7:27 – Johnny Miller: “I’ve never seen such a finish in championship golf.”
7:11 – Phil plays the last two holes at the U.S. Open +3 to lose to 29-year-old Geoff Ogilvy.
7:07 – Phil runs his ball into the thick greenside rough from the bunker. I think I’ve seen a lot of miracles in my day, but holing out here may just top them all. It would top Tiger’s 16th-hole chip-in at the 2005 Masters. Barring this miracle, Geoff Ogilvy is the 2006 U.S. Open Champion.
7:05 – Johnny Miller: “Man, he [Phil] got a couple bad breaks on the lies, didn’t he?” Uhhmmm, no??? Only the two bunker shots in the last two holes.
7:03 – Phil hits his third shot into the greenside bunker. Par is virtually out of the question now. He has to get up and down to get into a playoff or Geoff Ogilvy will win the 2006 U.S. open. Johnny Miller again: “just crazy shot selection.”
7:01 – Phil hits a tree with his second! He’s still in the area where the gallery has walked, near the tents, and he’ll have to play a similar shot. The ball advanced forward only about 30 yards.
6:59 – Ogilvy MAKES IT!!! Phil needs par or better to win the U.S. Open. Double bogey gives the win to Ogilvy. A bogey will result in an 18-hole playoff on Monday.
6:52 – Ogilvy’s perfect drive comes up in a sand-filled divot and his approach shot spun too hard (as they are wont to do from a divot). Phil Mickelson hits a tent WAAAAAAAY left of 18 and it bounces back, yet again, into the area where the gallery has walked. Johnny Miller: “I cannot believe he didn’t hit 4-wood there.” If Ogilvy can get up and down, he has about a 75% chance of getting in a playoff. A playoff Monty would have been in with a bogey.
6:49 – Montgomerie rolls his 40-foot par putt nearly 15 feet past the hole. Choke is spelled C-H-O-K-E, Monty.
6:44 – “What kind of shot is that?” Monty chokes on the 18th, likely needing only a par to win outright or secure a spot in a playoff. His ball is short, right, and buries deep in the grass.
6:40 – It looks more and more as though we may be heading to a Monday playoff.
6:38 – Ogilvy gets his miracle, chipping in for par. He remains at +5. Monty is in the fairway on the dogleg left 18th, bravely fitting his fade against the shape of the hole. Mickelson’s tee shot was literally hit into the junk; it came to rest in a trash can full of beer bottles. He’s gotten lucky once again though, as he has an angle out of the trees with a small cut.
6:35 – Stupid Phil returns and hits driver on 17, missing the fairway by 50 yards or so. Monty is waiting on the tee at 18, tied with Phil. Ogilvy, still not on the green after three just ahead of Phil on 17, is probably out of it, barring a miracle.
6:34 – Furyk misses a four-footer to post +5. He posts a +6 and an even-par 70, which will not be good enough to win this U.S. Open.
6:29 – Montgomerie holes a bomb at 17 just as Mickelson fails to get the ball to the green from a plugged lie in a greenside bunker. Monty is one back at +4 and Phil would fall to +4 after two-putting from the fringe.
6:16 – Harrington misses a four-footer for par to fall out of it at +6. Phil cozies his long putt on 15 to virtual tap-in range, assuring his par. Ferrie falls to +7.
6:11 – Ogilvy narrowly misses a birdie putt on 15 to get within one shot of the lead. The rest of the field is running out of holes. They’re going to have to hope Phil makes a mistake on the finishing three holes. His shot from the intermediate cut on 15 finds the green.
5:58 – Ogilvy misses his par putt to fail to stay in the lead. Furyk misses a birdie putt on 15 to get into a share of the lead. From 123 yards, he takes four strokes to get down, just the latest in a series of anemic shots. Ogilvy would be better off going at the centers of greens instead of at the flag.
5:54 – Phil has hit only 2/10 fairways through the drive off the 14th tee (which he misses right). Hicks would later remind Miller that he said “the guy who hits the most fairways will win today.”
5:52 – NBC’s camerawork continues to suck. First we fail to see Ogilvy’s shot until it’s bouncing in the greenside rough, then we immediately cut to Padraig’s ball as it’s careening around a tree. The tracking of golf balls has been a week-long problem.
5:48 – Monty, who talked of “hitting fairways and greens, then putting defensively” earlier in the week, succumbs to his first three-putt at 14. Phil fails to save par from the bunker, burning the right edge of the cup.
5:41 – Jim Furyk, putting for birdie from 25 feet on the fifteenth, barely hits his putt halfway. Now he has a 12+ footer to save par. Geoff Ogilvy, after missing the green left of the par-3 13th, nails the flagstick and sets the ball down within inches for his par. Mickelson grimaces as soon as he hits and finds the same shortside bunker. Furyk misses his par putt.
5:29 – The USGA needs to spend a little less money on programs that don’t work ($50M in their initiative to bring golf to new segments of the population) and more on some new commercials.
