SAN FRANCISCO – The Olympic Club did it again.
The place known as the Graveyard of Champions claimed a couple more on Sunday and handed the U.S. Open to an unlikely winner from out of the mist that often shrouds these sloping fairways.
GOLA: NO CHOKE, BUT JOKE ON TIGER AT OPEN
It’s not that Webb Simpson isn’t a good player. He was second on the PGA Tour money list last year with two wins. But even he wasn’t sure he was ready to win a major at age 26. Let alone come from behind to pass ex-champs Jim Furyk and Graeme McDowell.
2012 U.S. OPEN FINAL LEADERBOARD
“When Graeme missed (a birdie putt to tie on 18), I shook my head in disbelief,” said Simpson, who calmed his nerves by watching videos of his 16-month-old son as McDowell and Furyk played the final holes. “If I was honest with you, I believed I could win a major but maybe not this soon. It’s so hard to do. One of my thoughts on the back nine was I don’t know how Tiger has won 14 of these things. The pressure… I couldn’t feel my legs on most of the back nine.”
U.S. OPEN INSIDER: FURYK HAS 99 YARDS OF PROBLEMS WITH 16
Tiger Woods, by the way, shot himself out of contention by playing the first six holes in 6-over par, an Olympic victim himself after holding a share of the 36-hole lead. But like Ben Hogan (to Jack Fleck in ’55) and Arnold Palmer (to Billy Casper in ’66), it was Furyk, most of all, who saw victory slip away.
The 42-year-old Pennsylvania plodder, a U.S. open champ in 2003, had at least a share of the lead until a snap-hook off the 16th tee led to a bogey on the par-5 hole.
“Very. Very,” he said when asked how disappointed he was. “I don’t know how to put that one into words, but I had my opportunities and my chances and it was right there. It was, on that back nine, my tournament to win.”
Ultimately, Furyk would also bogey No. 18 to shoot 74 and finish in a tie for fourth, two shots back, with McDowell (73) and first-round leader Michael Thompson (67) one behind Simpson in second. McDowell, who won his Open down the coast at Pebble Beach two years ago, had one last chance to force a playoff with a 24-foot putt on the 18th but he never gave it a chance. It was left all the way. That’s not why he said he lost, however.
“There’s a mixture of emotions inside me right now,” said McDowell, who had birdied the 17th. “Obviously disappointment, deflation, pride, but mostly just frustration, just because I hit three fairways today. That’s the U.S. Open. You’re not supposed to do that.”
Simpson, an Arnold Palmer Scholar when he was at Wake Forest, struck the ball beautifully for two days. He carded two 68s over the weekend and finished at 1-over 281. After falling five shots back with two bogeys on the first five holes on Sunday, he began a run that would win him the title with a birdie on No. 6, one of four on the next four holes. His last, on the 10th, was a “mistake,” he said, because he was trying to hit left of the flag, not five feet from the hole where it ended up. Then, by parring the final eight holes, including a nice up-and-down from a depression in the greenside rough on 18, he claimed the title.
“To be honest, I never really wrapped my mind around winning,” Simpson said. “This place is so demanding, all I was really concerned about was keeping the ball in front of me and making pars. Today I was 2-over through five, but I didn’t think anything of it because I knew I had (hole) seven coming up and a few other birdie holes in the back. I was just trying to keep my mind focused on the hole that I was playing and just somehow make pars.”
Simpson also said he was happy to be playing in the fourth-to-last group, not with the leaders: “I felt a lot of pressure all week playing this golf course, how demanding it is, but I can imagine playing the final group of a major is really tough.”
He doesn’t have to imagine what winning a major feels like. At Olympic.
Where else?
