Where are the big names
Right about the time this paper lands in your driveway, the
second round of the PGA Championship, golf’s final major of the
year, will be well under way. The question is will names such as
Woods, Mickelson, Singh and Els rise to the top of the leader board
by week’s end or will they hover slightly below the lead and open
the door for someone else?
Where are the big names
Right about the time this paper lands in your driveway, the second round of the PGA Championship, golf’s final major of the year, will be well under way. The question is will names such as Woods, Mickelson, Singh and Els rise to the top of the leader board by week’s end or will they hover slightly below the lead and open the door for someone else?
So far, that’s been the case all season long, as not a single big name has captured any of golf’s Major tournaments in 2007.
In fact, not only have the big name players failed to win the Masters, U.S. Open or British Open but all of the major championship winners that outplayed the tour’s elite group this year had never won a major before – and all of them have been different people.
Talk about the potential for a unique slam…Instead of talking about Tiger winning all four, we’re talking about a “grand slam” of first-time major winners.
Remember, Zach Johnson won the Masters; Angel Cabrera won the U.S. Open, and last month Padraig Harrington captured the British Open.
At the start of the year, I would have bet on the big-name players winning at least 50 percent of the majors this year. Now I’m going to bank on another first-time major winner capturing this week’s 89th PGA Championship in the sweltering Tulsa, Okla. heat.
The question is who is it going to be? I wouldn’t exactly fly to Vegas and bet on this – especially after the way Tiger crushed the field in last week’s World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational – but in keeping with the theme this year, I’d say the top 5 players to watch this week in Tulsa are Sergio Garcia, K.J. Choi, Adam Scott, Arron Oberholser and Charles Howell, III.
Garcia, who finished second in the PGA in 1999, leads the list as he is probably still steaming and determined to rebound after handing over the British Open to Harrington down the stretch. Choi is playing exceptional and the others on this list will no doubt win a major before their careers are over.
If the trend continues this would be the first time since 2003 when first-time major winners won all four majors – a pretty amazing feat considering we are in the prime of the Tiger Woods era.
What might be even more amazing than all of this is that we could go the whole year without seeing the name Tiger Woods etched onto a major championship trophy. Who would have ever expected Tiger to finish the year without his 13th Major? The only other times that has happened since 1999 was in 2003 and ’04.
Will history repeat itself? We’ll just have to wait and see.
