Sunday, August 11, 2013

PGA Championship -- Day 4

Here is the latest leaderboard from Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, N.Y.:

T1.  J. Dufner:  -9 (58 holes)
T1. J. Furyk:  -9 (58)
3.  H. Stenson (SWE):  -8 (58)
T4.  J. Day (AUS):  -6 (69)
T4.  S. Piercy:  -6 (68)
T4.  A. Scott (AUS):  -6 (59)

79 comments:

  1. Furyk makes his fifth par in a row to open today's proceedings, but Dufner hits his approach on 5 to within two feet, and then knocks in his second birdie in a row. He now has the outright lead at 10-under par.

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  2. Here's the leaderboard:

    1. J. Dufner: -10 (59 holes)
    2. J. Furyk: -9 (59)
    3. H. Stenson (SWE): -8 (59)
    T4. J. Day (AUS): -5 (70)
    T4. S. Piercy: -5 (69)
    T4. A. Scott (AUS): -5 (60)
    T4. J. Blixt (SWE): -5 (59)

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  3. Furyk rolls in a 35-foot putt to birdie the par-3 sixth hole, and he moves into a tie for the lead at 10-under par.

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  4. Stenson three-putts the seventh hole, makes bogey, and falls back to 7 under par.

    Furyk and Dufner, who are tied at 10-under, are now three shots clear of the field.

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  5. Stenson comes back with a birdie on 8, and is now 8-under par.

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  6. Dufner birdies the 8th hole -- his third birdie on the front nine -- and retakes the outright lead at 11-under par.

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  7. Furyk bogeys the 9th hole to make the turn at 9-under par. Dufner pars the 9th to make the turn in only 32 shots. He is 11-under par, and he has a two-shot lead on Furyk, and a three-shot lead on Stenson.

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  8. CBS says Jim Furyk's coach wants him to putt like a young man again--to take a quicker assessment of how he needs to hit the ball and then to just confidently strike the putt. If that's true, ... oh, sure, that's really helpful.

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  9. Am I the only person who thinks that Dufner would make a great Jud Fry in a PCC production of "Oklahoma!" Because I can totally see Dufner doing "Poor Jud Is Dead."

    Rory McIlroy, on the other hand, would make a great Curly, assuming he could get the accent right.

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  10. On 10, Dufner had a short birdie putt that would have gotten him to 12-under. But he just missed, and he remains at 11-under.

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  11. Leaderboard:

    1. J. Dufner: -11 (63 holes)
    2. J. Furyk: -9 (63)
    3. H. Stenson (SWE): -8 (64)
    T4. A. Scott (AUS): -6 (65)
    T4. J. Blixt (SWE): -6 (64)

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  12. Adam Scott birdies the 12th hole to move to 7-under par.

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  13. Dufner has another decent birdie chance on 11, but his 15-foot birdie putt comes up shot. He remains at 11-under.

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  14. Jason Dufner is 36 years old. He's a latecomer to success on golf's bigger stages. He was born in Cleveland and lived in Washington as a boy and didn't start playing golf until he was 15 and had moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He had to walk on to the golf team at Auburn. He struggled to stay up on the PGA Tour for the first several years of his professional career. He earned his first PGA Tour victory in his 164th start in 2012, at age 35. And it wasn't until 2010 that he played in all four majors in the same year, but he's been in contention in at least one of those tournaments in each year since--tying for fifth in the 2010 PGA Championship, finishing second in the 2011 PGA and tying for fourth in both the 2012 and '13 U.S. Open tournaments. He also was the 36-hole leader at the 2012 Masters but ended up tied for 24th. He seems to be pretty popular among the boys on the tour.

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    Replies
    1. Most of that stuff came from Wikipedia, which, again, is just amazing.

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  15. I don't think Jim Nantz has decided yet who is going to win.

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  16. Jim Furyk is 43, and he's from West Chester, Pa.

    Per JimFuryk.com:

    ... It seems like Furyk was born to play golf; his father Mike as an assistant pro at Edgmont Country club, and young Jim was raised into the game. Jim Furyk's only golf instruction came from his father; and many note that might account for his unusual—yet effective—swing. In addition to Edgmont Country Club, Mike Furyk also served as head pro at Uniontown Country Club.

