Tiger Woods may not have been in the Barclays field, but what it lacked in star power, it more than made up for with exciting final round play as Steve Stricker birdied four of the final five holes to win the Baraclays and take the initial lead in the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
The past six and a half years have not been easy for Steve Stricker. Nor has the past year. After finding himself poised to win both the U.S. Open and Open Championships, only to be betrayed in the final round as pressure began to build. Yet Sunday would be Stricker’s day alone to shine. "I’ve put in a lot of hard work at the end of the 2005 season. I went back to TOUR School and I think that was a big wake-up call. I put a lot of effort there and I think I missed my TOUR card there by a couple of shots. I just worked real hard at it at the end of the 2005 season. I came out with I think kind of a fresher attitude and I caught on to many things during the winter in Wisconsin hitting a lot of balls," said Stricker.
Much like his road back to contention on the PGA Tour, Stricker’s victory on Sunday was an uphill battle the entire way. The goal of the FedEx Cup was to bring the best players on the PGA Tour in contention for a series of weeks, and it appears they did just that. On the back nine of the final round, ten players were within three strokes of the lead including Phil Mickelson, Geoff Ogilvy, and Ernie Els. However, towards the end, it was clear the tournament would come down to the final pairing of K.J. Choi and Steve Stricker.
K.J. Choi who is having the best year of his career began the round in an uncharacteristic fashion, bogeying three holes before finally making his first birdie on the ninth which seemed to turn the momentum in his favor. After collection two more birdies on 10 and 12, Stricker began wondering if he would be able to stop Choi’s charge, "I thought, here he goes. I was in contention there at AT&T and he holed it out of the bunker at 17. I thought, ‘Well, here he goes.’ He made a bomb and then he made one earlier, too. You know, I just had to pay attention to myself and I didn’t really worry about what he was doing. I just tried to stay focused on what I was doing and trying to do."
It would have been the perfect time for Stricker to fold, for the pressure to overcome him. Clearly it came close to doing just that. Bogies on 10 and 13 after wayward drives brought Choi and Stricker very close. Then Stricker erupted with four birdies on the last five holes: "You know what, I felt good. I was thinking that after birdying 16, I’m like, you know, I finally — you know, I got deeper into the round having a chance to win. Those other tournaments, it kind of — piddled it away there mid-round. So I felt like, you know what, I’m deep into the round; anything can happen."
Perhaps Stricker’s success at the Barclays was because of, and not in spite of his earlier disappointments this year. Despite the difficulties he experienced Stricker took the positives from the previous tournaments and used them to fuel his victory on Sunday. He said, "I didn’t see them as disappointments. I think that’s the first thing. I didn’t see those as a negative deal. I thought that was another building block in what I was doing. Even though I didn’t finish them off, you know, the way you’re supposed to, I still felt like those were positive things for me. I was moving in the right direction."
FedEx Cup Standings
Pos |
Player |
Points |
1 |
Steve Stricker |
104,950 |
2 |
K.J. Choi |
102,900 |
3 |
Rory Sabattini |
100,650 |
4 |
Tiger Woods |
100,000 |
5 |
Phil Mickelson |
99,613 |
6 |
Vijay Singh |
99,000 |
7 |
Jim Furyk |
98,850 |
8 |
Zach Johnson |
97,350 |
9 |
Adam Scott |
97150 |
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