Recording the season’s ultimate daily double, Steve Stricker supplanted golf’s two top stars with one stroke at the Deutsche Bank Championship.
Courtesy of his one-shot victory, the 42-year-old grinder bumped Tiger Woods out of the FedEx Cup points lead and replaced Phil Mickelson as the world No. 2 heading into the penultimate event in the season-ending playoffs.
“I really don’t think about it, player of the year honors or anything like that,” said Stricker, whose seventh career win and third this season staked him to more than a 900-point lead over Woods entering this week’s BMW Championship at Cog Hill. “We all know who the guy is out here. You know, I’m just happy to be in the position I’m at and with the opportunity to do something special for myself. He’s done enough other special things, so maybe he’ll let somebody else do something special.”
With a PGA Tour-best five victories this season, the 33-year-old Woods still has an advantage in his quest to collect a 10th Jack Nicklaus Trophy, the award given annually to the tour’s top player based on a vote among his peers.
Given that none of Woods’ victories came in the majors, however, Stricker still could swipe the honor by claiming the FedEx Cup.
“This format adds a lot of excitement for a guy like myself or anybody else to kind of challenge [Woods],” Stricker said. “That’s what we’ve got. Whoever is going to win this, whether it be him or me or anybody else, I mean, you’re going to have to play some pretty good golf for two more events, and it’s going to lead to a lot of excitement for the fans, the media and the players alike. I think it’s a lot of fun.”
Stricker has enjoyed some success at Cog Hill, winning the 1996 Western Open on the suburban Chicago layout in Lemont, Ill. But nobody plays the 7,386-yard, par-71 Dubsdread Course better than Woods, who has collected four victories in 10 professional starts at the venue, posting a field-best scoring average of 68.58 in 40 rounds at Cog Hill and setting the tournament scoring record (22-under 262) in his last start at the BMW (2007).
After nearly a month of suspect putting performances, Woods finally broke out of his slump with the short stick during his final round of the Deutsche Bank, using just 25 putts during a Monday-best 63 that lifted him to a tie for 11th.
“[I changed] nothing, absolutely nothing,” Woods said of his finale. “I went out there and I did the same things. … The last three days I hit about three or five lip-outs per day. … I’m hitting good putts, OK, so hit good shots, same thing I’ve been doing, and maybe those putts will fall. All of a sudden, boom, they start falling, and here we go.”
One thing to watch this week will be the fatigue factor. Players like Stricker, Woods, Padraig Harrington and Scott Verplank have been in contention in both of the first two playoff events and could be competitively weary by the weekend given this week’s short turnaround.
“Yeah, I’m kind of cringing,” Stricker said after the Monday finish. “I’ve only got two days and a lot of stuff to do in these two days to get ready to play Chicago.”
The 30 players who qualify for the FedEx Cup finale in Atlanta will get next week off before the Tour Championship (Sept. 24-27). But given the Deutsche Bank’s Monday finish and the fact that this week marks the beginning of the NFL season, this week would have made a far more logical break in the schedule.
International intrigue - Greg Norman surprisingly chose slumping countryman Adam Scott on Tuesday with one of his two captain’s picks for the Presidents Cup (Oct. 8-11). While Norman’s other pick, 17-year-old Japanese sensation Ryo Ishikawa, and both selections made by U.S. counterpart Fred Couples, Lucas Glover and Hunter Mahan, were beyond reproach, Scott has sagged to No. 53 in the world rankings this season by recording just one top-10 finish and missing the cut in 10 of his past 14 starts.
“He was really a logical choice,” said Norman, who chose Scott over candidates like Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee, who has two victories and eight top-20s in Europe. “When you look back a year ago, Adam was the No. 3 player in the world. Everybody goes through a slump. … At the end of the day, he’s got the playing skills and, as Adam said, the team camaraderie, what he can bring to the locker room, the support he gives to the other players, the connection and the experience that he’s had playing on the Presidents Cup team.”
If Scott performs poorly in a loss for the underdog Internationals at Harding Park, expect the Shark to endure a legitimate skewering for his suspect show of nepotism.
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