    Jim Furyk took that homegrown golf talent to play at the University of Arizona in Tuscon, where he was an All-American twice. He also led the Wildcats to their first (and thus far only) NCAA title in 1992. That same year, Furyk turned professional and the rest, as they say, is history. He joined the PGA TOUR in 1994 and has won at least one tournament each year between 1998 and 2003.

    ... Furyk truly hit his stride in 2010, winning a career-best three tournaments on the PGA TOUR that year. The most notable victory was the season-ending Tour Championship. That victory earned him the 2010 FedEx Cup. His stellar performance in 2010 won him both the PGA Player of the Year and PGA TOUR Player of the year. ...

    Jim Furyk's trademark looping golf swing and his deliberate approach to the game have earned him nicknames like "The Grinder" and "The Businessman." His father Mike Furyk encouraged his son's unusual swing; he didn't want to change what felt natural and comfortable. History has gone to show that Furyk's swing has been a great asset to his success on the PGA TOUR.

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  17. EMMA TALLEY WON THE U.S. WOMEN'S AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP TODAY BY A SCORE OF 2 & 1.

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    1. YEAH! YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

      Also, though ... spoiler alert ... they're showing it on tape delay on Golf Channel. At this point, we've got her coming up the No. 15 fairway, ahead by one hole.

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    2. Actually, I'm glad for the spoiler alert. Watching this on tape delay has been so nerverwracking.

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    3. Oh, also, Golf Channel just said that Emma Talley doesn't come from a golfing family. That jibes with some nice woman at the Adsmore Museum in Princeton told my wife and me last year.

      And Golf Channel said that Princeton has only four stoplights. I guess that's true, but I'm thinking they're might be at least as many as six or seven. I'm pretty sure there are at least three on the parallel one-way strips of Ky. 81 in downtown. And then I would've guessed there are at least three or four counting the interchange with the Wendell Ford Western Kentucky Parkway and the run of U.S. 62 where they've built the Walmart.

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    4. According to Golfweek, the Talleys bought a house that bordered the Princeton Country Club solely for the real estate value, not ever planning to play golf. Emma Talley is still the only golfer in the family -- her dad has been caddying for her, but he doesn't give her any advice.

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    5. That's the key right there. My dad gave me tons of golf advice, and I'm horrible.

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  18. Incidentally, Dufner doesn't appear to have a web site of his own. He is on Twitter, however. Most of his Tweets appear to be Retweets of stuff about Auburn or his sponsors. And he appears to be a Cleveland Indians fan (Cleveland native). And then he has a whole bunch of Tweets that include pictures of vehicles overloaded with stuff--hay, furniture, etc. Here's an example.

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  19. I'm watching the U.S. Women's Amateur now.

    Here's the PGA leaderboard at 5:35 P.M. ET:

    1. J. Dufner: -11 (66 holes)
    T2. H. Stenson (SWE): -9 (67)
    T2. J. Furyk: -9 (66)
    T4. A. Scott (AUS): -6 (67)
    T4. J. Blixt (SWE): -6 (67)

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  20. Stenson bogeys the 14th hole, and falls back to 8-under par.

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  21. Now I have no idea what's happening at the PGA, because Emma Talley and Yueer Cindy Feng are playing the 35th -- and last -- hole of their match.

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    1. Wait! I thought you already said Emma Talley won?

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    2. She did. I'm watching it on the Golf Channel.

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    3. OK, phew. I quit watching once you posted that she had won. I was scared to death that you had misinterpreted the match-play dealio. Hooray for Emma Talley!

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  22. I wish Dufner could have hit at least one of those birdies he had a shot at.

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  23. Henrik Stenson is 37, and he's from Gothenburg, Sweden. He started getting close to his first major victory in 2008: T3 at the British Open and T4 at the PGA Championship. He finished ninth in the 2009 U.S. Open and T6 in the PGA that year. He went T3 at the 2010 British--and then second alone, behind miraculous Phil Mickelson, at Muirfield.

