Top professionals such as Rickie Fowler (left),
Anthony Kim (center) and Scott Piercy felt the
bite of Shaughnessy’s long and difficult rough.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA |
Pretournament talk (and most of it during
the four days of competition, actually)
centered on the setup of Shaughnessy
Golf and Country Club, specifically the
length, thickness and abruptness of
the rough.
Opinions seemed to be split right
down the middle, half the field saying the severity of the long grass was
totally unnecessary and demanded the
sort of golf that was neither fun to play
nor watch; the other half acknowledging it was a national championship and
should play tough.
“It’s nice in this day and age where
the best guy doesn’t win on a regular
basis – it’s usually the guy who putts
his butt off that wins – so it’s nice to
play a golf course where you know who
is playing the best,” said Woody Austin,
after a sharp opening 68 that put him in
a tie for second.
Paul Stankowski was similarly complimentary. “I think there’s some strategy. The strategy is to hit it straight,”
he joked. “But, seriously, it’s obviously
a great course and will produce a fine
winner.”
John Daly was another in the pro-Shaughnessy camp. “It’s an awesome
golf course, I love it,” he tweeted on the
Tuesday. “ 1 thing I would change is the
name to: Shaughnetrees!” He added he
liked the setup because the tournament
would not descend into a putting contest.
Geoff Ogilvy, his thoughtful, erudite
self as always, questioned what the
motivation of the organizers was. “The
greens are cool, but the bunkers are in
the wrong places and the rough doesn’t
allow recovery shots,” he told Lorne
Rubenstein, writing for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail.
“To me, when a club knows it’s
getting the tournament, the question
should be how to get the best player in
the tournament that week to win. How
do we test the complete game of the
players? If this is the mission (to pro-
tect par, and to force one-dimensional
golf onto a property that could invite
multidimensional golf), and I don’t
know if it is, then they’ve succeeded.”
One man with an interesting take on
the subject was golf historian Michael
Riste, whose biography of Shaugh-
nessy’s designer, A.V. Macan, was
recently published.
Canadian fans had much to celebrate with the performance of 22-year-
old Adam Hadwin, but until he moved
to the first page of the leaderboard
with a third-round 68, there was much
despondency among the home crowd
following the withdrawal of Mike Weir
after six holes of his second round.
At 8-over par for the tournament,
the 2003 Masters champion’s poor
season was continuing, but it got even
worse when the pain in his right elbow,
which he first injured at the Heritage
last year, became unbearable.
“I couldn’t open a bottle of water this
morning after hitting those shots out
of the rough,” he said. “It’s very disap-
pointing, but I just don’t want to go down
that road again where it becomes a bad
injury. I’m not going to re-injure it.”
At the start of the week, Weir con-
firmed that after a two-year split, he
was back working with the Stack and
Tilt team of Andy Plummer and Mike
Bennett, hoping to find something sim-
ple to latch onto. Since leaving Plum-
mer and Bennett in 2009, the Canadian
has worked with swing coaches Mike
Wilson and Jim Flick and mental-game
gurus Rich Gordin and Bob Rotella.
After missing the cut at Royal St.
George’s, world No. 1 Luke Donald was
looking to rebound with a solid week but
opened with 70, 73 and 72 to tie for 45th
on 5-over par through three rounds.
During the final round, he at last
got something going, reaching the
turn in 32 after having started at the
10th. On his back nine, the birdies kept
coming and at 5-under for the round
through 14 holes, Donald was up into
a tie for sixth and threatening Stephen
Ames’ 2005 course record of 64. Sadly,
the Englishman finished with bogeys
on his 16th and 18th holes to complete
the four rounds on 2-over 282. l
