Tour Report: Tweaks prove valuable for the leaders (PGATOUR.com)
January 27, 2012
Stan Badz/PGA TOURBill Haas tweaked his putter and made 11 birdies Thursday at Torrey Pines.
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM
LA JOLLA, Calif. — Four weeks into the 2012 PGA TOUR season, there are still definite signs of rust.
Just ask Phil Mickelson, who fired a disappointing 77 on the South Course Thursday that left him in very real danger of missing the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open for just the fifth time in his career. But even among the leaders, there’s some tinkering being done.
Bill Haas, for example, is fiddling with his putter. At the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, he used the same belly putter that helped him win a playoff at last year’s TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola — and with that title, the FedExCup.
The magic appeared to be gone, though, as Haas ranked dead last among the field with 136 putts, including 36 on the final day. Small wonder, then, that Haas opted to banish the belly and return to a traditional length putter last week at the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation.
Unfortunately for Haas, the results weren’t much better. He was tied for 74th — and 75 players made the cut — with a total of 121 putts per round and he never had fewer than 30 on any day in the desert.
So Haas decided to trim an inch from the shaft of his belly putter this week. Voila — he used just 27 as he made 11 birdies and shot a 63 on the North Course that left him one shot off the lead at the Farmers Insurance Open.
"Great start mainly with the putter, and today it felt really good, which is surprising because these greens probably the toughest to putt on so far that we’ve played," Haas said.
The three-time PGA TOUR champ, who took a share of the lead into the final round at Torrey Pines last year, doesn’t know if the alteration is the answer. "But sometimes just being a little different it’s a little more comfortable," he said.
Besides, there was a practical reason for shortening the putter. Haas felt like he couldn’t get his eyes over the ball. The inch he excised made a big difference on Thursday.
"The longer it is, the harder it is," Haas said. "The putter has to go further away from your feet. So it allows me to get over the ball a little better and maybe see the line. That’s my theory."
Kyle Stanley, who is tied for the lead with Spencer Levin after both shot 62s, was looking for answers after missing the cut last week. He only hit 27 of 41 fairways and 38 of 54 greens. Two rounds of even par in what is normally a birdie fest simply did him in.
A 20-minute drive up the coast to the Titleist Performance Institute on Monday proved to be time well-spent, though. Not to mention, Stanley played the North Course in Wednesday’s pro-am, and he could see there were birdies to be had.
"I didn’t play very well last week, but I spent Monday up at Titleist and figured a few things out and started hitting it really well," Stanley said. "… I think it was just my alignment. I was setting up way out, so it was causing me to go really in to out on the downswing, so just squared things up a little bit."
Levin is playing with a new driver but it wasn’t put in the bag out of frustration. He cracked his tried-and-true model prior to the final round of the Sony Open in Hawaii where he tied for 23rd. Levin rarely carries a back-up so he ended up using his dad’s driver and shot 72.
"Last week I was fooling around with a few, and I found what I like now, and it’s pretty good," Levin said. "But it was scary because I hadn’t switched in two years and I hardly every switch clubs, so that was kind of a curveball."
Levin ended up hitting 12 of 14 fairways on Thursday so the new driver must be working well.
"I kind of tinker with the weights a little bit on the R11," he said. "But I got it to where my swing was today, so hopefully, I can do that again. I like it a lot. I was hitting it really straight today.”
Tidbits from the first round
LA JOLLA, Calif. — News and notes from the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open:
• Spencer Levin and Kyle Stanley posted matching 62s Thursday on the North Course to take the overnight lead. The lowest opening-round score in tournament history is a 61 by Brandt Snedeker in 2007 on the North Course.
• The top 12, and 23 of the top 26, players on the leaderboard all played the North Course Thursday.
• John Huh had three eagles today on the North Course. The last time a player made three eagles in a single round on the PGA TOUR: Derek Lamely, 2011 Bob Hope Classic, Round 4.
• First-round scoring averages — North: 69.24, South: 72.84.
• Bill Haas led the field with 11 birdies Thursday. He finished his round at 9 under, one shot behind the leaders.