    Assuming he wrote this stuff himself (and it sounds like he probably did), Henrik Stenson is a pretty entertaining writer. Here's some of what he has to say at HenrikStenson.com:

    No one in my family played golf. I played soccer and badminton. My first contact with golf was through a friend down the street, Pontus Eriksson, who asked if I wanted to follow him to the driving range. I was hooked immediately. I went home to Mom and Dad and asked for some clubs – and I got them! My parents thought that my interest in the sport would wear off after a few weeks but I came back and asked for more equipment.

    My Dad, Ingemar, who had played many sports, came with me when I had my second lesson on the driving range at Gullbringa Golf Club. The pro Richard Bayliss said he was impressed that I was hitting straight shots, which caused my Dad to ask, “Isn’t that the whole point of the game?”.

    I played my first rounds when I was 12 and after that first summer I was down to an 18 handicap from the ladies tees. Having achieved this I moved to the men’s tees and reduced my handicap to 9 by the end of the following summer. Gullbringa Golf Club was quite far from home so Mom and Dad drove me there in the morning and picked me up in the evening. These were long days but all my friends were also on the course all day. We played short game competitions, and searched for balls in ponds and ditches. My Mom soon got so tired of washing and drying dirty, wet clothes and shoes that she offered to buy balls instead. But the real attraction was the thrill of the search. Maybe it was my Mother I was thinking of when I took off my clothes at Doral, to avoid soiling my shoes and clothes. During the summer my Dad took up playing because he was tired of sitting in the parking lot listening to me saying “Just one more bucket of balls.” My Dad soon discovered that hitting the ball straight wasn’t as easy as it seemed! ...

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  24. PGATour.com normally has a very good live scoreboard, but it's been a disaster this whole weekend. A while ago it showed that Stenson had birdied 14 to move to 10-under, when in fact he had bogeyed it to fall to 8-under.

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    1. Yeah, I've been perplexed by its scoreboard all weekend.

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    2. Yesterday it froze for about two hours.

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  25. Thankfully, the Guardian is posting updates. Here's the latest scoreboard:

    1. J. Dufner: -11 (68 holes)
    2. J. Furyk: -9 (68)
    3. H. Stenson (SWE): -8 (69)
    4. J. Blixt (SWE): -7 (69)
    5. A. Scott (AUS): -6 (70)

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  26. I guess Jim Nantz is going to let this thing sort itself out a little more before he comes back and starts talking in his shoulder-rub, knowing tone about whoever is in the lead.

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    1. I'm listening to PGA Tour Radio, where they are pretty clearly rooting for Dufner and Furyk.

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    2. I'm pretty clearly rooting for Dufner and Furyk. All along!

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  27. I wish Dufner could have hit one of those birdie putts.

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  28. On the Golf Channel, Emma Talley tells us that the folks in Princeton are probably screaming and hollerin' and yellin' at each other. And who can blame them. She also says that everyone in Kentucky is awesome, and again, it's hard to disagree.

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    1. I think I understood Golf Channel to say that she birdied No. 17 and No. 18 of the morning round to get the match back to All Square. Then they broke for lunch. I wonder if Emma Talley and her folks talked about Taco John's during lunch.

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    2. I guarantee you she's going to get some Taco John's when she gets back home.

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    3. I'll tell you what. Princeton also has an out-of-sight pizza place, Pagliai's. The Second Region had its girls' basketball tournament at Caldwell County a few seasons ago. We happened to be at that pizza place on the night of the semifinals, and the place ended up just filling with people from each of the teams. It was a great night.

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  29. Per Wikipedia:

    Hans Martin Blix (born 28 June 1928) is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979) and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As such, Blix was the first Western representative to inspect the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union on site, and lead the agency response to them. Blix was also the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from March 2000 to June 2003, when he was succeeded by Dimitris Perrikos. In 2002, the commission began searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, ultimately finding none. In February 2010, the Government of the United Arab Emirates announced that Blix will be the head of an advisory board for its nuclear power program.

    ... Blix's statements about the Iraq WMD program came to contradict the claims of the George W. Bush administration,[6] and attracted a great deal of criticism from supporters of the invasion of Iraq. In an interview on BBC 1 on 8 February 2004, Dr. Blix accused the US and British governments of dramatising the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case for the 2003 war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were ever found.[7]

    In an interview with London's The Guardian newspaper, Hans Blix said, "I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media".[8]

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  30. Dufner and Furyk both par the 15th hole.

