Weir's game goes foul on the fairways
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Mike Weir played with fire all week long. On some level, he knew his luck couldn't last, wouldn't last. Oak Hill Country Club eventually would exact its revenge.
Weir had trouble keeping his ball in the fairway all week at the PGA Championship on a golf course that severely punished shots in the rough. Hence, the high-wire act that saw Weir making pars and birdies from some gnarly places during the first three rounds.
His imagination and creativity allowed him to be one of only three players under par starting the final round, but that's where his luck ran out. And when things went sour yesterday, they really went sour.
Having started the final round at one-under-par, Weir made five consecutive bogeys to start his day and shot himself right out of contention for his second major championship of the year.
It was not difficult to identify the problem. Weir couldn't find the fairway from the tees.
"I wouldn't have ever imagined that I would struggle like that," he said. "Bottom line is, if I sit back and analyze it, I tried to go to the well too many times with poor ball-striking all week.
"I wasn't playing very well, but I was able to salvage rounds every day. Today, it just caught up with me, although I did feel like a caught some horrible breaks."
Before the tournament started, Weir said that unless a player hit 70% of the fairways, maybe even 80%, he had no chance of winning. In the end, Weir managed to hit 33 of 56 fairways, a rate of 59%.
While that was better than most, it wasn't enough to get his name on the Wannamaker Trophy.
Part of Weir's problems probably stem from a sore lower back, the result of a poor swing last weekend at The International in Colorado. He was able to keep the back loose with massage and the hot weather through much of the week, but it took a toll.
"An important part of my game is maintaining good fundamentals and maybe I wasn't able to do that because of my back.
"I'm going to see. I might have to take two weeks off and get myself healthy."
That would mean that Weir might not play in next week's NEC Championship, one of the World Golf Championship events that could help decide player-of- the-year honours. But he'll gladly sacrifice that tournament to be healthy and ready for the Canadian Open three weeks from now at Hamilton Golf Club in Ancaster.
"That's going to be fun," he said. "I'm really looking forward to it. I just need to get rested up and get my body working right."
Weir was quick to give credit to Shaun Micheel, who handled the difficult conditions and the pressure of leading his first major championship on the last day with amazing poise, to become the fourth first-time major winner of the season.
"It's hard to believe that so many guys have come out of the pack like that," Weir said.
"Everybody has just raised their game a little bit. Maybe these guys just aren't afraid, aren't afraid to go out and do it. They have enough experience. Even though Shaun hasn't won, he has been out here enough to understand what it takes."
Weir's early collapse came as a complete shock, both to him and the hundreds of Canadians who made his gallery one of the loudest on the course.
They had all been looking for a repeat of Augusta, but what they got was Medinah, instead. Weir's five-bogey meltdown to start his round was somewhat reminiscent of the PGA Championship at Medinah in 1999 when, as a largely untested player, he was chewed up and spit out by Tiger Woods.
The difference is that, in '99, Weir lost his composure. This time, he simply couldn't find the fairway.
Yesterday's debacle started on the first tee and extended right through the fifth green until he stopped the bleeding at six.
From that point on, he was able to negotiate the rest of the golf course in even par, but the damage was done. Back-to-back birdies at eight and nine even raised the possibility of a huge comeback, a la Sea Biscuit, as Weir himself had suggested on Saturday, but this was not a movie. It was simply an unforgiving golf course keeping everyone honest.
