Steve Stricker's battle with his golf swing hit its bloodiest stretch at the 2004 Players Championship, round one. It was at the watery, railroad-tied TPC Sawgrass that Stricker suffered a series of gruesome knockdowns that might have driven others to throw in the towel.
Starting on the back nine and playing alongside Todd Hamilton and Greg Norman, Stricker's tee shot on the par-3 17th hole was so bad that it not only missed the island green, but also the water and the pot bunker. His ball found the footpath to the green. Amazingly, he got up and down for par.
A few minutes later he hit a topspin, snap-hook drive into the drink on the 18th, the ball traveling 120 yards or so before splash-down.
A less gifted player would have shot 85 from where Stricker was hitting it that day, but Stricker shot 73. His putting is that good, a point he drove home with birdies on four of his last five holes to win the Barclays, the first event of the FedEx Cup playoffs, held at Westchester Country Club on Sunday.
His move past Tiger Woods and up the FedEx point standings, to 1st from 12th, highlights a spate of big moves. The first week of the FedEx playoffs was about comebacks. The winner, who rediscovered his game while hitting range balls from a heated trailer in the dead of winter in Wisconsin, was only the most vivid story.
• K.J. Choi (to second from fifth) and Rory Sabbatini (to third from sixth) also moved past the idle Woods in the FedEx Cup standings.
Choi's move was the most surprising, since Westchester had gotten the better of him in the past. He'd missed the cut in 2005 and finished T33 in 2002 and T64 in 2000.
Sabbatini has been barbecued for having the temerity to verbally challenge Tiger's superiority and then failing to back it up in two head-to-head matchups, but he's passed Tiger in the race for the Cup.
By the way, Woods would easily regain the lead with a W this week at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston, where he's the defending champion. As the new points leader Stricker put it, "There's still a long ways to go, and we all know who's coming back next week."
• Phil Mickelson proved something to himself with a tie for seventh place, his first top-10 finish on the PGA Tour since winning the Players in May. But thanks to the big finishes of the aforementioned three players, he slipped to fifth from fourth in the FedEx Cup standings.
Mickelson, who had never done much at Westchester, will play with the men directly in front of him (Woods) and behind him (Vijay Singh) in the penultimate group for the first two rounds in Boston, Friday and Saturday.