• Phil Mickelson matched his second-highest score in this event in 80 total rounds. He also shot 77 in the third round in 1997
• An amateur has made the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open four of the last five years: Jamie Lovemark (2007 and 2008), Gregor Main (2009) and Anthony Paolucci (2011). Jay Hwang a golfer at UCLA is the only amateur in the field. He is tied for 83 at even-par after Round 1 on the South Course.
• The Farmers Insurance Open has not produced a first-time TOUR winner since Jay Don Blake in 1991 and has never produced a rookie winner, although Gene Littler won the event as an amateur in 1954.
Mickelson: ‘I just don’t get it”
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM
LA JOLLA, Calif. – In a word, Phil Mickelson said the round was "pathetic."
The 77 he shot on the South Course during Thursday’s first round was Mickelson’s second-highest ever and left him in a tie for 147th — and in very real danger of missing the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open for just the fifth time in 23 starts.
Mickelson’s highest score ever on the South is the 78 he shot in the third round of the 2005 event where he ended up in a tie for 56th. Otherwise, he’s virtually owned the highly-regarded municipal course – winning three times, finishing second twice, including last year, and posting a total of 10 top-10s.
Mickelson was particularly disappointed because he thought he’d seen signs of improvement at last week’s Humana challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation. He opened with a 74 but managed to break 70 each of the next three rounds, including a bogey-free 66 on Saturday.
"I went in and had a good weekend, good final few rounds at the Hope," Mickelson said. "I had some good days of practice and I was ready to play. I don’t know what happened. I just wasn’t able to focus.
"Obviously, I hade some bad swings just in the wrong spots and so forth. But I felt like my game was ready heading in, and I don’t know what to say about the score because it was pathetic."
Mickelson only hit 6 of 14 fairways and half of the greens in regulation — which left him tied for 151st in that category the 155-man field. While he had been enthused about the way he was putting when he met with the media on Wednesday, Lefty used 32 putts in the first round.
The shot-game wizard also saved par just two of the six times he found a greenside bunker.
Mickelson, who only made two birdies in Thursday’s first round against seven bogeys, heads to the easier North Course on Friday. He’ll need to shoot really low there, though, to play the weekend in his hometown event.
"There is an opportunity tomorrow to go really low over on the North if you play well," Mickelson said. "I birdied 17. I thought I had a birdie on 18 so I missed that little one there. That would have gotten me to a point where I thought if I could have shot 6- or 7-under par on the North I’d at least get here for the weekend and build some momentum.
"But it’s a little disappointing that the first round here and the first round last week have been so poor because I felt really ready and sharper than I have in a long time starting the year. So to shoot those numbers, I just don’t get it."
Final update: Two set pace with 62s
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM
LA JOLLA, Calif. – Spencer Levin has heard players talk about being in "the zone."
He’s just not sure he’s ever been in one, although the way he played in shooting 29 on the back nine of the North Course on Thursday probably came awfully close. Levin finished with a 62 that set a career low in relation to par and put him in a tie for the lead with Kyle Stanley after the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open.
"I never even know what that means, and I guess when guys do it, they don’t even know they’re doing it," Levin said. "Maybe that’s why I shot that because I just kept trying to hit every shot as good as I could, and I just had a good rhythm going.
“My mind was pretty clear, and it just worked out good. I played really well on that back nine."
Indeed. Levin made a 15-footer at the 10th hole and almost holed a 5-iron at No. 11 to set up his second of the seven birdies on the homeward stretch. His next five birdie putts were all inside 10 feet — and he actually had two unsuccessful eagle attempts from inside 12 feet that might have created a 59 watch.
"I had good looks and was putting well so it kind of added up," Levin said.
Levin and Stanley are one stroke ahead of Bill Haas, who shot a 63 on the North Course that included a double bogey on the par-3 sixth, his 15th of the day. The group at 8 under included Rod Pampling, Josh Teater, Vijay Singh and rookie John Huh.
Stanley’s 62 was also a career-low and it included an eagle on the 18th hole. Stanley estimated his drive on that hole covered 380 yards and he coaxed an 8-iron from 173 yards to 3 feet for the tie with Levin.
"The course is in good shape, the fairways are nice, the greens are soft, but you can just be pretty aggressive with your irons," Stanley said. "You’ve got to hit solid putts. If you don’t hit solid putts, it will bump up on you."
