The Last Word
Life at the low end of the PGA Tour food chain has not dampened the spirit or the determination of Skip Kendall to capture that elusive first win.
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
LA QUINTA, Calif. -- They couldn't come from further apart on the golf spectrum.
On the one hand, you have Phil Mickelson, one of the game's glamour names ever since he was a teenager, the kid born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Tall, rich, handsome, one of the game's regal figures for whom real hardship is a foreign concept.
On the other hand, you've got Skip Kendall, who has spent the better part of two decades, scratching out a living on the bottom end of the PGA food chain.
This is a scrapper. He has played every backwater mini-tour in existence, working part-time jobs to make ends meet. As he approaches his 40th birthday, he's still looking for his first PGA Tour victory.
And, in case you're wondering, this was not to be a victory for the stable boy, all 5-foot-nuthin' and 130 pounds of him, at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Prince Charming put the boots to that notion quite decisively in a playoff here yesterday.
Mickelson won his first PGA event in 18 months with a four-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole to snuff out Kendall's bid for a first Tour win. It was his third career playoff defeat, a distinction that only makes the losing more agonizing.
"It hurts," Kendall said. "I played my heart out but it's hard to take. Still, I'm glad I was there at the end.
"I am getting older, too," he allowed, "but I still feel like I'm progressing as a player. People sometimes ask me what my highlight is in golf and I say: 'Stay tuned.' "
BRIEF LEAD
Kendall fired a 66 yesterday and briefly held the lead down the stretch. But a bogey at the 17th hole allowed Mickelson back into the game.
After both players birdied the par-five 18th from the rough to the right of the green, they went back to the 18th tee for the playoff. Both players drove in the fairway, with Kendall about 15 yards behind Mickelson, 240 yards from the hole.
His 5-wood found the left rough while Mickelson's shot was a carbon-copy of his approach the first time around. Kendall misread the break in his chip and finished 16 feet below the hole. Mickelson hit his to within three feet. When Kendall missed his first putt, Mickelson made his to win the tournament.
Kendall knew that he didn't really lose the tournament in extra holes. He probably lost it at the 17th, an uncomplicated par-3 of just 130 yards. He committed the unpardonable sin of missing the green, leaving himself a difficult lie to a green sloping away. He made a decent recovery shot, but wound up with bogey to lose his lead.
"I'm standing on the tee with a wedge in my hand," Kendall said. "It's one thing if I'm standing there with a 3-iron, but I should be able to put a wedge on that green.
"It was right there, right there in front of me."
Kendall is the kind of guy who just keeps grinding it out, week after week, making cuts and cashing cheques. Despite the fact he has, to this point, failed to crack the winner's circle, he has, through persistence, finished in the top 75 earners in all but one of the past seven years.
Kendall twice lost in playoffs, most recently at the 2000 Southern Farm Bureau Classic when Steve Lowery sank a 45-foot putt on the first extra hole and, before that, at the 1998 Buick Invitational when Scott Simpson beat him.
Even with this newest dagger in his heart delivered by Mickelson yesterday afternoon, Kendall was undaunted.
"I think it's going to happen," he said, doggedly. "I know it's going to happen. I know that I have the game to win out here. I've just got to get over the hump somehow. It was an 'almost' today.
"But you know I'm going to try hard next week and the week after that."
That's just what he does.
"I know that his day will come," Mickelson said.
"He's been in contention too many times for it not to happen. I'm just fortunate that today it wasn't at my expense."
