed above the fray and recorded a taped congratulatory message that was played at AT&T Park. Aaron chose not to chase Bonds around the country waiting for No. 756, but now the countdown is done and there’s no need to chase anybody anywhere. Bonds is coming to 755 Hank Aaron Drive for a three-game series starting Tuesday.
We Atlantans know there’s no sight so rare as seeing the greatest Brave ever in attendance at an actual Braves game. He’s on the board of directors and he holds the title of senior vice president, but Aaron doesn’t like going to ballgames. (He does use the Turner Field workout facilities, we’re told.) And that’s fine. He wouldn’t have to stay for a single pitch. Aaron could just show up during batting practice and shake Bonds’ hand.
There would be no need for any statement or briefing. The photographs, which would be splashed across the front of every sports section the next day, would send the message that frankly needs to be sent: That baseball, its scowling and dissembling commissioner notwithstanding, salutes the new record-holder.
It would be the sort of grace note Selig is incapable of sounding. It would provide a bit of symmetry — Bonds hit his first homer off Craig McMurtry on June 4, 1986, across the street in the now-razed stadium where Aaron hit his 715th — and would extend to the new holder a courtesy baseball didn’t offer the previous one. For decades Aaron seethed over the lack of official fuss made over No. 715 — Bowie Kuhn was in Cleveland that momentous night — and Selig has made it a point as commissioner to make his buddy feel more appreciated.
Let’s say, 33 years from now, baseball still hasn’t contrived to strike Bonds’ records from the book. Let’s say he’s still the all-time home run champion. Will some other commissioner be apologizing to him the way Selig did to Aaron? Or would one handshake from the Hammer be enough to make the new king of clout and the watching world forget all about blundering Bud?
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