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  31. Dufner has just hit a spectacular shot to within about two feet of the hole on 16. If he can make that tap-in, he will move to 12-under par.

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    1. Dan Jenkins ‏@danjenkinsgd
      That just won the the tournament for Dufner. Unless he yips it.
      5:17 PM - 11 Aug 13

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  32. Furyk rolls in a 15-footer for birdie on 16. He moves to 10-under par.

    Dufner makes his tap-in birdie, and moves to 12-under par.

    And so they move to the last two holes -- which are also the two most difficult holes on the course.

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  33. Here's the latest scoreboard:

    1. J. Dufner: -12 (70 holes)
    2. J. Furyk: -10 (70)
    T3. H. Stenson (SWE): -8 (70)
    T3. J. Blixt (SWE): -8 (70)

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  34. Stenson and Blixt, bogey and bogey.

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  35. Replies
    1. The question now is whether Dufner can make it an all-SEC weekend.

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  36. Furyk's approach shot on 17 lands in the rough near the green.

    Dufner, who has hit every fairway on the back nine, puts his approach on the 17th green.

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  37. Stenson and Blixt both bogey the 17th hole and fall to 7-under par. It now looks as though we will have an American winner.

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  38. I hate the family in these Samsung commercials for the smart TV. These commercials are actually persuading me not to buy the product.

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  39. Furyk bogeys the 17th hole and falls back to 9-under par.

    Dufner three-putts from the middle of the green for a bogey. He falls back to 11-under par.

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  40. Here's the scoreboard:

    1. J. Dufner: -11 (71 holes)
    2. J. Furyk: -9 (71)
    T3. H. Stenson (SWE): -7 (71)
    T3. J. Blixt (SWE): -7 (71)
    T5. S. Piercy: -5 (72)
    T5. A. Scott (AUS): -5 (72)

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  41. Dufner's drive on 18 goes into the rough on the right side of the fairway.

    Blixt bogeys the 18th hole. He finishes at 274, 6 under par.

    Furyk's drive on 18 ends up in the rough on the right side, just short of Dufner's ball.

    Stenson pars the 18th hole. He finishes at 273, 7 under par.

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  42. 1. J. Dufner: -11 (71 holes)
    2. J. Furyk: -9 (71)
    3. H. Stenson (SWE): -7 (72)
    4. J. Blixt (SWE): -6 (72)

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  43. Furyk is 204 yards from the hole, which sits up on a hill. Surrounded by yet another enormous gallery, he spends a lot of time thinking about what to do. Finally, he lashes at the ball, and immediately knows he hasn't gotten it to the green. It lands in the rough short of the green.

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  44. Dufner is 186 yards away. He takes out a 6-iron. He whacks at the ball, but you're really not supposed to be able to reach the 18th green if you drive it into the rough, and his ball also comes up short of the green. The folks on PGA Tour Radio think Dufner should have laid up, and I agree with them.

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  45. Furyk blasts out from the rough, and the ball lands on the green, rolling about 25 feet past the hole.

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  46. Now Dufner just needs to get his third shot on the green -- and he does, plopping it out to about 10 feet from the hole. He could three-putt from there and still win.

    S! E! C! S! E! C!

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  47. Furyk's 70th shot of the day rolls about one foot past the cup. And then he taps in for a 71, and a total score of 272, 8-under par. He did better than I expected.

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  48. And now here's Jason Dufner. He hits a lag putt to within 6 inches, and he taps in for a 68 and a final score of 270, 10-under par.

    JASON DUFNER IS THE 2013 PGA CHAMPION!

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  49. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about what happened today. I thought Dufner and Furyk would fall apart, but they both played very well -- and Dufner played a glorious round. He is a deserving and popular winner.

    It's also nice to think that Dufner, a Cleveland native, won a title that was contested so close to the Great Lakes.

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  50. It was so impressive that Dufner managed to play so well despite seeming so nervous. I didn't get to see his interviews after the tournament, as we were trying to get out the door to get somewhere over the last two holes. But when he came off and shook Furyk's hand, he just looked so relieved that it was all over. Majors golf is so great.

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  51. Previous reports:

    -- Tournament preview
    -- Day 1 wrap
    -- Day 2 fun and wrap
    -- Day 3 fun and wrap

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