Global Golf Post - February 15, 2010

DUSTIN TIME
TaylorMade’s Newest Driver ( 5)
Accenture Match Play Brackets ( 10)
Couples Wins On Champions Tour ( 13)
Days At The Beach
Funny, wasn’t it, how the deeper they
got into the the back nine Sunday at Pebble
Beach, the more it started to look like a U.S.
Open? Paul Goydos, leading at the time,
blew to a quadruple-bogey nine on the
diabolical 14th hole.
The winner, “D” fending champion
Dustin Johnson, played “D” fense all day
long and was rewarded at the end with a
textbook birdie from the right, front green-
side bunker on the famous and final hole
at a place Scottish author Robert Louis
Stevenson once described as “the most
felicitous meeting of land and seas in
creation.” Johnson shot 37-37—74 Sunday,
a score that was one shot worse than the
73 Tom Kite needed on a wind-lashed
Sunday at the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble,
a day on which many long time observers
still insist conditions were the most trying
ever at America’s national championship.
Funny, isn’t it, how Pebble Beach is the
same place they will play the U. S. Open in
June. Or maybe it won’t be so funny when
the wind blows and the scores soar like a
flock of scared sea gulls.
Or maybe a contrite Tiger Woods will
be back by then with a healed soul and a
rejuvenated game. We can dream, can’t we?
Johnson, meanwhile, is tall and loose
and frighteningly fast at the business end
of a golf swing that launches golf balls high
into the sky. Isn’t that what Geoff Ogilvy
did last year while winning the Accenture
Match Play? Isn’t the Accenture Match Play
next week in Arizona?
Doesn’t Dustin Johnson now have to be
the pre-tournament favorite?