What may or may not have been the last shot anyone had to catch Matt Kuchar at the Barclays fizzled when Vijay Singh’s approach shot from the right rough plopped onto the soft green at his final hole on Friday, some 40 feet from the cup.
Hurricane Irene, which already has forced tournament organizers to shorten the event to 54 holes, could shorten it to 36 holes if the heavy rains forecast for Saturday afternoon soak the already saturated golf course at Plainfield Country Club. “If we don’t get 18 in tomorrow, we will resort back to 36 holes,” said Slugger White, the vice president for rules and competition for the PGA Tour.
Kuchar, who leads Singh and Dustin Johnson by a stroke, set the pace in the early going Friday, with six birdies on the soft greens with the aplomb of a master chef ladling a nice Mornay sauce on crepes.
“I just tried to birdie every hole I could,” said Johnson, who eventually was tied for second by Singh’s 64. Singh is looking for his first victory on tour since he won his third Barclays title and first Deutsche Bank title back to back in 2008.
The PGA Tour on Friday reduced its first playoff event to 54 holes because of the rain and potential damage expected from Hurricane Irene.
Slugger White, the tour's vice president of competition, said the plan was finish 36 holes Friday and start the third round first thing Saturday morning, with hopes of getting in a 54-hole event before the rain arrives.
If they can't finish Saturday, he said it would revert to a 36-hole tournament. Left unclear was whether a 36-hole tournament - if that were the case - would count as an official win. Six years ago, Adam Scott won the Nissan Open at Riviera in a playoff after rain reduced the tournament to 36 holes. What mattered more at this FedEx Cup playoff event was advancing to Boston. The Barclays was a sellout at Plainfield.
Confused? Kuchar.
Last year's winner at Ridgewood Country Club finished his first round this morning and walked off with the leader at 8-under par. His 63 puts him one shot ahead of Harrison Frazar, Robert Allenby and William McGirt.
Played really well today and the conditions were there. Right now, no one's is lower than Kuchar.
McGirt — the last man to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs field here at Plainfield Country Club — began his completion round staring at a 10-footer for birdie on the 12th hole. The North Carolinian parred his next four holes, before carding his only bogey of the round at the 17th hole.
Defending champion Matt Kuchar is also without a win this season, but he still managed to finish higher on the points list (12) than any winless player on the PGA Tour in 2011. No player has successfully defended his title at this event since Ernie Els, who won in 1996-97 and will go for another win this week.
Singh has won it more times than anyone with four victories dating from 1993 to 2008.
Next week, the top 100 points leaders will take part in the second postseason event, the Deutsche Bank Championship, which Charley Hoffman won by five strokes in 2010.
EUROPEAN TOUR
JOHNNIE WALKER CHAMPIONSHIP AT GLENEAGLES, The Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland - The European Tour heads to Scotland this week for the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles, which Edoardo Molinari won in 2010.
The win catapulted Molinari onto the European Ryder Cup team last year, becoming the first player to play in The Ryder Cup the year following graduation from the Challenge Tour.
Golf Channel will carry coverage of all four rounds.
CHAMPIONS TOUR
Fred Couples is also participating after winning his first senior major last week at the Senior Players.
After two weeks off, the Champions Tour heads to Asia for the Songdo Championship Korea, which Russ Cochran won last year.
LPGA TOUR
Wie has struggled of late, however, without a top-10 finish in a stroke play event since finishing sixth at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. NATIONWIDE TOUR
Next week the Nationwide Tour heads to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania for the Mylan Classic, where Kevin Kisner won in 2010.
CANADIAN TOUR
CANADIAN TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP, Ambassador Golf Club, Windsor, Ontario, Canada - The Canadian Tour is in Ontario this week for the Canadian Tour Championship, which Aaron Goldberg won in 2010.
The Canadian Tour is off for over two months following this event until November 3-6 for the Desert Dunes Classic, where Adam Hadwin won in 2010.
In the closing laps of the Good Sam RV Insurance 500 at Pocono Raceway, Kurt Busch was running third, with his teammate Brad Keselowski leading and his younger brother, Kyle, running in second.
Keselowski ran the whole race, overtook rival Kyle Busch for the lead after the final caution, then drove away for his third career win.
The heroes are the guys who died in Afghanistan.
We’re not saving the world or curing cancer, I just drive a race car.”
Busch and Keselowski have had serious conflicts in the past, but even Busch gave credit.
Kurt Busch outran Jimmie Johnson for third, with some bumping and banging leading to a show of temper on Johnson’s part after the race.
“That’s just good, hard racing,” said Busch. “That’s what the fans pay good money to see, hard racing. “I have no problem racing hard. Ryan Newman, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Paul Menard completed the top 10.
Kevin Harvick beat Kyle Busch to the checkered flag in the rain-delayed Camping World Truck Series race earlier in the day.
