GOLF-The Game Of Life

Unaffected By The Marquee Mayhem



San Diego – “Where’d everybody go?” said the marshal stationed at the first tee Thursday at a 8:17 a.m. “They were just here a minute ago.”

It wasn’t as if you had some slouches on the tee box. There was Steve Flesch, a four-time winner on the PGA Tour; Rich Beem, the surprise winner of the 2002 PGA championship; and Lee Janzen, an 18-year veteran of the tour who won his second United States Open 10 years ago. That’s as many Open championships as any one individual in the field, including World No. 1 Tiger Woods.

No matter. That vacuum sound you couldn’t help but notice on the first hole of the first round of the 108th U.S. Open wasn’t Tiger Woods’ pulled tee shot deep into the left rough that lead to a double bogey. It was the hordes of fans scampering after everyone’s dream grouping of Woods, Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, leaving anyone playing in their wake feeling a little like chopped liver.

Not that Beem, Flesch or Janzen would cop to any feelings of neglect. “Why wouldn’t [fans] take off after Tiger and Phil,” said Beem after a 3-over 74. “They’re the top players in the world, and I’m not.”

Still, with many thousands thronging the first tee long before Mickelson-Scott-Woods showed for their 8:06 a.m. starting time, you had to figure it wasn’t going to be easy playing either in the group immediately proceeding or following the game’s superstars. For 18 holes, the world’s top-three ranked players created the kind of crazed buzz one really only experiences late in the final round of a close-fought major, and even then the excitement is typically distributed over two or three pairings until it gets down to very last hole or two.

On Thursday, the mania was concentrated to one group and sustained over a full five hours. And the throng only grew as the round progressed. The fact that nobody in the group was playing spectacularly (Mickelson finished at even par, Woods one over, and Scott two over for the round), hardly mattered to the fans.

However, the hullabaloo may have mattered more to those coming up on their heels than they were willing to let on.

“It was fine,” Beem insisted, dismissing any suggestion that the commotion may have thrown his group off their games. “Everybody is going forward, nobody is going back, so it was no big deal at all.”

And yet, collectively, his group finished the day 14 strokes over par, which is a big deal.

The group playing ahead of the big party faired better, especially after Mark Calcavecchia dropped out with a sore knee on the ninth hole. Oliver Wilson threw away a couple of shots on the final hole to finish one over par, while Joe Ogilvie scrambled back from 3-over start to finish at even-par 71.

“I heard walking down the 18th fairway that there are more people on the golf course today than there were even at Bethpage [host of the 2002 Open], and Bethpage set all the records,” Ogilvie said afterward. “And they weren’t all right behind me like you’d think. They were also a hole ahead of me and the hole that I was on, waiting for Tiger and Phil and Adam. But with so many people, there wasn’t a lot of movement, so it wasn’t the nightmare we thought it would be.”

The only possible problem, as Ogilvie saw it, was that at times, figuring the roar of the crowd was inevitable, he had no choice but to take a moment and become a spectator. “You certainly didn’t want to hit when those guys were hitting,” he said. “But that was OK. These guys are the top three players in the world. It’s fun to step back and watch what they do.”