From the moment the pros arrived at the Greenbrier and started to get a feel for the Old White course, the red flag was up and the 59 watch was in effect. “There’s a 59 out there,” Rocco Mediate said, summing up the general consensus. In every round of the tournament, the number went a little lower. On Thursday, Eric Compton shot a 63. On Friday, Jeff Overton shot a 62. On Saturday, J. B. Holmes shaved that down to 60, but the watch was at its most intense when D. A. Points came down the home stretch. He coulda/shoulda pulled it off. He shot a 61 with a bogey-par finish, and the bogey came on a par 5. A birdie there would have done the trick.
On Sunday, Stewart Appleby got ‘er done. He shot a 59, becoming the fifth player in the history of the PGA TOUR to hit the magic number. Appleby was primed for it, after having been paired with Points on Saturday and getting a close-up look at that 61. And his 59 was enough to win the Greenbrier Classic by a single stroke. Appleby’s win was the biggest come-from-behind victory of the season; he started the round seven strokes behind the third round leader, Jeff Overton. Appleby had played 358 rounds since he last shot anything lower than 64. It had been four years since his last win.
In every possible way, then, this was a meaningful, pressure-packed round for Appleby. He played with deliberation and precision, and I have to admit it — I came out of my chair when he holed those putts on 17 and 18. I whooped loud enough to startle the dogs.
So it is with all respect to Appleby that I ask: Is 59 going to be like the 4-minute mile? It took years for that barrier to be broken, but once it was, runners began to break it more and more frequently . . . . and then everybody started doing it.
Less than two months have passed since Paul Goydos shot 59 at the John Deere Classic, That day could have been even more remarkable, since Steve Stricker shot a 60 — one more putt and there would have been a pair of 59′s. Isn’t 59 supposed to happen every 17 years or so, like a plague of locusts? Actually, it was 14 years between the first 59 — Al Geiberger at the 1977 Memphis Classic — and the second 59, shot by Chip Beck at the 1991 Las Vegas Invitational.
Or think about it this way: Geiberger shot his 59 in the second round of the tournament, which he won with a total of 273. His scores for the four rounds were 72-59-72-70. Appleby shot rounds of 66-68-65-59 for a total of 258. Appleby’s 59 was 9 shots lower than his highest round; Geiberger’s 59 was 13 shots lower. The margin surely says something about the degree of difficulty.
On Sunday, the scoring average for the whole field of the Greenbrier Classic was 67.584. On Saturday, it was even lower, 66.965 (and believe it or not, that wasn’t even the lowest scoring day on the Tour this year).
The Old White course, a par-70 that is 7,020 yards in length, was no match for the power-hitting pros. You had to scroll way down the leaderboard to find anyone with a score in the 70′s. The tournament reminded me of arena football (not that I’ve ever watched more than a minute of it) with ten-gallon athletes jammed into a pint-sized playing field.
“This is a shotmaker’s course,” said announcer Ian Baker -Finch at just about the same moment that Jeff Overton was crunching another huge drive. The big hitters basically played the Old White with three clubs — driver, wedge, putter.
The Old White, originally designed by Charles Blair Macdonald, dates back to 1914. Richmond-based architect Lester George recently completed a head-to-toe renovation. When I spent the best part of a morning with George, looking over the plans and photographs he used to “restovate” the course, he was understandably excited and proud. George restored bunkers that had been grassed over, resurrected streams that had been buried, and returned the greens to their original contours and configurations. Most importantly, he took pains to re-create the Old White so that it would play as Macdonald intended — the same strategies, the same enormous variety of shots. Macdonald, the first man to call himself a “golf architect,” was a seminal figure in American golf design; his work sparked the Golden Age of course design. He summed up the cornerstone of his philosophy in these t words: “Variety is not only the ‘spice of life” but is the very foundation of golfing architecture.”
There wasn’t much variety in the way the pros attacked the Old White. The challenges and strategies of the course just didn’t apply to them. They flew right over the hazards like LeBron James sailing over a flat-footed defender for a slam dunk.
Business as usual, I guess, but for me the Greenbrier Classic put the whole issue of power golf into a stark new perspective. Instead of moaning about technology, and how far the ball flies, and sounding like another old coot wishing that the old courses weren’t obsolete and that golf hadn’t made the leap to hyperspace, I am going to do two things:
1. I hereby declare that the the new magic number is 54. The 59 barrier has been broken. It’s porous now. So let the 54 watch begin!
2. I am going to get to the Greenbrier to play the Old White just as soon as I possibly can. The course might have been too small for the pros, but it looked just right for the rest of us.
