2009 PGA Tour second half preview

With the first five months of the golf season in the books, it’s time to look ahead.  Three majors, the FedEx Cup and the Presidents Cup still lie ahead of us.

Let’s review some of the key numbers to this point:

Official World Golf Rankings

1. Tiger Woods

2. Phil Mickelson

3. Paul Casey

4. Sergio Garcia

5. Geoff Ogilvy

PGA Tour FedEx Cup Points

1. Zach Johnson

2. Geoff Ogilvy

3. Steve Stricker

4. Tiger Woods

5. Sean O’Hair

  Presidents Cup Qualifiers

US:  Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Kenny Perry, Sean O’Hair, Zach Johnson, Jim Furyk, Justin Leonard, Stewart Cink, Anthony Kim

International:  Geoff Ogilvy, Vijay Singh, Camilo Villegas, Ernie Els, Mike Weir, Retief Goosen, Angel Cabrera, Tim Clark, Rory Sabbatini, Jeev Milkha Singh

The second major of the year lies two weeks ahead.  Tiger Woods defends the U.S. Open Championship at Bethpage State Park (Black), where he won in 2002.  Bethpage, known for being one of the most difficult tests around, is precisely the kind of golf course that appeared to be a bad fit for the 2009-vintage Woods.  With accuracy at a premium, Tiger’s tendency to spray the ball with the driver looked like it was a problem.  Tiger’s win at the Memorial, hitting 87% of fairways, may dispel many of those concerns, and Tiger goes right back to the top of the favorites list. 

In 2002, Tiger held off Mickelson and Garcia.  Mickelson figures to be back in the mix again, despite missing a few weeks because of his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis.  Returning to the Tour this week in Memphis will allow him to answer a lot of the media inquiries about his wife this week.  Mickelson was also a favorite of the Bethpage crowd in 2002, which should give him a boost.  Garcia, on the other hand, has been lost most of the season.  Padraig Harrington, who has been similarly AWOL in 2009, was T8 in 2002.  Many of the others on the 2002 leaderboard have drifted on to the Senior Tour (Scott Hoch, Nick Price), into the broadcast booth (Nick Faldo) or into irrelevance (Jeff Maggert, Billy Mayfair, Tom Byrum). 

So who else should be in the mix at Bethpage?  If Geoff Ogilvy is on, he has the game perfectly suited for the U.S. Open, and he proved at Winged Foot he had the moxie to survive the USGA’s setups.  Paul Casey has been red-hot, and seems poised to win on a major stage.  PLAYERS champion Henrik Stenson has had a dismal record at the U.S. Open, but top-5 finishes in the last two majors last year may indicate that record is ready to change.  Among Americans, Steve Stricker is good bet to be on the first page of the leaderboard.

After Bethpage, attention turns to across the Atlantic.  The Open Championship will be held this year at Turnberry for the first time since 1994.  The course has only hosted the championship three times previously, and each time it produced a champion at the peak of his game — Nick Price (1994), Greg Norman (1986), and Tom Watson (1977, over Jack Nicklaus in the famous “Duel in the Sun”).  Two-time defending champion Harrington should be in the mix here.  Additionally, we’ve seen the Open produce valiant runs from folks seen as perhaps past their prime in recent years.  Might this be one of the last opportunities for Ernie Els to pop up and win a major?  Or a repeat of Greg Norman’s effort from 2008?  Stenson, Casey, and Ian Poulter are also good bets to be in contention.

After Turnberry, the PGA Championship returns to Hazeltine National just down the road from my house.  In 2002, Rich Beem delivered the first in a string of unlikely major winners in 2002-2004 (Beem, Ben Curtis, Shaun Micheel, Todd Hamilton).  Hazeltine seems like a perfect fit for Woods, as the course is quite similar to Medinah, where Tiger has won PGA crowns in 1999 and 2006.  Surprisingly, though, given the course’s length (7,360 yards then, extended to over 7,600 for this year), shorter hitters dominated the rest of the leaderboard.  Fred Funk, Justin Leonard, Rocco Mediate, Jim Furyk, and Steve Lowery all notched top-10 finishes.  Furyk would be a good bet to contend here again, in addition to Mike Weir and Luke Donald.

So, lets’ get to the picks.  Originality may be short here:

U.S. Open:  Tiger Woods

Open Championship:  Ian Poulter

PGA Championship:  Tiger Woods

That makes 16 major championships for Woods, bringing him within two of Nicklaus’s record.