5:27 – We’re reminded for the umpteenth time that Phil is +2 on the par fives this week as he misses the fairway to the left on twelve. “Maybe that’s a good thing, he can hit 8-iron, wedge, and make a ten footer” says miller. Hicks quickly adds “That’s against his nature.”
5:15 – “Very creative” is, apparently, defined as hitting a 3/4 gap wedge from 112 yards and letting it bounce onto a green four or five yards. Yeah… sorry, guys, but if that qualifies as “creative” these days, golf has gotten even more pathetic than I thought.
5:13 – Ogilvy bogeys and Furyk saves par, now tied for the lead at +4.
5:09 – Dan Hicks contributes “scalded duck served up with a fried egg” to the discussion of Geoff Ogilvy’s plugged lie in the bunker at 11 from 106 yards in the fairway. Ferrie two-putts after a semi-poor chip to fall back further with bogeys on three of his last four holes.
5:02 – Furyk gets into the mix, as does Padraig Harrington, both with birdies at the 12th. Ferrie failed to draw his shot at ten, missing right of the right bunker. Phil gets a big cheer simply for hitting the green 30 feet from the pin.
4:56 – The USGA has set up the course quite nicely for the final round. Early indications (scroll down) were that there were lots of birdies (even eagles) available. Harrington, coming off 11 straight pars, reaches the shortened 12th in two with an iron. Ogilvy, Mickelson, and Ferrie have yet to tee off on the tenth.
4:50 – Mickelson, from the same spot as Ogilvy, leaves his ball roughly as short as Ogilvy, yet Miller calls Geoff’s shot “not his best effort” and the hard-hitting Roger Maltbie calls Phil’s “not a bad effort.”
4:42 – Mickelson finds the center of the fairway at the ninth (as does Ferrie) just as Ogilvy leaves his bunker shot well short. The turn could prove to be a turning point in this U.S. Open.
4:34 – That was the longest “quick update” I’ve ever seen. By the way, did you know that the Stanley Cup’s seventh game would be played Monday?
4:25 – Phil pushes a par putt after tugging (again) his 8-iron well long and right on the par-3 seventh. Ogilvy is short and right of the eighth after two whacks. Ferrie, likewise, bogeys after three-putting from the back left of the par 3. Ogilvy leads by two… for a little while.
4:13 – NBC shows Phil’s scoring averages by round in the U.S. Open: 70.94, 71.69, 72.40, 73.57. He’s heading towards that 73.57 right now as he fails to birdie either the par-5 fifth or the drivable par-4 sixth.
4:04 – Phil bogeys. Ferrie shuts up those who deemed him this year’s EuroGore by two-putting for par to get back into a tie for the lead. Ogilvy pitches relatively close, sinks the putt, and pulls into the lead.
3:58 – From the left rough on five, Phil moves the ball two feet at most from 140 yards out with his 4-wood. OUCH. His fourth shot, played with an iron, comes out left. NBC’s traditionally poor camera work misses it until the ball comes to rest on the green. Ferrie is bunkered greenside in two.
3:55 – Lady Luck may be looking elsewhere. Ogilvy birdies to go to +2 and Phil misses the fairway after landing right next to a grass finger in the bunker on the par-5 fifth. Vijay looks to birdie #6.
3:48 – Phil’s luck (x2 on this hole!) results in a birdie and takes him to +1, Ferrie holes a long par putt, and Stricker holes out from 75 yards at the sixth to get back into the picture at +4.
3:43 – Phil has yet to hit a fairway, yet he continues to get every break in the book – great lies in horribly thick rough, bounces onto the green instead of into deep greenside rough. Every break. Lady Luck has a new man, and his name is Phil Mickelson.
3:38 – Ferrie finds the fairway at the difficult fourth hole, and Phil tugs another one well to the right (nearly into the 5½” rough). If Monty and Furyk, not to mention Ogilvy, could mount a run, Phil would feel the pressure.
3:24 – Jim Furyk goes to -2 for the day, +4 total, and two back. Montgomerie rolls a long one in as well to get to +4. Phil just escaped his tugged drive on two and leaves his long birdie putt eight feet short.
3:20 – Another Villages ad. Did you know that you can golf free on the executive courses free for the rest of your life? And why does Travelers Insurance say “in-synch”? What’s wrong with “in sync”? Isn’t it more widely used?
3:16 – Phil escapes with a par, as does Ferrie. Both left their putts well short – a widely recurring theme this week – from opposite sides of the hole. Ferrie then massively pulls his tee shot on the second tee. Phil tugs one right too. Will someone apply some pressure?
3:02 – The leaders tee off. Ferrie stripes one while Phil pulls one so far right he gets into the gallery and may actually have a good shot.
2:49 – The third flagstick of the day is rattled. Monty hits a shot on the first hole to three feet. A final-round 65 is looking even more likely.
2:42 – Jimmy Roberts is on. You know what that means: another goofy little segment on some out-of-the-way player or person. This time, the angry Dave Stevenson and the change it prompted in him.
