David Barrett

Golf with David
June 20th, 2006

David Barrett is the editor-in-chief at Divot Communication. He also produces our GolfNotebook once a week plus the occasional column.

- GolfObserver editors

Phil at Winged Foot, Jean at Carnoustie

Is it a coincidence that the two greatest final-hole meltdowns in recent major championship history have come in the two majors that have tried players' souls the most of any in the last three decades?

Since the "Massacre at Winged Foot" in 1974 produced a winning score of seven-over par, the highest winning totals relative to par have been six-over at Carnoustie in 1999 and five-over at Winged Foot in 2006. Those tournaments have also given us the disastrous finishes of Jean Van de Velde and Phil Mickelson that will long live in infamy.

It's not so much that the difficulty of the 18th hole in either case directly produced Van de Velde's triple bogey at Carnoustie or Mickelson's double bogey at Winged Foot. No, both hit such wildly off-line shots and made such questionable decisions, that they could have run up a big number even on an easier hole. Perhaps, though, after being battered for 71 holes by a pugilistic course, they were like punch-drunk fighters who were wobbly on their feet, impaired in their thinking, and softened up for a knockout blow.

Photo: © David Cannon /Allsport Jean Van de Velde in the middle of the Barry Burn in one of the biggest collapses in golf

The anatomy of the disasters was remarkably similar. Both involved hideously wild tee shots, a second shot that hit an obstacle, a bad break, course difficulty becoming a larger factor close to the green, and a one-putt. Both had their strategy questioned as much as their execution. The main difference, of course, is that Van de Velde needed only a double bogey to win outright; instead making a triple and losing in a playoff. Mickelson needed a par to win outright; his double got him nothing.

Van de Velde's drive was blocked so far off line that it found the adjacent 17th fairway and, it appeared at the time, didn't hurt him that much because he didn't have to play from Carnoustie's nasty rough. Mickelson's was even worse, an intended fade that turned into a push-slice that bounced off a corporate tent before settling in trampled rough behind some trees.

Both were criticized for hitting drivers. But after experiencing and witnessing for four days the bad things that can happen on a brutal course, they knew that playing safe is sometimes not as easy as it sounds, and is not a guarantee of the desired result.

Photo: © Marc Feldman/WireImage It was very questionable if Phil Mickelson should of hit driver on the 72nd hole.

In Mickelson's case, he needed a par to win without a playoff, so he couldn't play TOO safe. Ironically, the case both for an against using a driver used Mickelson's wildness off the tee on Sunday (he hit only two fairways) as the main argument. He had already proved he couldn't hit the fairway with a driver, the critics said, so he should have used a club with which he could find the short grass. Mickelson's response was that his next longest club was a four-wood, and that if he missed the fairway with that he would be too far back to get to the green from the rough. Sounds like he wasn't confident he could hit the fairway with a four-wood, either.

Both played boldy on their second shots. Van de Velde, with nothing in his way except a burn he knew he could carry with a long iron, went with a two-iron instead of a wedge back to his own fairway short of the creek. He hit another wild shot to the right, though, and that's where the bad break came in, as it bounced backwards off a railing in the grandstand to the short side of the creek.

Photo: © Action Images/WireImage Phil Mickelson after he realized that the tournament was lost.

Mickelson may have been done in by his inbred enthusiasm for pulling off trouble shots. From 210 yards, he tried to hit a huge fade around some trees directly in front of him and hit the green. That, however, brought double bogey into play instead of a safer escape that would put him close enough to the green to give him a chance to get up and down for a winning par while taking the trees out of play. Like Van de Velde, the execution was terrible. Mickelson said he over-faded it, but those on the scene said it was more of a push as it flew directly into the tree not far in front of him. He then got his bad break on the third shot, which settled into a fried-egg lie in a greenside bunker.

Here is where the difficulty of the course and set-up came into play for both. Carnoustie's rough was the fiercest in recent memory, gruesomely long and thick, and Van de Velde faced a shot over water from a nasty patch of it. He didn't clear the burn, took some time deciding whether he would try to play it out (a case of punch-drunk thinking), dropped, and slashed his next into a greenside bunker.

Mickelson, for his part, had to get up and down at a green complex where that is designed to be a devilishly difficult task under the best of circumstances, let alone from a bad lie with the championship on the line. Playing to a green that sloped away from him, he almost inevitably had the shot roll off the green on the other side, setting up a chip, instead of a putt, to try to make a playoff.

Photo: © Andrew Redington /Allsport Jean Van de Velde may have celebrated after making the putt for a seven to get him into the playoff but he would go on and lose to Paul Lawrie.

When Van de Velde finally reached the putting surface, he gathered himself to hole a dramatic 10-foot putt to stay alive, but when Mickelson got there and holed his eight-footer, it was academic.

While equally shocking, the finishes were in a perverse way appropriate endings to weeks where the course had the players overmatched.

At Carnoustie, a clearly sadistic set-up was the cause. At Winged Foot, the reasons were a bit more complicated, as it was a bit of everything. The largest factor was the rough guarding the narrow fairways. The USGA went to a graduated scheme this year, with a deeper cut farther from the fairway and the gallery ropes pushed back to lessen the possibility of balls ending up where the grass had been trampled down. The concept was well-received, but was made more penal than intended by late-spring rains that thickened even the "normal" portion of the rough into a ball-grabbing nightmare.

The greens were a nasty combination of firm to hit to and bumpy to putt on. And let's not forget the design itself, which forces players to hit approach shots to small greens featuring steep slopes and flanked by deep, grasping bunkers.

The horror stories on such layouts are, of course, not limited to the final pairing. In fact, it might only SEEM this way, but I swear that players get frazzled to the point where they start hitting worse shots than they do on a more forgiving course.

Certainly, they do have to start playing defensively, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. While a challenging course is more likely to favor the best players than an easy one, I'm not sure that argument continues in a straight line. There might come a point where a course is so tough that it doesn't allow players to showcase their skills, maybe even taking away some of the edge of the better players (and certainly of the more aggressive ones).

That seemed to be the case at Carnoustie, won by Paul Lawrie and nearly won by Van de Velde, two players who never factored in a major before or since.

The 2006 Open at Winged Foot did a better job with its leaderboard, with players like Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Colin Montgomerie, Padraig Harrington, and Vijay Singh featuring prominently. Ogilvy, while a surprise winner, has been one of the top players this year and shows the potential of being a big winner in the future.

And, while a lack of birdies made it drag at times, it certainly provided plenty of drama at the conclusion, even if it was mostly that of the horror-movie kind.

Which makes you appreciate Hale Irwin's Winged Foot finish in 1974 even more. It may have been a massacre, but Irwin didn't let himself become a victim. Playing in the final group and needing a bogey to win, he rifled a 2-iron to the green and made par. Considering Mickelson's travails, that looks even better than it did at the time.