18th has Stenson’s number
Snowman kills Swede’s round
AUGUSTA, GA. – Henrik Stenson has now stripped down to his underwear on the golf course during a PGA Tour event twice. Only one of them was on purpose.
Thursday in the first round of the Masters — unlike the conscious decision to do his yellow shirt and white trousers to wade into the muck after his golf ball at Doral in 2009 — it was only in the figurative sense that the big Swede was undressed by the 18th hole at the Augusta National Golf Club.
But it was a lot more embarrassing.
Leading by three shots with three to play, Stenson gave one back at the 16th, but saved the real shenanigans for the finale, where he scuffed, hacked and three-whacked his way to a quadruple-bogey eight, tying the highest score ever made at Augusta’s closing hole.
On the bright side, he didn’t break any clubs. He did that at the U.S. Open last year, snapping the shaft of an iron and cutting his hand.
“I do have a temper, but I need my clubs tomorrow,” Stenson said in a gracious, candid post-round interview.
Still, his stunning snowman — after he’d made two frontnine eagles en route to 6-under par, three shots in the clear — let everyone in the Masters field who was in red figures feel a lot better about themselves by the end of play.
Feeling especially good was world No. 3 Lee Westwood, the Englishman who seems to be in the neighbourhood every time a major comes around, and who finished o his round of 5-under-par 67 just ahead of wind and light rain that seemed to be the leading edge of yet another thunderstorm.
“This is a golf course I love playing. I hit pretty much every fairway and 16 greens in regulation and rolled some nice putts in from 10-15 feet, which is productive,” said Westwood, who was three shots back when Stenson self-immolated, and within a couple of hours he had the solo lead, by a stroke over 2010 British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen and Sweden’s Peter Hanson.
“It’s nice to get o to a good start, and have a platform to build from,” said Westwood, who was talking about the round as a whole, but could have been referring to four straight birdies on the front nine — and it might have been six, but for a couple of makable putts missed.
“Billy (Foster, his caddy) had walked around the course and sent me a text saying the pins were ... tough. He used slightly more flowery language, but we’ll stick to tough. It’s never an easy golf course. (But) if you look at my stats this year, proximity to the hole, I’m fairly high up, and this is a secondshot golf course.”
Also happy: Oosthuizen, who birdied the last two for his 68, and another former Open Championship winner, Paul Lawrie, the 1999 champion golfer of the year at Carnoustie, whose 69 Thursday included eagles at both par-5s on the back nine, and put him in a mob of players tied at 3 under.
Stenson, however, stole the show, which isn’t easy to do considering he ended up four shots o the pace.
“It wasn’t that stable the whole day,” admitted Stenson. “I mean, I had made two great eagles, hit some great second shots and made a putt on two par-5s on the front nine, and I even chipped in once for par — but after No. 11 I didn’t hit one fairway o the tee, and playing out of the forest most of the back nine, it’s going to cost you sooner or later. Even though I didn’t expect it to cost as much as it did on 18.”
The eight on 18 started with a hook into the trees, a punch shot through a bush, a poor iron shot off the pine straw, and an airmailed wedge over the back of the green, from where he took four to get the ball in the hole.
“Finishing with an eight, I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”
Lawrie, who took a decade to stop feeling defensive about the triple-bogey seven Jean Van de Velde made on the final hole at Carnoustie to help hand the Scot the 1999 Open, now has benefited from an even bigger gaffe — if not quite as comic — by a fellow European.
But as at Carnoustie, when his final-round 67 was blurred by the Frenchman’s memorable meltdown, Lawrie played terrific golf Thursday, eagling both par-5s on the back nine, including a slippery downhill chip-in from 50 or 60 feet away at the 15th.
“I tried for a wee while to change the way that people saw (his ‘99 triumph), and I failed miserably, to be honest,” said Lawrie, of his battle for respect. “When people would say something negative about me, it used to just cause me so much grief. I kind of lost that a long time ago. It doesn’t alter my life if someone doesn’t think I should have won and Jean should have, anymore. We just get on with it.”
Also at 69 were aging Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez, Italy’s Eduardo Molinari, Ben Crane, Jason Dufner and Bubba Watson.
There were no fireworks from Tiger Woods’ corner. He fought the driver all day, hit some horrific pull hooks o the tee, and needed all his shortgame wizardry to salvage an even-par 72, the same score as, among others, Canada’s Mike Weir.
“I squeezed a lot out of that round,” Woods said. “Warmed up bad, and it continued on the golf course.”
“I hit some of the worst golf shots I’ve ever hit in my life.”
As for Weir, who was 3-overpar after 11 but birdied the 12th, 13th and 15th holes, it was the first good news in a long, arduous journey back from elbow surgery.
“It’s not there yet, but I’m gaining on it. It was fun. There were a lot of good signs.”