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 Closer Look: Stricker tames course
Posted: Saturday June 19, 1999 10:51 PM
By Albert Lin, CNN/SI PINEHURST, N.C. -- He started the day in a tie for 20th, six strokes off the 36-hole pace set by David Duval, Phil Mickelson and Payne Stewart. But it didn't take Steve Stricker long to draw attention to himself. Stricker holed two of the biggest shots of the tournament on Nos. 2 and 3 to suddenly vault into contention at the U.S. Open. On a day when Pinehurst No. 2 played to an average score of 75.972, the 32-year-old Wisconsin native put up the only red number of the round, a one-under 69, and stood at two-over 212 heading into Sunday's final round. "To get off to the kind of start I had today is something you only wish upon," said Stricker, whose previous best finish at a U.S. Open was a tie for fifth last year at Olympic, when he was paired with eventual champion Lee Janzen on Sunday. "From that point on I just tried to regain my composure, to stay as aggressive as I could but to play pretty smart." What had Stricker so juiced up? On the 447-yard, par-4 second hole, Stricker's five-iron approach just made the front of the green. But from there his 40-plus-foot putt for birdie was dead on. "I haven't made a putt of that length in quite a while," he said. "When you see that go in, and you get a birdie instead of a bogey, it gets you going in the right direction." But even Stricker couldn't have been prepared for what would happen on the very next hole, the 335-yard, par-4 No. 3. His two-iron tee shot found the left fairway bunker, and he pulled out an eight-iron for the final 136 yards to the cup, cut in the front left of the green. The ball landed, took a couple short hops two feet past the flag, then spun back and to the right, dropping into the hole for an eagle 2, only the third of the tournament but the second on No. 3 (Chris Tidland also put up a 2 in Round Two). "I heard the people going crazy," Stricker said. "You can tell it's getting closer by how people react. But to have that go in, you don't expect that." The eagle dropped his overall score back to even par, which gave Stricker some breathing room while he tackled the final 15 holes. He bogeyed 8 and 9 but grabbed those strokes back with birdies on 10 and 14. Then he made a couple mistakes that kept his score from being even more impressive. On the 489-yard, par-4 16th, he hit a two- rather than a three-iron approach, running the ball off the back of the green and failing to get up and down. Trying to compensate for that error, he again was too aggressive on the 191-yard, par-3 17th, hitting a seven-iron on the right side of the green and then missing a 10-foot par save. "Maybe that's a lesson I learned today that I can apply tomorrow," he said. The bottom line, though, with the struggles of Messrs. Duval, Mickelson and Stewart -- who only hit 29 greens in regulation among them -- was that Stricker sits in a tie for fifth just three shots behind Stewart. It is a position with which he became familiar at last year's PGA Championship at Sahalee, where Stricker played with Vijay Singh in Sunday's final pairing and finished runner-up. "I was able to see how they [Janzen and Singh] won, basically," he said. "They stayed real patient. I could tell they were battling nerves, too. They got a couple good breaks, but I think mainly they remained calm on the outside. ... I know when I get into contention, especially in a major tournament, that I really get ahead of myself and I start to walk a little bit faster, my swing gets a little bit quicker. And those are the things I'm going to have to deal with and slow down a little bit." Stricker's PGA experience also mirrored what Mickelson is going through this weekend. Stricker's wife and one-time (and future) caddie, Nicki, was due with the couple's first child two weeks after the tournament. He didn't have the pager and cell phone Mickelson has in his bag, but he did have arrangements for a private jet to fly him back to his Tampa home in case Nicki went into labor. But with how involved the entire family is in his career (Nicki's father, Dennis Tiziani, is Stricker's teacher), Stricker didn't necessarily expect a phone call. "She'd probably say, 'We're gonna have more kids, you can be there for the next one,'" Stricker joked. "That was probably her thinking." Ten months later, Stricker is a happy father and again in contention again for his first major. "At least I have another opportunity, and that's really all I can ask for going into the last day," he said. "So [the 69] puts me in good position for tomorrow."
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