Carl Edwards will trim his Nationwide Series schedule next year to spend more time with crew chief Bob Osborne and their Sprint Cup effort.
The 31-year-old driver has 34 career Nationwide wins and won the 2007 title for Roush Fenway Racing. He’s run the full Nationwide and Cup schedules for the past seven years, one of the most taxing schedules in NASCAR history.
“The racer in me wants to run the Truck Series, the Nationwide Series, and the Cup Series every week. (Five-time Cup champion) Jimmie Johnson doesn’t run (many) Nationwide races.”
Edwards hasn’t set his ’12 schedule, but it likely will include only Nationwide companion races at Cup venues. Until he abruptly decided to skip Road America in June, he had run 210 consecutive Nationwide races. He was scheduled to fly from Pocono to Newton, Iowa, on Saturday afternoon for Saturday night’s US Cellular Nationwide 250.
I’ll run Watkins Glen almost certainly; there’s a huge benefit to the Cup Series. Instead of leaving Infineon Raceway on Saturday to run the Nationwide race, he stayed and spent more time with Osborne and their Cup car.
Adam Scott was losing ground Saturday at Firestone when he decided to stick with what was working. Scott was at 12-under 198, the lost 54-hole score at Firestone in 10 years.
Scott atop the leaderboard should be compelling enough, especially with Woods back to golf. Ishikawa might be the only other player in golf to appreciate what it's like to get attention like Woods. He has been a star in Japan since he won his first tournament as a 15-year-old amateur, and his 10 wins on the Japan Golf Tour include shooting a 58 in the final round to win The Crowns.
A win would make him the youngest winner of a PGA Tour-sponsored even since John McDermott won the 1911 U.S. Open at 19. PGA Tour rookie Keegan Bradley had a 68 and was two shots behind, along with Martin Laird (67). The group another shot behind included world No. 1 Luke Donald, who had a 64 despite a bogey on the last hole, and Rickie Fowler, who holed out from the fairway for eagle for the second straight day. Woods opened with a bogey that started with shots to the right and left of the fairway, and he didn't hit a single fairway on the front nine.
It may be a truism in golf that half the players on any given day of a PGA Tour event hate the way the course is set up - usually the half that aren't playing worth a damn.
But give Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club credit: this week at the RBC Canadian Open, you can't find anyone who likes the rough. In fact, if you conducted a mass interview of all those players who caught the Golf Canada national open Golf charter flight back to Vancouver from the Open Championship at Royal St. George's on Sunday night, this might be the average comment: "Define easier," Goydos said, sounding a lot like the substitute school teacher he once was. "Worrying about what Paul Goydos thinks of the rough is just silliness.
"I don't know if it should be a one-shot penalty for a guy who lands his tee shot in the fairway and two-bounces into the rough. It's one of those courses that every shot - tee shot, approach shot, first putt - if you don't hit a good shot, you're going to struggle to make par. Tommy (Two Gloves) Gainey hit just five fairways and shot 65. If I hit it in the rough on a par-4, I immediately start thinking par-5. If you miss it, then whatever.
The golf course, at 36 holes, is starting to identify the best players in the field. Richard Zokol knows all about that pressure having played the country’s national golf tournament 26 times. Weir once called the chance of a Canadian winning the Canadian Open the equivalent of “lightning in a bottle. Zokol agrees.
“It is tough to play well on that one week you need to play well. Weir is one of five regulars playing on the PGA Tour this year, all posting very mixed results. Others in the field include Canadian national open Golf Mid-Am champ Dave Bunker, a high school gym teacher when he’s not playing golf. Former amateur standouts Matt Hill, from Bright’s Grove, Ont., and B.C.’s Nick Taylor, both currently playing Canadian Tour, are also back this year.
Among those late qualifiers to the field are former Canadian national open Golf Amateur champion Darren Wallace, a native of Langley, B.C., who know plays on the Canadian Tour, along with veteran Brad Fritsch of Manotick, Ont. and Mitch Evanecz, a member of Canada’s men’s amateur national team from Red Deer, Alta.
Top amateur golfers Albin Choi of Toronto, and Eugene Wong of Vancouver, who missed the cut at last year’s Canadian national open Golf, are also teeing it up at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club this week, while Canadian PGA Club Pro champ, Brian Hutton of Burlington, Ont., rounds out the list of Canadians. Truthfully Canadian professional golf, at least on the PGA Tour level, seems to be in a state of transition.
Matt McQuillan might very well be the hottest Canadian golfer right now. SCOREGolf: You’ve had two big weeks in a row.
What may or may not have been the last shot anyone had to catch Matt Kuchar at the Barclays fizzled when Vijay Singh’s approach shot from the right rough plopped onto the soft green at his final hole on Friday, some 40 feet from the cup.