2:30 – We’re seeing eagles everywhere. José Maria just holed out, we’ve seen an eagle at the short par-4 sixth, and there have already been two or three others. It again reinforces that someone could make a big move today. O’Hern moves to -4 today and +5 total. At 2:32, Jeff Sluman nearly aces the sixth and Luke Donald nearly holes out for an eagle!
2:19 – Nick O’Hern birdies the par-3 seventh to go to -3. Miller says “there are six really easy hole locations today.” Could someone shoot 65 to take the U.S. Open?
2:15 – YAPS – Yet Another Phil Sighting (along with his entourage of Pelz and Smith). In the words of my buddy Don, “Pelz is the type of guy who, if you saw him walking down the street, you’d cross to the other side.” He really needs to find some cooler sunglasses.
2:00 – My pick after two rounds, Arron Oberholser, fell apart a bit in the third round but looks to start strong in round four with an approach on the first to about four feet. 13 minutes later, NBC shows him missing the birdie putt.
1:57 – Ian Poulter’s headcover and bag changes color with his outfit. Maltbie asks what it will take to win after asking if Rod Stewart is rooting for him this year. Maltbie has not forged a reputation for asking the tough question, and if you needed any proof of that…
1:4 – Johnny Miller, referring to Adam Scott’s form, says “this is Tiger Woods in the year 2000. Too bad Scott’s missing the shot versatility, short game, and mental acuity and focus of Tiger Woods, eh Johnny?
1:33 – Bob Costas must have been paid off by Phil Mickelson. In interviewing Ken Ferrie, he cited the benefits granted the U.S. Open champion. Ferrie tries to take it in stride, but gee whiz Bob, couldn’t you fit this in another time? Dan Hicks concludes with a horrible joke about Kryptonite.
1:29 – Roger Maltbie asks Geoff Ogilvy if it would be nice, as an Australian, to win the U.S. Open. You can imagine the sort of response Ogilvy gave to this probing, in-depth question. Oy.
1:25 – The tasteless Tiger and Earl Woods commercial airs for the first time on Sunday.
1:11 – Charles Howell III dubs a shot from greenside rough into a greenside bunker. Charles Howell III should shoot for a Jay Haas career at this point, since it seems he’ll never actually win anything.
1:06 – The blimp appears before the short par-5 fifth appears and a Duval sighting. Did he have an honest shot at this title? No. Was his 68 exciting? You bet.
12:54 – Oh look, a Villages ad. I didn’t know the old cart-riding farts were subsidizing the USGA, too.
12:51 – Fuzzy Zoeller. Everyone seems to forget that he won a U.S. Open. Everyone remembers Hale Irwin.
12:41 – 11 minutes in and finally they show someone playing golf – Ernie Els nearly driving #6.
12:35 – It took the leaders more than four hours to play yesterday. Why exactly are they still teeing off at nearly 3pm?
12:31 – 94° and 10-15 MPH. One has to wonder whether a struggling Ferrie will bring down a surging Mickelson, or whether playing with one of the world’s best will calm Ferrie into playing good golf.
12:30 – The fridge is stocked. I’ve got my potato chips and other assorted goodies, and the TiVo is working beautifully. We’re ready to go.
Geoff Ogilvy 71-70-72-72--285 +5 Jim Furyk 70-72-74-70--286 +6 Colin Montgomerie 69-71-75-71--286 +6 Phil Mickelson 70-73-69-74--286 +6 Padraig Harrington 73-69-74-71--287 +7 Nick O'Hern 75-70-74-69--288 +8 Jeff Sluman 74-73-72-69--288 +8 Mike Weir 71-74-71-72--288 +8 Steve Stricker 70-69-76-73--288 +8 Vijay Singh 71-74-70-73--288 +8 Kenneth Ferrie 71-70-71-76--288 +8
Photo Credits: © AP.
a couple = two
Hey “c,” if you hit a high ball into a bunker, it’s gonna plug. And if you get 20 good breaks in a week and two bad ones, it’d be pretty asinine to say “he got some bad breaks.”
I thought Phil had learned to play smart. I thought wrong. Where the hell was Bones to tell him to put the driver in the bag and punch a 3 iron off the tee on 18?
Mediaguru is completely correct, but the Caddie should have interjected well before the 18th tee. Phil could not find the fairway with the driver all day. He should have switched to the 4 wood much earlier in the day.
Phil spends months on his US Open preparation, and plays like an idiot on the back 9 (especially the 18th). It just shows what nerves can do to some of these top players (no one was immune).
The door was open for Vijay, Furyk, Monty, and others to play well and win at +4, but nobody could. This does not bode well for Phil at the Ryder Cup.
To be honest, although it was stupid, I can understand why Phil continued with the driver off of the tee on 18th. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t pitch out for his second shot. That was the truely stupid move, in my opinion.
Great tournament, same old commercials, except for the “30 handicapper at Bethpage” one, which was funny. Hey USGA, the “hole in one” kid is old enough to buy beer now and the old man has probably passed on.