The top 12 players on the leaderboard all played the North Course, which is generally regarded as the easier of the two. In fact, Mark Turnesa, who shot 66, and Marco Dawson and Brandt Snedeker, who shot 67s, were the only players in the top 25 who played the South.
The field will switch courses on Friday and everyone who survives the cut will play the final two rounds on the South. The scoring average on the South was 72.846 while the North’s was 69.244.
Phil Mickelson, the hometown favorite and three-time champ at Torrey Pines, was one of the South’s casualties. He shot a 77 that was his second-highest score ever on the course that hosted the 2008 U.S. Open and left him in a tie for 147th
"The North Course, if you start on it, you’ve got to get off to a good start," said Rickie Fowler, who shot 68 on that layout. "You play it Friday and you feel like you can make up ground. So it is a place where you can make birdies. But the South, obviously, we play three rounds. so you have to hang in there."
Dustin feels fine after firing 66
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM
LA JOLLA, Calif. — Dustin Johnson only played 27 holes at last week’s Humana Challenge before his back seized up and caused him to withdraw from his first tournament of the year.
Johnson was in a much more positive frame of mind on Thursday after firing a bogey-free 66 on the North Course that left him four strokes off the lead at the Farmers Insurance Open. He only hit five fairways but the misses weren’t by much, and he managed to find 14 greens in regulation where he used just 29 putts.
"I hit the ball well," Johnsons said. "Even though I missed a few fairways, but all the fairways I missed, it seemed like I was just a foot off. These fairways out here on the North were really tight. But I drove the ball, hit my irons really good. You know, I holed a couple putts."
Johnson had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee in November and while he’d practiced, the South Carolinian hadn’t walked 18 holes until last week. He shot 72 in the first round but was 4 over when he made the turn on Friday and decided he couldn’t continue.
"Last week I just had a little bit of trouble because I favored my left side because I had surgery on my right knee," Johnson said. "So I struggled. It wasn’t the knee bothering me or anything, I just walked on the left basically and my back and stuff got a little tight. "But I’ve been getting some treatment on it every day to make sure I don’t get stiff again, but I feel great. I felt good last week too. It’s just I stiffened up."
Watch: Chalmers finishes strong
Chalmers eagles 18th
Greg Chalmers holes a 48-foot putt for eagle on the par-5 18th hole.
Leaderboard update: Stanley joins Levin
LA JOLLA, Calif. — Kyle Stanley has eagled the 18th hole on the North Course to grab a share of the lead with Spencer Levin.
Stanley hit an 8-iron 173 yards to set up the 3-foot eagle putt after a drive he estimated at 380 yards. The eagle went with nine birdies and a bogey in the former Clemson standout’s career low.
Bill Haas, who held a share of the lead entering the final round of last year’s Farmers Insurance Open only to tie for ninth, made birdie on his final round to finish with a 63. Rod Pampling, Josh Teater and John Huh have also finished 18 holes on the North Course at 8 under while Bio Kim is at that number through 14.
All of the top 13 players on the leaderboard played the North Course, including Vijay Singh, who is 7 under through 17 holes.
Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson is 6 over through 15 holes on the South and tied for 150th. Only two players currently have higher scores in the field of 155.
Mickelson struggling on South
LA JOLLA, Calif. — Granted, Phil Mickelson is playing the more difficult of the two courses at Torrey Pines.
But he’s certainly making the South Course even more of a challenge by playing his first 13 holes in 4 over – and falling into a tie for 139th at his hometown event.
Turns out, Mickelson may have set the tone for the day when he couldn’t get up and down from the greenside bunker and made bogey on the first hole. He three-putted the fourth from 62 feet, found two bunkers at No. 7 on the way to another bogey and made a third when he missed the green on the par-3 eighth.
Mickelson did manage a tap-in birdie from 4 inches at the par-5 sixth and turned in 39. But he dropped another shot at No. 12 when he found the left fairway bunker off the tee, missed the green well right and couldn’t convert a 6-footer for par.
Mickelson, who also got off to a slow start last week at the Humana Challenge, has only hit 3 of his first 11 fairways and seven of 13 greens in regulation. He opened with a 74 in the desert before shooting 69-66-69 to tie for 49th.
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