After 89 professional tournaments, Camilo Villegas came out atop the leaderboard. Mr. Villegas won the Western Open, oops my error, The BMW Championship with a wire to wire performance at Bellerive. A rain out on Thursday forced the tournament to be played over three days, with 36 holes be played on Saturday. Mr. Villegas shot a final round 68 to win by two strokes over Dudley Hart, whose 65 and second place finish boosted him to 14th in the FedEx standings and a spot in the Tour Championship in three weeks.
Anthony Kim (67) and Jim Furyk (70) played in the final group with Mr. Villegas. The threesome played an entertaining final round, complete with lead changes, marvelous shots, clutch putting and a whole lot of dry spitting. Mr. Furyk had the lead after Mr. Villegas bogeyed two holes in a row on the front nine. However, thanks to seven straight one putt greens Mr. Villegas seized the tournament and would not let go for anyone.
Mr. Kim charged late, after back to back bogeys left him seemingly out of contention. But superb iron play and clutch putting had him within two strokes with two holes to play. On the par 5 17th however, his birdie putt slid by the hole on the left side and he was reduced to needing some help to catch the eventual champion. It was not to be, as Mr. Kim, after telling his caddy he wasn’t there to play for second, pulled his second shot into the bleachers long and left of the green. Mr. Villegas hit his second shot onto the green and two putts later clutched his first trophy. After being in contention several times since The Open Championship, it’s nice to see him earn a victory.
As for the FedEx Cup, Vijay Singh will be the winner unless he doesn’t finish the Tour Championship at East Lake for some reason. It didn’t appear to make him happy as he refused interview requests from NBC after his round was completed and left without speaking to any media folks. Some of those media folks assume it just Mr. Singh being surly, but I think he just wanted to leave the day to the tournament victor. With the new volatility infused into the format, some fine play in this week boosted players into the final tournament. Kevin Sutherland, Ken Duke, Tim Clark, Bubba Watson, and Mr. Hart will all be part of the field at East Lake. Chad Campbell, who withdrew after the first round to be with his wife during the birth of their first child, also made the field despite earning no points. A very cool week indeed for Mr. Campbell, even without the additional honor of being selected for the Ryder Cup team.
It seems strange to think of the playoffs as being over even before the final rounds get played. Another reason to doubt the concept of playoffs and golf, but hey I’ve been wrong about things before this playoff stuff. I can’t help but think that with the $10 million prize off the table the Tour Championship will be anti-climatic, especially after the Ryder Cup is completed in two weeks. It’ll be a good tournament, but the whole playoff sideshow will be moot.
Bravo. Of course Vijay left because he did not want to take attention from young Camilo Villegas, the winner, and did not want to appear to be rooting for him against his other colleagues Furyk, Kim and Choi.
He had just played 72 holes in three days, putted very badly and finished way down in the pack. True, he just won $10 million and should have given a diplomatic and short interview, but give the man a break. To call him “surly” because he did not want to talk to the press when they wanted him to simply exposes the media’s astonishing presumption that it is all about the media.
The media has made a whipping boy out of Singh for a long time. Unless Vijay is in the outright lead, he is usually never given air time unless he has hit a bad shot or missed a birdie from short range. But the man is a great golfer, with 34 Tour wins and another 22 or so internationally. He is sure to win 40 tournaments to exceed the number won by Tom Watson and needs only a win in one of the Opens to close the last flaw in his astonishing career/
Comment by Leon Tipps
— September 8, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
Like the guys’ reports, however, does he write for the Wall Street Journal in his day job, the Mr. is just getting to me.
Comment by Roger Perfini
— September 8, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
The press picks on Monty and Sergio but haven’t noticed them going out of their way to pick on Vijay. Ever.
Airtime is a factor of network programming for maximum ratings, the writers/reporters of the media have no influence on this. If you want airtime, be in contention.
Singh is a great player, a future hall of famer but he is comparable to Phil. He may catch Tom Watson in total victories but there is no chance that he will match Watson’s 8 majors. Vijay isn’t Tom Watson, neither is Phil. In 20 years there will be no debates raging to determine if the 19th best player ever was Vijay or Phil. Nobody will care.
Comment by Mike Hager
— September 9, 2008 @ 8:38 am